Presenter Cynthia Weiss discusses images created representing labyrinths
Photograph by Sophie Barbasch

In the summer of 2010 educators, artists, and organizational leaders gathered to participate in the Habla Teacher Institute. Participants collaborated with a team of international artists in multiple artistic disciplines to explore the concept of labyrinths through contemporary and classical art works and literature. Participants created original work in various art forms considering how labyrinths resonate as a metaphor in our lives today. Through this process educators envisioned how to transform educational settings into cultural communities rich with writing, reading, and art making.

Habla partnered with CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education) to document the teacher institute. Arnold Aprill, founder and creative director of CAPE, led a team of researchers–Rebekah Bergman, Maggie Thulson, Sophie Barbasch, and Jessica Vosburgh–to thoroughly documented the institute with video, images, and transcriptions of presentations.

Visit CAPE/Habla's collaborative website here to see the full Habla Teacher Institute documentation.

The 2010 Habla Teacher Institute partners included CAPE, The ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University, Project AIM in The Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College, and Manigua.

A primary emphasis of Habla's work is documenting teaching practices and student learning to share beyond the walls of the school. In 2010 teacher and artists visited from around the world to collaboratively teach at Habla's summer lab school.  The students in the school, ages 8-12, explored the concept of "Labyrinths." Each week was shaped around a different aspect of the concept: labyrinths of the self, city, natural world, and imagination. At the end of each week, students presented performances and exhibits for the community.

With the support of NALAC (National Association for Latino Arts and Culture), Habla partnered with CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnership in Education) to document the summer experience so that the student and teachers might reflect on their own experience and for educators beyond Habla to use the concepts and activities in their own classrooms.

Click here to visit the CAPE/Habla website to see extensive images, videos, and text of the full experience.

A special thanks to Arnold Aprill, the founder and creative director of CAPE, for spending two weeks at Habla leading a team of documenters and working with the teachers and students.

In her talk at the 2009 Habla Teacher Institute "Cabinets of Wonder," Ms. Patron Vazquez describes ways we might find the center of language teaching by moving beyond textbooks and worksheets and finding the essence of what it means to tell stories, create art, and "narrate ourselves" in a new language. To listen to the audio of this talk click here. To download a podcast of this talk, right click, and Save Link As here.

Morris Bowie photographs the teacher institute. Photograph by Arnold Aprill.

Through our work with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) and Reggio Emilia we've learned the importance of thorough documentation of the teaching and learning process. During the Habla 2009 teacher institute, "Cabinets of Wonder," we were lucky to have with us Arnold Aprill, the creative director of CAPE as well as Chicago photographer Morris Bowie. Habla director Kurt Wootton, Arnold, and Morris collaborated with the participants to document the institute through field notes, photography, and video. CAPE donated space on their website to host the curated institute documentation. See the full documentation here and join us next year for the 2010 Habla Teacher Institute "Into the Labyrinth."

In his talk “Cultural Agency and Learning with Each Other” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Dr. McLaughlin explores how teachers can act as cultural advocates by working as compañeros with students and other teachers to share language, arts, cultural, and teaching experiences. Mr. McLaughlin outlines three dispositions necessary for successful cross-cultural collaboration.

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Mr. Wootton’s IDEA talk, at the 2009 Habla Teacher Institute provides a vision for rethinking school reform by placing creativity and wonder at the center of learning.

To watch the video of this talk click here (recommended due to the interaction of the speaker and the images.)

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On June 15th-19th, 2009 Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) and Habla collaborated to design a new kind of professional development institute for teachers at the Walt Disney Magnet School in Chicago, Illinois. The staff for this week-long institute involved many of the artists and educators who work with Habla on a regular basis (and who will be involved in the Habla Teacher Institute "Cabinet of Wonders" July, 2009). These artists and educators included Arnold Aprill, Cynthia Weiss, Kurt Wootton, Morris Bowie, Robert Possehl, Sarah Roodhouse, and Catherine Mann.

CAPE and Habla documented the entire process with video, photography, and text.

Visit CAPE's website to view the process (and to learn about thorough ways to document teaching and learning).

In her two-part talk titled “Through lines” and “Translations” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Ms. Weiss defines through lines as the central and recurring forms and structures that unite personal and professional work.

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In her talk “Documenting and Sharing: ‘new approaches to teaching literacy and language’: Multiple Representations for Teachers” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Dr. Burnaford presents an innovative idea for teachers to become coresearchers on both their teaching practices and their personal development.

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here.

In her talk “Social Change, Mobilization, and the Performing Arts” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Ms. Stevenson shares her current ethnographic study of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Group in Oakland, California, that explores the relationally transformative capacities of a collaborative arts group.

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In his talk “New Standards for a New Century: Contemporary Arts Education and Contemporary Teaching and Learning” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Mr. Aprill talks about teaching and learning organized around Big Ideas and contemporary concepts in anticipation of future demands on education.

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In his talk “An arts education augury: Thoughts on new research and the state of the field” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Mr. Rabkin analyzes the common threads in the current moment of evolution within arts education, using Steve Seidel’s speech on the “Quality of Quality” and a recent blog-a-thon on artsjournal.com as exemplars.

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In his talk “A Pedagogy of Infinity: Best Practices in Language, Literacy, and Arts Teaching across the Americas” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Mr. Wootton describes the characteristics of extraordinary arts, language, and literacy practices across international education settings. To hear the audio of this talk click here. To download the audio of this talk, right click and Save Link As here. To watch the video of this talk click here. To download the video of this talk, right click and Save Link As here.

In her talk “Manifesto! Teaching is Believing” given at the 2nd Annual International Education Summit, Ms. Lichtenstein describes curricular manifestos as transformative outlines for curating personal interior space in public space. Ms. Lichtenstein shares her own manifesto and several artistic projects that realize various dimensions of this philosophy.

To explore websites mentioned in this talk, visit the blog for Personal Manifestos/Public Contraditions @ the MCA or the Census of the Senses|Un Mundo website.

To download and read Ms. Lichtenstein’s own curricular manifesto click here.

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Read the article published in the Teaching Artist Journal by Habla Director Kurt Wootton that outlines the foundational principles of Habla.

Download the article here:  constant-search.pdf