And I think that if I and other teachers truly want to provoke our students to break through the limits of the conventional and the taken for granted, we ourselves have to experience breaks with what has been established in our own lives; we have to keep arousing ourselves to begin again. - Maxine Greene
Are you ready for a professional adventure?
Are you looking for dynamic ways to integrate the arts in your educational setting?
Would you like to contribute to an international community of educators?
The Habla Summer Institute is a professional development experience in Merida, Mexico, for all educators interested in activating their own creativity and finding new ways to make the arts part of the daily life of their classrooms.
Work with international leaders in the field of education and the arts at the weeklong Habla Teacher Institute. Habla documents and shares best practices for using the arts to transform schools and communities. At this institute you will experience these best practices, share your own, and learn ways to fuse the arts with literacy in your educational setting.
What will we do?
The Habla Teacher Institute will be led in English and Spanish. No Spanish language background is necessary.
The 2012 Habla Teacher Institute will explore the essential concept of Mapping Worlds: Cartographies of Learning. Mapping has long been used as a tool in education for making our thinking visible from creating word maps of vocabulary to mapping curriculums for an entire school. This summer will broaden our definitions of mapping and look at what it really means to map learning from a cognitive and artistic perspective.
Two of the partnering organizations for this institute—Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education and Project AIM at the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Columbia College Chicago—led citywide projects where students created a variety of maps of their lives and the subjects they were studying. This stunning display of visual maps was presented in a curated exhibit for the city of Chicago. This year, at the Habla Teacher Institute, working with leaders in both organizations as well as presenters from a variety of settings, we will learn about the range of ways students can map their own learning and their growing understanding of language, literature, and the physical world.
At the institute participants will collaborate with a team of international artists in multiple artistic disciplines to explore the concept of mapping through contemporary and classical art works and literature. We will then create original work in various art forms considering how this concept resonates as a metaphor in our lives today. Through this process we will envision how to transform educational settings into cultural communities rich with writing, reading, and art making.
Unlike many professional development experiences, the Habla institute is not a series of disconnected presentations and workshops. A team of international presenting artists and educators collaborate on a continuous series of experiences, each building on the previous, modeling an integrated and continuous process of learning. Reading, writing, and creating through art forms are presented holistically, inviting connections between disciplines. Ample time will be allocated for participants to reflect on the process.
Program Highlights
Participate in professional development hands-on workshops led at the Habla center by international leaders in the fields of literacy, the arts, and culture.
Hear and discuss IDEA talks given by education pioneers from various fields. For previous IDEA talks from various Habla experiences click here.
Have conversations and share teaching practices with an international group of educators attending from around the world. An average of nine countries are represented at each teacher institute.
Receive a copy of the Habla Best-Practice Handbook that documents powerful teaching practices for integrating the arts from North and South America.
Celebrate throughout the week with social events including the legendary closing fiesta in a gorgeous quinta (estate) outside the city.
Enjoy Yucatecan food served daily for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
Explore through professionally guided tours the Mayan ruins of Uxmal and the ecological wonders of Celestun (optional).
Engage in optional experiences at night led by international visiting artists that extend the day’s learning from the institute.
The full institute itinerary for this year isn’t completed yet although the overall structure will resemble last year’s institute. To see last year’s institute itinerary click here.
How you will benefit
Acquire a set of practices, tools, and activities for integrating the arts meaningfully with language and literacy development in your educational setting.
Experience a model of cross-cultural education involving multiple languages with participants from a range of backgrounds and ages.
Learn a set of cutting-edge tools from various leading organizations for documenting and sharing student learning.
Compare model educational practices from different parts of the world that help to teach creativity to students from diverse backgrounds.
Explore ways to develop a community in the classroom by engaging in meaningful sharing of work through multiple mediums.
Understand how to foster an educational environment of multiliteracies that fuses art forms and technologies.
Reflect on ways to build a multilayered classroom environment that engages students in ways to think about the problems and solutions in our global society.
Leave with a clear structure for transferring the experience of the institute directly to your specific grade-level and/or educational context.
Who is the institute for?
In past Teacher Institutes participants gathered from Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Canada, England, France, Italy, and Australia from a range of professional backgrounds including
Public school elementary teachers from the United States of every grade level
A doctor setting up a literacy program in the Dominican Republic
Spanish language professors in an Ivy League university
Literature professors from universities in Mexico
An educator who works in rural Mexican schools for a non-profit organization
An arts education administrator, poet, and educator from Minneapolis
A literature teacher in a KIPP charter middle school in the United States
An artist who facilitates arts programs for kids in Mexican orphanages
A state arts council administrator and visual artist from the United States
Elementary and Secondary visual arts teachers from the United States and Australia
Graduate students interested in exploring new ways to teach language and literacy
A Spanish language professor in a rural liberal arts college
Although everyone of any professional background is welcome, the institute is especially relevant for
Literature, language arts, and literacy educators
Elementary school teachers
Foreign language teachers
Arts teachers (all disciplines)
Teaching artists
Community educators
Educational administrators
How safe is Merida?
Merida is a very safe city where it feels comfortable to walk on the streets any day or night. We are far from the drug violence in other parts of Mexico. This article in CNN points out that Merida is safer than Wichita, Kansas in the United States. If you have any hesitation regarding safety in Merida please write us at contact@habla.org and we will answer your questions or put you directly in touch with people who visited for previous education programs and can tell you about their experience.
Presenters
This is a current list of confirmed presenters.
Patricia Sobral taught at Harvard University for five years in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and currently teaches at Brown University and is the coordinator of the Language Program in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She is co-author of Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language, a first-year language textbook, 2007. In fall 2009, Traveling through the Alphabet: An Intermediate Reader will be available by Focus Publishing, and in fall 2010, Brazil Via the Arts (tentative title) will be published by the same company. One course she teaches at Brown, Performing Brazil: Language, Theater & Culture functions as both a language and culture course and a platform for students to develop a solid foundation in education through the arts.
Cynthia Weiss Cynthia is an award-winning public artist, painter, and educator. She directs the Arts Integration Mentorship Project, Project AIM, at the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Columbia College Chicago. Cynthia is co-editor with Amanda Lichtenstein of a new Columbia College publication; AIMprint: New Relationships in the Arts and Learning, and co-editor with Gail Burnaford and Arnold Aprill of Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning, 2001. Cynthia is fluent in Spanish and always inspired by translations across art forms, language and culture.
Kurt Wootton is a co-founder and director of Habla and one of the founding directors of the ArtsLiteracy Project in the Education Department at Brown University. He has piloted several lab schools in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico and worked with Boston, St. Paul, Providence, and Central Falls on multi-year, district-wide initiatives. Wootton is often called upon to give university lectures and keynote speeches including recent talks at Harvard University, the Arts Education Partnership, and the International Conference on Arts and Functional Illiteracy in Rio de Janeiro. The New York Times writes, "Mr. Wootton remains every bit as convinced of education's power to transform lives. He has changed his tool of choice, however, from a mirror in which students see only reflections of themselves to a window that opens onto the rest of the world."
María del Mar Pátron-Vazquez is a co-founder and director of Habla and a PhD candidate in the Hispanic Studies Department at Brown University. She specializes on the intersection of community and Latin American literature and the arts. She has lectured internationally and led teacher workshops on language, art, and culture in partnership with the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University and the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University.
Arnold Aprill is the Founding and Creative Director of CAPE, comes from a background in professional theater as an award-winning director, producer and playwright. He has taught at the University of Chicago, National-Louis University, Columbia College, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is one of the co-editors with Cynthia Weiss and Gail Burnaford of Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning. He consults nationally and internationally on the role of the arts in effective school improvement. He has been recognized for exceptional leadership by the Chicago Community Trust and by the Leadership for a Changing World initiative supported by the Ford Foundation.
Charly Barbera is a percussionist dedicated to Afro-Caribbean musical traditions. He has extensively studied the folkloric music of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Colombia. He is also dedicated to preserving and developing these cultural art forms and bringing them to education programs in universities, schools, and community centers. Charly is a musician in several musical groups including Africaribe, EE, and Crystal Gravy. In addition to an expertise in folkloric music, Charly also plays with groups in the areas of jazz, hip-hop, fusion, rock and other genres.
Laura Riebock teaches and dances in Chicago and internationally. Laura specializes in giving educators the tools to integrate various forms of movement and dance into their curriculums in schools around Chicago. She has studied various styles of dance such as Ballet, Jazz, Belly Dance, Salsa and Puerto-Rican Bomba. She currently dances and plays percussion with AfriCaribe and Bompleneras.
Dates: July 14-20, 2012
Cost:
Institute Cost: $950 USD (includes city tour, events, workshops, and programs)
Excursion to Uxmal (optional): $110 USD
Excursion to Celestun (optional): $110 USD
Housing
There are many beautiful hotels and homes for rent in Merida. Here are a few of our favorites. Hotels do fill up quickly for this time of year so book your hotel room as early as possible.
We recommend the following:
Casa Esperanza (10% discount for the Habla Teacher Institute; mention when booking)
"The institute was so planned out and professional but also offered that personal touch. The environment allowed for immediate vulnerabilities to be shared and for long-lasting friendships to be forged. I am permanently changed as a person and teacher as a result of the institute - and that has not usually been the case with teaching seminars/institutes. I will be back!!!!!!"
Kelly Lane, 1st Grade Teacher
"When I reflect about the institute, I cannot think of it as divided by days and hours and sessions, moments of work, or conversation, or performance. In retrospect, it seems to be like a timeless intense moment in which we went from one layer of depth to another, guided by discovery and wonder. Working and collaborating on equal footing with everyone, regardless of who we were and what we did, was truly revealing, profound and inspiring for me. It gave me a glimpse of what could be achieved by working in this manner with our students and colleagues. I had never before had the opportunity nor the privilege of working with such talented yet humble, wonderful artists and other educators from different walks of life. It was as if all of a sudden, I had become another person or maybe the real me that had been hidden, fearful of showing itself to others. It was an experience of deep joy, peace, inspiration and energy."
Nidia Schumacher, Director of the Language Program in Hispanic Studies at Brown University
"I learned how well the exploration of text and writing could be enriched through work in the art forms. Sometimes we focus too much on the medium and technique in the arts – not on what you will use the medium to express. The opportunities to read and write during the institute gave me something I wanted to have images for. This was very apparent as everyone eagerly worked on their book projects. I was amazed in how rich and personal the final products were."
Ruth Piispanen, Arts Education Director, Idaho Commission on the Arts
"What I think it changed the most in my teaching, is the way I see myself now as a person in front of a class, how I am committed to the moment and the confidence to experiment and be more creative."
Dani Evia Duarte, Language Educator and Yoga Instructor, Mérida México
“In all honesty, my experience at the Habla Teacher Institute reaffirmed my decision to become a teacher. Being around so many dynamic educators awoke a passion that I had, until now, been stifling. The Institute made me see teaching itself as an art form and one with incredible opportunities for creativity and imagination.”
Rebekah Bergman, Brown University Student
“At the institute there was no hierarchy between the professors from Brown University or Columbia College and elementary school teachers like myself. This is extremely unusual in an education conference setting. The culture and structures at Habla echo Paulo Freire. The teachers and the students were co-learners and co-teachers in the truest sense.”
Anne Thulson, Visual Arts Educator and Artist, Denver, CO
Habla worked with CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education) to document the 2011 Teacher Institute “Into the Labyrinth.” For videos, images, and reflections on that year’s institute visit CAPE’s website here.
The 2012 Habla Teacher Institute will explore the essential concept of Mapping Worlds: Cartographies of Learning. Mapping has long been used as a tool in education for making our thinking visible from creating word maps of vocabulary to mapping curriculums for an entire school. This summer will broaden our definitions of mapping and look at what it really means to map learning from a cognitive and artistic perspective.
At the institute participants will collaborate with a team of international artists in multiple artistic disciplines to explore the concept of mapping through contemporary and classical art works and literature. We will then create original work in various art forms considering how this concept resonates as a metaphor in our lives today. Through this process we will envision how to transform educational settings into cultural communities rich with writing, reading, and art making. 
Merida is a very safe city where it feels comfortable to walk on the streets any day or night. We are far from the drug violence in other parts of Mexico. 
Patricia Sobral taught at Harvard University for five years in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and currently teaches at Brown University and is the coordinator of the Language Program in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She is co-author of Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language, a first-year language textbook, 2007. In fall 2009, Traveling through the Alphabet: An Intermediate Reader will be available by Focus Publishing, and in fall 2010, Brazil Via the Arts (tentative title) will be published by the same company. One course she teaches at Brown, Performing Brazil: Language, Theater & Culture functions as both a language and culture course and a platform for students to develop a solid foundation in education through the arts.
"The institute was so planned out and professional but also offered that personal touch. The environment allowed for immediate vulnerabilities to be shared and for long-lasting friendships to be forged. I am permanently changed as a person and teacher as a result of the institute - and that has not usually been the case with teaching seminars/institutes. I will be back!!!!!!" 
Ruth Piispanen, Arts Education Director, Idaho Commission on the Arts