Welcome to the Folk Arts – Cultural Treasures School (FACTS) and the Philadelphia Folklore Project’s (PFP) teachers’ guide for a school-wide folk arts residency. Here we share our experiences about an approach to education that we believe matters, our thinking about a set of concepts that shape our practice, and our deep appreciation for the knowledge and experiences that artist, Losang Samten, generously shares with the children at our school. This is a folk arts education curriculum for an artist residency. We present here the curricular framework, its scope and sequence, and summaries of all the learning activities.
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Not long after the school began in 2005, PFP and FACTS chose to invite Tibetan sand mandala artist, Losang Samten into the school to conduct a school-wide folk arts residency.
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Although we have written this guide for use by an audience of teachers at FACTS, there are two other groups of educators who we feel could find this guide of value and use. The first group of educators includes those educators who are working with Losang Samten or another sand mandala artist from the Tibetan tradition. They will find here guidance in structuring systematic learning activities for various age students that take into account the specifics of this art form and its cultural context. The second audience is educators who are doing, or who seek to do, a school-wide folk arts residency. This document presents a model for developing learning activities that engage students more deeply with the artist, the art form and its cultural context. If any of our readers are planning to host a school-wide residency, they can find here a way of structuring it that helps teachers to support student learning about the artist, art form and cultural context even when there is limited face-time with the artist.
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Each mini-unit guides student learning toward gaining multiple enduring understandings about the artist, art form, or its context that are developmentally appropriate for their age. Our model contains a spiraling sequence that systematically revisits focus areas every three years. Ours is an annual residency model structure that uses the same folk artist year after year. This model allows for students to deepen and extend their relationship with the artist through sequenced instruction. Students have at least nine meaningful interactions with the artist throughout the years that build upon rather than repeat the same experience over and over.
Read more and access the guide by clicking on it in the downloads section of the sidebar…
Losang Samten and the mandala he made for the 2016 AFS conference in Miami.