Well, hello and welcome to Hillbrook school. My name is Bill Selleck. I am director of technology and my goodness, do we have a group of humans in front of me. Various art and design and creativity people at Hillbrook give a quick hello, starting off with Jamie Piaza. Hi.
Hey.
Hi, Bill.
What's your role here?
Oh, I teach lower school music and all the things.
We have Laura Hale. Hi, Laura.
Good morning, Bill. I am a visual arts teacher in the lower and middle school.
Awesome. And then we have Susie Heater.
Hi, Bill. I teach junior kindergarten through third grade visual arts.
Awesome. And Clara no.
Hi, I am the director of the hub, but I mostly teach design and making.
Yes, you do. And last I was going to say last but not least, last and everybody's on the same whatever.
Yes, we are.
Vanessa, how are you? Who are you?
Great. I am Vanessa Holmesilberman, and I teach middle school and upper school performing arts.
Awesome. So, Laura, kick us off. What are we talking about this episode?
I'm really excited to have us all together this morning. This podcast was really born of a institute that we held this summer in which everyone present was discussing the nature of creativity at Hillbrook Marchmont campus. Also, the work that Susie and I do in the visual arts, which is usually culminates in an end of the year art show, drawing, painting, and sculpting was discussed. We also discussed the separation between both the performing arts and visual arts in regards to design and making. And Greg Stamos, who isn't with us this morning, was also present at that institute this summer. And we were addressing the idea of electives. At Hillbrook, we have many opportunities for students to elect into learning with teachers who might not have the area of study or experience of that educator. And so what has happened for me is that I have entered the year having conversations with students, discussion, talking about visual art or making. It became muddy. But if I started with performing arts, kids were really clear. They have a very clear sense of what happens and what's included in the performing arts. And that distinction helps them then to see everything else. So from performing arts, where they said, this is about presenting and this is using our body as a material, that's what I heard kids saying. We then talked about visual arts, and across the grade levels, students were very quick to identify that drawing, painting, and sculpting is fine art. And when you're doing fine art, you're doing it to do it to express yourself. And it involves materials paint, pen, charcoal, things like that. And from there, I talked with students about design and making. And what was interesting about design and making is that their own language they, you know, ms. Hale, when you are designing something or you're making something, you have a plan and the product that you're creating has a purpose. It is something for someone or for some purpose, and you can use all kinds of materials for that, but it is a plan that has a purpose. And from there, we talked about electives as an everything bagel. We talked about how Electives can be anything under the sun and are really based on an educator's, as I said, interest or expertise. And so we have had Electives of all varieties over the years. Currently, Greg is teaching culinary arts and photography, but we've had Electives around digital music in the past. We've had mass electives. So the landscape for Electives is really broad. And so that's where we begin our conversation. And I'd love to hear from the others about how they see their strand in experience with students here.
Thanks, Laura. I really love that the kids said that design and making solves a problem. This is a conversation that we had with students last year as well. And it was really interesting because sometimes they're like, well, sometimes there's art in design. When you're making a thing, you also maybe want it to look good. And I was like, yeah. It's definitely a combination of sorts sometimes. And the other part is the audience. And that's why I love teaching design, is because what I really want to teach is empathy and getting students to think about other people. Usually in the middle school, they're really thinking about themselves a lot. So this subject really helps put them in other people's shoes. And so we often have an authentic audience that we make for so that we could get feedback on and improve and iterate through the process.
So as the lower school visual arts specialist, I guess we call it, I really put a big value on tell when they walk in that list. And so we always start out reading the book Beautiful Oops. And we do celebrate mistakes, and I try to get them to understand how big of a part of being an artist that is we study the elements of art. Right now, all my classes are starting with Fun line Projects line, not line. I use literature a lot to inspire the kids, so I read a lot of books prior to introducing a lesson. I expose them to a lot of famous artists taking the time to, as a group look at a work of art and discuss it, and learning how to appreciate art and also how to if you don't like it and why, and if you really like it and why to being able to talk about those things.
Thanks, Susie.
You bet.
I'll lead that into my approach to lower school music. My big theme as I travel through this year is just that all are welcome here. Music is so universal and it is something that people enjoy regardless of them having a desire to necessarily play. But I do find that if you introduce basic music knowledge to kids, and give them the tools to play small percussions xylophones that it gives them an opportunity to express themselves and it gives them a different joy because they're learning how it works and how it's put together. And while the lower school we do have performances, we have two major performances a year, I don't focus it as much on performing as much as it is on the enjoyment of music and the basic knowledge that they will need as they enter into middle school performing arts.
And with that, what a great segue to talk about middle school and upper school performing arts. So my philosophy on performing arts in general is that it is audience centric in terms of we are always doing something for an audience and we want the audience to have an experience. But at the same time, we're trying to find a platform to express ourselves.
That sounds like design and art together.
I was going to segue to that because I think that the first thing I want to say is that in middle school and upper school, at this age level, it starts to separate pretty distinctly and kids really do start to either love it or realize it's not really their thing. And so, as we get to especially 7th eigth and above, it really does become a safe space for kids. I'm just thinking of the 9th grade this year and 25 kids came out to participate in the fall play. And one of the things that they have mentioned several times is that this is a safe space for them. This is a place where they can express themselves and be themselves without the pressure of doing something that they might not really like or be good at. I really try to stress that you don't have to be good at it. You just have to give everything that you can. And so, Clary, as you were talking about design and making, I was thinking, gosh, yeah, like audience centric. It doesn't always matter that it looks beautiful because sometimes it's about that process. And the one thing that I love about performing arts is that I sort of feel like it encompasses everything that every one of you said. Because we're building sets, we're making plans, we are designing things, we're creating music and dance connections and drawing things and painting things, making mistakes and making a ton of mistakes. So I have a question for all of you, actually, as we're talking about making mistakes. And Susie, I was thinking like, I had this director once who was like, I was a perfectionist and she was not, clearly. And so as I was making mistakes, she was always saying to me, like, great, good job. What a mistake that was. And I was always frustrated. But now that I'm on the flip side of that, and I'm the educator, telling my students the same thing, mistakes is really important. Or are mistakes are really important. They're important. I think, to everyone here, actually. So I'm just curious if anyone can say anything about mistakes, the beautiful mistakes that bring creation.
Interesting you asked that question, because yesterday I had some kids do some geometric line art, and some of them would make mistakes. And there were kind of two camps. One would be like, I made a mistake. This is so hard. I don't want to do this anymore. And then there was the other side of the camp, which is the growth mindset of like, I made a mistake. Can I have another sheet? And yes, absolutely. Can I try again? So that's what I instilled in them is like, it's okay to make mistakes, but go with that growth mindset and see what you can do to make it better rather than give up.
Yeah, absolutely. It's beautiful. And I definitely see that in my classroom. Often there's a child on the regular that can't get it the first or the second or the third time, and they feel frustrated. And I was like, but you can't improve and progress unless you fail sometimes, and it is okay to fail. And one of the big things that I like to say in my classroom is nothing is perfect. And we're not shooting for perfection. We are shooting for expression and a place to find joy.
One thread that I saw, it's not just learn the skill in isolation, so at home I can open up an iPad and jump in GarageBand and learn to make music. Right. The thing that's interesting and that I kept hearing again and again, is that it's either you in your class or it's you in your class with an audience. And I made so many connections as I'm hearing all these different stories, all these versions of kind of the same lesson. Questlove has a book drummer of The Roots called Creative Quest, and he just finished for me the chapter about commercial art. And I think it applies for any sort of creative venture in school. Is it's the internal thing, you have to make it for you, but you're also making it for an audience. So for him, it was to make money to share his art in the world, to have it critiqued in the world. And for us, I think it's student and teacher, student and other students, and in a lot of cases, student and audience. And I saw that again and again and again. And then the last thing is that I noticed it's not again about the skill. It's about the bigger things. So if we zoom out just a little bit, it's about empathy. It's about building that resiliency. And I think what I love, and this goes back to our last episode, is that it's about actually developing habits of how we interact with others. So it's not and I'm seeing all the heads nodding. It's not just, oh, I made a thing. I learned how to design a thing. It becomes, like, your approach for interacting with people as adults? For me, as a leader, yeah.
Literacy.
Right. It becomes this way that we talk with people. And so for me, I love and I work best when I'm making a thing with people. It's actually about co creating this space. And I heard that again with what everybody was sharing. So it's really beautiful. Excited to talk more about the arts.
This year and yeah, Bill, I just want to say thanks for giving us this platform, because I think when we all collaborate together and talk about these things, they're not always easy discussions, and sometimes they're ugly discussions, which are also necessary in life. So thank you for letting us have.
I'm I thank you all for listening.