CHLL Podcast

Heather Francis, Lois Hetland, Louise Music, Cally Flox

Conversations with members of GenZ, Millenial, GenX, Baby Boomer, and the Greatest generations to surface the creativity and wisdom needed to improve education and understand, adapt to, and solve the issues we face now and in the future.

  1. 11/20/2023

    15. What We Have Learned

    In the final episode of the CHLL podcast series 3: Intergenerational Dinner Reflections, Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise reflect on the week they have just shared together in Utah.  They look back on the successful intergenerational dinner for 40 guests at the beginning of the week, their trip to the Aspen Pando in the middle of the week, and what they learned from the five guests that participated in the earlier episodes in this series. Lois shares that her big takeaway from the week was that it is really as simple as having conversations.  Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General has said that loneliness is a public health issue in this country, and that community is the solution.  Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise discuss what they think made the June 27 intergenerational dinner such a success for the 40 people that attended, and what they see as some next steps.   The CHLL podcast hosts are students of Margaret Wheatley who says that “whatever the problem, community is the solution.”  The group reflects on what may evolve of the rich learning experiences they and others had in Utah during this week in June of 2023.   Mistakes The group reflects on how important it is to be willing to make and admit to mistakes for real learning to take place.   Community can provide the conditions to have the courage to act, make mistakes and learn from them.  Cally shares about how the Native American curriculum initiative, developed with her team and partners at Brigham Young University, was founded on the guiding principle that individuals would have to accept that they would inevitably make mistakes, and that the importance of the initiative took precedence over individual ego.  She shares how the group learned to give each other the grace to teach each other and learn.   Leadership In this episode the CHLL hosts gain clarity that the role of leadership is to create the community necessary for people to do the hard work they need to do. Leadership is about creating the spaces where each and every person feels comfortable sharing and listening.  They reflect on their individual and shared responsibility to continue to invite people into well designed conversations, and to encourage others to do the same.  The stakes are too high to simply lament the divisions among individuals and groups.  It is the role of leadership to understand that we need each other, we need community, we need conversation, we need understanding, we need a collective purpose, and leadership must bring people together to create the community that will serve the collective purpose.   Learning From Nature The day following the intergenerational dinner, Cally Heather, Lois and Louise traveled to southern Oregon to visit the Aspen Pando.  The Aspen Pando is 106 acres of a single male Aspen tree that sends out underground stems from which trunks go up. The Pando is a single  organism that presents itself as 106 acres of individual aspen trees.  The Pando is the largest, and possibly the oldest living organism on the planet. Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise share what they learned from the Pando about the interdependence and connectedness of all living things. In this episode the group recommits to continuing intergenerational conversations to improve education, and to building spaces for communities to better prepare to manage together the very hard questions of our time.   Resources:  Aspen Pando

    43 min

  2. 11/20/2023

    14. Friendship Across Generations

    In this episode Cally talks with two people, from different generations who attended the June 27, 2023 dinner in Heber Utah, who are both personal friends and mentors to Cally.  Cally, at 60 years old, is a baby boomer and she talks with Kay who, at 81 years, is from the silent generation and Heather who is a millennial at 32 years of age.  They share experiences, such as learning to cook, garden, do home repairs or sew clothes or costumes, that have, across the decades, instilled in them a sense of resourcefulness and self confidence.  They describe watching a parent can fruit, or repair an appliance as a kind of early mentoring experience, that they feel lucky to continue to practice in their current relationships: Cally to Heather, Heather to Cally, Cally to Kay and Kay to Cally.  The mentoring is by no means one way.  It is not necessarily older woman to younger woman, but rather reciprocal.  Cally instantly recognized Kay’s wisdom and experience, and Kay marveled at Cally’s ability to develop programs and networks which were made successful by Heather’s keen skills at project management and systems development. They wonder and reflect on whether well-intentioned risk management for children today, interferes with young people’s ability to develop the kind of self-reliance that these women are grateful for in their own lives.  They wonder about how social media, and social distancing, have impacted young people’s opportunities to meet and connect with others in ways that these women have benefited greatly from.   They discuss that too much emphasis is put on curriculum and assessment in education, and not enough emphasis on relationships and connection. Kay says, “There is real power that comes from helping your peers and sharing information. In the end, it's the connectedness that matters.  There are many kids that haven't had role models or the resources that we were lucky to grow up with.  But I have observed, and I have a sacred belief in, the resilience of human beings to find what they need and become the best they are. There are so many potential detours, but the resilience of human beings is always there.” Cally agrees.  “Yes, all learning happens within relationships.  It is the teacher that establishes that culture. And when that happens, the role of teaching can be from student to student, student to teacher, teacher to student, and everyone learns from each other.” They discuss how important mentoring for teachers is, and that too often the most important professional development is overlooked by practices that keep teachers isolated from each other.  They discuss how important it is to continue to work for improving public education because it is the one institution that will always be intergenerational.  At 81 years of age, Kay is in the process of creating a new women's organization that lifts up the experience of older women and connects it with the vitality and new ideas of younger women.  The group discusses how their various projects intersect and inform each other.

    45 min

  3. 11/20/2023

    13. Holding Space for Differences

    Mark Borchelt, a boomer, and Christine Baird, a millennial, were both table hosts at the June 27 intergenerational dinner in Heber, Utah on June 27.  In the second episode in this series, they bring reflections on how the individuals representing the six generations interfaced with each other.  While both Mark and Christine shared that everyone enjoyed the opportunity to be in conversation with five to six other people from different generations, they also did not necessarily appreciate the generational designations or stereotypes.  This was specifically true for members of the so-called Silent Generation, who did not experience themselves, or their peers, as silent.  It was explained that the misnomer “silent” generation came from the fact that this generation experienced the McCarthy era: a time of communist baiting and persecution for political beliefs, when it was not safe to speak.  Many people lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their reputations as part of this oppressive era. Mark and Christine discuss with Lois how influential the logistics of the dinner were to its success.  The beautiful out of doors setting, the mountains in the backdrop, the delicious food, the luxurious timing, the thoughtful reflective conversation prompts, and the very fact that everyone needed to travel some little distance to be in Heber, getting away from it all, contributed to comfort and success of the evening. Mark said, “I love the fact that we had to drive to get to the Merrill's house, because it was like this coming together required various groups and ages to make an effort to arrive at this opportunity. It was like passing through a threshold to speak to one another. And it was great walking around and saying, Wow, they did a fantastic job of getting a nice cross section of ages. And there was this lovely representation of humanity, I guess is the best way I'd like to describe it. The facilitation of the conversation was incredibly easy for me, because people were not shy about speaking or sharing their experiences. The environment was outstanding, the food was delicious, and everything just congealed to allow people to feel comfortable in productive ways.” Christine concurred, “I didn't understand why we were driving all the way to Heber to do this dinner, which I think for everyone was a long drive. But once I arrived, and was in an environment that was very separate from the middle of a city, it absolutely helped us focus on what we were there for. I think one of my favorite parts about being a facilitator was that no one at the table knew each other and it was an absolute clean slate. It was this beautiful opportunity that I've never had before, to sit at a table where I purposefully was different from everyone else, and no one knew each other. We were there for a common purpose that was away from our normal lives created for listening. It was just the coolest that everyone got to answer the same question because there was time for everyone. We all were overjoyed to hear everyone's response to every question. I'm qualified, just because I have lived the amount of years I've been alive. So cool.”  Mark adds, “Yeah, I noticed some of that too, because I was trying to make sure everyone felt comfortable. Everyone was impacted by the example set by the person who spoke before them. It was unspoken, but very powerful. We were inspired by each other to open up. I had the sense that people immediately bonded at each table.  This was made possible, I think, by the opening mingling activity, and then I appreciated the movement activity at the conclusion that brought everyone back together as a larger group.” Christine learned new things.  “A member at our table of Generation X, shared that she was born in 1970 and thought it was the most idyllic time to have ever been born. She had the most wonderful childhood. Growing up in the 70s and the 80s was so cool. There was all this fun life and art and culture and socialization.” Christine had never heard that from someone her age, now in her 50s. She realized that she knew so little about growing up in the 70s and 80s. “I had mostly heard about the 70s and 80s being a kind of hot mess, and that everyone was freaking out and having an identity crisis. It made me so happy to hear what had happened from her perspective because it was before my time. I didn't get here till 1987.” Mark adds, “Our silent generation, our octogenarian, was talking about how you get to a certain age and you feel that you're being silenced.  People don't see you. She was talking about a recent health scare and people in the medical industry were looking at her and doing tests and she felt basically being cheated.  Their attitude seemed to be, ‘You've already had a great life.’ But this person felt, ‘Wait, I have a lot more living that I would like to do.’  She felt that she was being placed on a shelf and didn’t know where she fit in or how to interact. And the  millennial at our table said, ‘Oh my gosh, I'd never made that connection. I think my generation, especially in our 20s, that's exactly how we felt. I didn't have my voice yet.  It’s interesting to see that spiral, that it comes back around.’” And Christine continues, “That reminds me of one other of my favorite moments. When we were discussing whether individuals have friends who are 10, 20, 30 years older or younger than you, Karma, who is 91 years old said in the most beautiful, crystal clear, confident way, ‘If you were a friend, you were a friend.’ It had never occurred to her for a moment in her 91 years that there would be a qualification that you needed to be somewhere in the same age range to be a friend.  She had such a beautiful perspective on life.” Mark, Christine and Lois continue to share what they are realizing about the specific and special qualities unique to interacting with people from different generations.  Lois reflects on how so much in our culture is designed for us to stay in our own generational cohorts, and she wonders what we can do to make intergenerational interactions more possible. Christine offers some ideas and observes that arts experiences that are open to the community, whether they're ticketed or not, are some of the best ways to mix with multiple generations.  She suggests investing in our local communities and supporting music concerts, plays, art exhibitions and farmers markets as great places to naturally interact with young and old and in  between. The group recognized that they often felt more competitive with people their own age, and less of that kind of self judgment with people who are much older or younger.  The design of the dinner offered the opportunity to listen to someone else's experience from another generation that unlocked connections and self-processing, and opened up a space of possibility for talking across other identity differences such as gender, racial, faith and ideological differences.

    48 min

  4. 11/20/2023

    12. How The Times Change Perspective and Culture

    In the first episode of Season 3, titled, How the Times Change Perspective, Heather meets with Dan and Erik, Baby Boomers who both attended the Intergenerational Dinner hosted by the CHLL team in Heber, Utah on June 27, 2023.  They share their experiences as members of the Baby Boomer generation, their reflections on intergenerational families, and the generational experiences of Baby Boomers that have shaped and influenced their lives. Erik shares about growing up in an intergenerational jewish family in Los Angeles.  The group discusses how expectations for a linear life path of education, job and growing a family have  changed and shifted over decades. Dan reflects on social changes that occurred during the Baby Boomers formative years: “Divorce  became much more common in our generation because of the economic changes. It's   an incredible stress to think of surviving on your own even if it's a time of prosperity. But I think part of why divorce became more common is because the survival of the individual was no longer threatened as much, with the war and the depression over.” The group reflects on what they consider to be major generational shifts.  The so-called Silent Generation was the “we” generation.  Women went to work in the factories, while men went off to war in a fight against fascism.  Everyone was expected to pitch in. Baby Boomers were the “me” generation, enjoying an affluent period where individuals carved new social and moral norms, resisted the draft, and engaged in public protests.  They told their children, the millennials, that they could have anything they wanted and be whatever they wanted to be.  But the millennials have grown into a time of economic and environmental uncertainty, limiting the opportunities their parents enjoyed. Resources:  Generations Over Dinner

    37 min

  5. 05/10/2023

    11. Earth, Art and Life: Young Artists’ Perspectives

    Earth, Art and Life: Young Artist’s PerspectivesSo much of what has been shared and discussed in this series on classrooms and climate change, has been focused on what adults think, say, do or do not do.  In this final episode of the series, “Is Climate Change Changing Classrooms” the CHLL group (Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise) reflect on what young people have to say through their artistic expressions.  The Brigham Young University Arts Education Partnership hosts an annual art competition for all grade levels, in all art forms.  It’s part of an initiative called Arts for Life, Utah. The purpose is to highlight the impact of the arts on students' lives, particularly their social and emotional well being. The initiative is a collaboration between the BYU Arts Partnership where Cally and Heather work, and the four professional arts education organizations in Utah. The competition is called M(arts)ch Madness, and includes a bracket style competition inspired by the athletics March Madness. Students submit their work showing the impact of the arts in their life and their schooling experience. Usually the theme is Arts for Life. But this year students were asked to submit work on the theme of Earth, Arts and Life, in an effort to surface students' perspectives on the environment, as well.  Examples of the student artwork and their artist statements are here in the show notes.  The CHLL team reflected on what they noticed about the interface of the Earth, Arts and Life in student work, and what they could learn from student perspectives. Cally  I would love to start with one of the paintings that's very memorable for me. There's so many artworks that I love, but I want to start with one, a high school 11th grader. This is his artist statement, “The name of my art piece is progress. It depicts a crow looking up at the clouded sky, knowing that he is not able to fly high without harming himself.  I created my own paint out of smoke, which allowed me to paint the piece purely with smoke paint. I decided to use a crow, as crows are black and highly intelligent, which allowed for the use of monochrome colors. The piece is titled ‘Progress’.  It shows an industrialized city filled with factories and buildings shooting pollution up into the air. I use smoke to represent how we as humans are affecting the Earth. …The crow is representing a human perspective looking down this long road at the pollution.”  The student has used perspective to draw our attention to the factory that's releasing the smoke into the air. And the crow seems reflective. Gazing, watching, and wondering how this impacts him. I really liked the contrast of nature, and the concrete breaks and the strong lines of the image around it. I thought this was a powerful piece, and showed a lot of commitment to the theme. He chose smoke to do this monochromatic piece with shades, everything from white to very dark blacks, and mostly shades of gray. Develop Craft and TechniqueLois  I think one of the things that interests me is the way this kid used material. One of the Studio Habits of Mind is to develop craft, and he really used the technique of perspective. It's like that crow is on the line of the perspective aiming right for the smokestacks. This crow is in the foreground and is dark and is facing away. It's really interesting how this kid was able to use technique to express something very personal. I think a really powerful thing about the arts is that, however much technique the kids have, students can use it to say what they want to say. Some students don't have very much technique yet, but still the expression is very, very rich.  Louise In this series we've been talking a lot about curriculum development, and how who decides and who decides what is being taught and learned.  In this one piece, it seems to me, there's so much curriculum opportunity on the topic of progress.  What is progress? When I was a child, General Electric had a logo, ‘Progress is our Business”. It's a real question, what is progress as we are going forward? When we have exhibitions of student work, often it is a culminating event. But it's also the beginning.  That’s the case with Lois’s Sea Rise Mural event at Umana elementary school in Boston to celebrate the completed mural. These events are opportunities to ask young people about the impact of artmaking and art viewing on their lives going forward. It is an opportunity for curriculum development because there are so many generative next places to go. Supporting Students’ Where They Truly Need Adult SupportLois  There's this one piece, by a 10th grader in Timpanogos High School, of a cherry tree on a little island reflected in the water. The artist says, “You know, cherry blossoms connect me with me by reminding me that there's always a chance to start over and do better than the last time.” This makes me sad, because I do think that that's true, and that's something we really want kids to know. It's a very important piece about making art. At the same time, there is a chance that if we don't pay attention to what's going on with climate change, if we don't get this conversation out there and get everybody talking about it, that we may be, for the first time at a place where human beings don't have a chance to start over and do better.  And there's a piece by an anonymous student in eighth grade. This is one where the technique is crude.  It's gradations of color, pinks, and purples and reds in the top, and the bottom is sort of a greenish yellow. It's called ‘Gold Sand Sunset’. The artist writes, “The beauty of the sand and loneliness, the world coming undone. The beauty of acceptance and broken things. I know what it's like to be broken. So do you. If you don't, you will soon because that's life. You can love and laugh too.” I look at these kids trying to make sense, and trying to live their lives trying to move through adolescence in the way that they need to. I'm reading a book by Elena Ferrante called The Lying Lives of Adults. It's from the perspective of an adolescent. Her family is a mess. They're really trying, and she's really trying to make sense of who she's going to become in the midst of all this broken stuff. I think we shy away sometimes from letting kids talk about the hard stuff because we want them to be beautiful and wise and there's a lot of hard stuff.  I think we have to be courageous about meeting young people where they are and sometimes they are in very deep, dark, hard places. Cally  We want them to be unburdened. The children are burdened with the task of growing up, and the emotional lessons are hard and family relationships are hard, and friends are hard, and all those things you have to learn are hard. Some people have supportive environments and others have more challenging environments. I wonder how we choose which burdens are for their growth and what we want to unburden them with. So often, we protect young people from things that that they don't need protection from, while they are dealing with things that they definitely need protection from.  That idea of burdened and unburdened, I find interesting. Lois  Trena talked about going to the kids and asking them where they are, what they know, what they think, what they care about.  I think that's the answer. We don't have to unburden them, we just have to go and be present to them where they are. Social and Emotional Resilience and Well BeingHeather  Cally and I attended an instructional leadership conference last week and one of the speakers spoke about the importance of adults in helping children with social emotional resilience and well being. The speaker encouraged adults to model the way that we sometimes have to express emotions and sometimes we have to tame them. Both are important. The role of adults in helping model that coregulation is so important. One of the entries in this competition was submitted by one of my dear friends who has been that adult for her son his entire life.  I saw her post something on social media and I said, you have to share this with the world. It is so beautiful. In her post, she said they knew her son was different from a young age.  He has needed support at school for various learning struggles. He has known he's not like the other students. They gave him the lead role of Horton, the elephant, in Seussical, the musical. His mother recorded him sitting on the box on stage singing Horton's song, which is so beautiful. It's all about being alone in the universe, and how Horton feels so alone and so different. This child probably really, really feels that way. But you would have no idea the struggles that this child has endured by the beautiful musical performance that he gives. He didn't submit it himself. His mom submitted it, and his mom is honoring and sharing his work. She's out there making sure everybody's voting for him today. I would probably say this about so many of the contributing artists. But it's so amazing the way his mother and his father and his family and his teachers have been there for this boy. They really know him. They know where he shines when singing; he's alone in the universe, but he is the star of the stage. Lois  Beautiful.  What does adding earth to the competition title bring out? I don't know what proportion of the kids just still did the impact of the arts in their lives. For many it was still straight social emotional learning. I found that I really wanted to look at the ones about earth. There were some that were about earth like, “I like to fish and so I made a fish.”  There were some that were really digging into like the centipede one.  So this is by an 11th grader at the Cedar Valley School. It's a vertical canvas with this statement by the artist: ”The world is screaming and we don't even hear it. I created this painting as a way to make people open their eyes and see the world burning and

    34 min

  6. 05/10/2023

    10. Making Sea Level Rise Visible: The Mural Project at Umana School in Boston

    The Mural Project at Umana School in BostonThe Sea Level Rise Mural Project at Umana School in Boston is an offshoot of another research project on extreme weather that Lois has been involved with.  It has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the past four years. This school year Lois has been working in a Spanish bilingual public school in Boston, called Umana elementary school. It's built on land that is 10 inches above the current mean high high tide.  The main high high tide is what we usually call sea level. The school is right on Boston Harbor but the kids don't have any access to the harbor because it's fenced away, and there's weeds and industrial garbage beyond the fence. Lois worked with the art teacher and the fifth through eighth grade students to make a clay tile mural about sea level rise.  Many of them are recent immigrants to Boston with varied documentation status.  Many are Spanish only speakers.  The playgrounds at Umana have already flooded at 10 inches, and they're going to continue flooding.  By 2030 it's going to be 14 inches, by 2050 It's going to be 33 inches, and by 2070 it’s supposed to be 55 inches.  These might be low estimates.  The purpose of the project is to raise community awareness about the impact of sea level rise on this community, and help them to understand nature based solutions to sea level rise.  We are making murals that show the animal habitat in the area, and potential adaptations to address the flooding.  For example, structures can be elevated, or structures can be built to block the wave action. Or marshes can be created to absorb water. The  hope is that these murals will educate and motivate community planning.  Lois describes her state of disequilibrium as she embarks on a project out of her expertise as a teacher and a researcher.  Lois had to learn from others how to design and site a mural.  She had to work with new materials and collaborate with others that could fire the 900 discreet tiles painted by students, and then install them on interior walls at the school.   Lois was challenged to learn a lot quickly about what constitutes or threatens healthy sea life in Boston Harbor, and what is predicted to happen to sea life with sea level rise. Lois worried about what students were actually learning as they painted their individual tiles, and how her arts education values of student choice, revision, joy, personal expression, problem solving, engagement, connection, commitment, imagination, reflection, playfulness, and close observation were, or were not, being attended to in this project. Lois describes how she has enjoyed the collaboration with the art teacher, and getting to know the East Boston community.  She appreciates the public visual permanence of the information that is expressed in the mural, which can be a platform for future learning. But what worries her about the project is whether the kids learned enough about sea level rise and the importance of biodiversity. . I don't know if they did. I don't know if they know why biodiversity matters. Were the students engaged enough and do they see the personal relevance? Lois asks, what makes a good enough project in climate education? Ask The Students For Their IdeasLouise I applaud you and your colleagues for jumping in, Lois. I think about Trena and Constance in our last episode, who surveyed the students of the teachers they were working with, and found out that kids were thinking about climate change all the time. They were wondering why adults aren't doing more. I can't imagine that that's so different for the children in Boston at Umana Elementary School. It is so great that they are having the opportunity to paint tiles with the local sea life, and that their learning is right there surrounding their school. These students see adults, you and your colleagues, as you put the panels together, and they see that you are doing something.  I imagine they see that this is helping them and their families to understand how climate change is going to change their local environment.  I imagine the kids must be really grateful that that's happening. I just can't imagine that it isn't very reassuring for children to see this project happening. I can't imagine that, because it will be a permanent piece at the school site, that it won’t inspire more collaborations and new curriculum about climate change in East Boston and the world.  What a gift!  Heather   Amazing educators, artists, like yourself, Lois, do good enough projects.  What makes a good enough project is having an excellent art educator in a system of schooling that is not conducive to the kind of artmaking that they're used to. When I was in second grade my whole extended family took several vacations to Yellowstone National Park. I was so enthusiastic about what I experienced that my second grade teacher gave me an opportunity to lead an art project for my classmates. This is a story of Heather's character as a curriculum designer from a very young age! I really wanted all the students in my classroom to feel and know what I knew about mud pots from Yellowstone National Park, because I remember standing by these muddy sulfur gray, gooey pots that would bubble up, and it felt like something from the Jurassic period. My imagination was just exploding. I got the idea to provide my classmates with coffee filters that they could paint gray, to simulate the mud pots. Then I told the whole class everything I had learned about mud pots in my Junior Ranger program. It was a profoundly meaningful experience for me. Made possible with coffee filters, gray paint, and a second grade teacher who was willing to take a risk on a t year old’s idea.  For me, it was a rich  experience that connected me to a love of the land and the Earth. Lois Hetland  You had a powerful experience and you wanted to share it and you were allowed to come up with a way to share it with other people. Your story demonstrates how important the idea of student choice and agency is in schooling. I worry that in this project there might not have been enough choice.  So much of it was designed by adults.  What’s The Meaning of Life?Louise Music    But it's just the beginning, Lois. When listening to Heather, I am reminded of a video on You Tube where Neil deGrasse Tyson is talking to a six year old about the meaning of life. It’s a must see.  Neil de Grasse Tyson explains to the child that the meaning of life is always revealing itself to us. Herecommends to the child that the most important thing to do is to go out into nature. He recommends the child pull things up out of the ground, smell them, take them apart, and look at how they're connected to each other. Basically, his best advice to this six year old is to do some version of what Heather was doing with her second grade classroom.  The advice from the astro-physicist is experiment!  Look at things that you've experienced, and think about what they're like and do something with it. Don't be afraid to explore. And maybe that's good advice for teachers.  Maybe what we need to be saying to teachers is, explore!  Do what Lois did.  Come up with an idea and do it even if you are not sure how it will turn out.  Then think about how well it went. Ask your students, “how did that go? What was confusing?” And then, with their input, begin again. Process Over Product?Cally Flox  I think it's important to remember that we're educators.  We want to assess what the kids do. We want to check our success. But a project like this isn't about our success. And the most important things we learn in life can't be assessed or measured in these ways.  So Louise just made it really simple. Ask the kids, what did you think? How did that feel, and then begin again. If you put your heart and soul into something, and you do something really wonderful, and then you reflect on it, and you begin again, that's good enough.  Lois Hetland   I think what still worries me is that this project was too product focused.  It was about making a mural, and that maybe a lot of the process of making the mural got lost.  Cally Flox    The beauty of your project, Lois, is that it has a permanence that is going to be there over time.  The students have time to engage their families, their friends, and for more conversations.  There's a new process being born because the product is in place. The students have the opportunity to go to that wall every day.  They will say, “I made this tile. What do I remember about making this tile? What do I want to tell somebody about this tile?”  Your project, Lois, is just beginning. “Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About!”Louise Music  Yes, Cally. I don't think we can underestimate the power of conversation. That's why we do this podcast. Good conversations need to start in our classrooms. We need to listen to children. I think we all know and have experienced the great promise of arts in our classrooms and schools. The arts products provide so many multiple ways for us to see what's going on in students’ hearts and minds. Heather I want to talk about the studio structures, because you haven't got into the exhibition part of this project yet, right Lois? The gallery showcase of student work, or the dance or music performance, at the end of a learning experience are rich opportunities to launch next steps. Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts EducationCally Flox   Let's clarify studio structures, because that's an important teaching pedagogy from Lois’ book Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts Education. Lois and her colleagues analyzed visual arts classrooms and found four structures that work in a studio setting, that we have found also work across the performing arts. One is a lecture demonstration: you give the kids the information and the background and the skills they need to do the project. The next one is: students at wor

    38 min

  7. 05/10/2023

    9. Teachers Preparing Students as Changemakers on Our Changing Planet

    Teachers Preparing Students As Changemakers of Our Changing PlanetLois shares a video created by the directors of Our Changing Planet, a professional development program that supports teachers' understanding of the environment in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.  The video features the voices of teachers who have participated in Our Changing Planet and tell how it has impacted them in their personal and professional practice.  Our Changing Plant is a project of IDEAL (Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership) that  introduces teachers to artists and scientists currently working on environmental projects.  The project provides the teachers with time to collaborate with artists, scientists and each other.  This is a cohort of 40 teachers who have been teaching and learning through arts integration, exploring the climate crisis across the whole curriculum for four years. The CHLL group had listened to an interview, prior to this episode, that Louise had with two of the founders and facilitators for the Our Changing Planet.  Constance Moore and Trena Noval shared how this project honors teacher professionalism and experience, while opening their practice to new dimensions that map onto student interest and needs.   The past three years have just been so demoralizing for teachers who are expected to always do everything and educate everybody, and had to emergency learn zoom and teach online. But these teachers actually found their passion during the pandemic and relied on this professional development experience to keep them going - even as it required extra time and work on their parts. The facilitators of Our Changing Planet were surprised by the commitment and enthusiasm of teachers to continue the work during the  pandemic lockdown when they were already online so much of the day.  According to Constance and Trena, the teachers locked hands and said to themselves, “We are in a crisis. This work is about facing this crisis, and our climate crisis, together.”  The facilitators met teachers exactly where they were at.  They asked teachers who were sitting at their laptops, in their houses, to look out their windows and observe their environment. Whether it's the birds in the backyard, or the trees along the front street, teachers were encouraged to get curious.  The opportunity to learn about what is in each teacher’s world, and to consider and situate learning around what's important to teachers and their students has been a foundational aspect of what has made this program successful.  Teachers are clear about the basic skills kids need to learn.  By teaching literacy and math skills through the lens of researching the natural world around them, students are motivated to write more and practice more.  When students are developing history and science knowledge in a concerted effort to understand present day problems in local communities, they engage more deeply.  When the content is really important to the teachers and the students at the time, it becomes the driver to read, to write, and to apply knowledge in math, science and history. Teachers and students want to build their skills, because the content is of interest and relevance. Relationships are Key to LearningHeather I was impressed that the topic of conversation and exploration was always connected to what teachers were interested in.  The facilitators were not there to execute a curriculum that was designed as the guide for the teacher experience. Instead the facilitators paid close attention so that they could pivot to what teachers are interested in, and to what's going on in the world. Lois They also drew on scientists and artists, who are working on climate change in all sorts of amazing ways. Teachers watched videos of these experts talking about their work, and the  teachers would watch and weep because it was so moving and poignant. And so moving.  Cally This project is an important reminder that learning happens inside of relationships. Relationships are the key to any kind of learning. These teachers come together in a crisis. They teach on zoom all day and then they come to a zoom meeting at night just to be with their own colleagues to feel some inspiration, and to belong somewhere. It actually reduces their stress they're dealing with at the time instead of increasing it. They bond together. Then they take the information out to their students. It's created in relationship, therefore it's disseminated in relationship. Then the relationships grew, and someone knew somebody at Alcatraz island  and ideas for the program got bigger. These incredible connections are built. Now the students are going on a field trip to Alcatraz to look at the birds that migrate there. I listened to them describe the authentic growth of the people who got involved. It grew from the ground up. That's one of the most important things in education is that we allow the human aspect of who people are and how they learn to emerge through relationships with natural connections and authentic learning, as opposed to here's a program and the system. I think this is how all education should be, because it's people centered, and it's expressive. Every learner connects authentically. Every teacher connects authentically.  Lois Many people are left with scripted curriculum, and it's done in the name of equity which is just amazing to me. In this project, they started out by talking to the students and asking what they think and know and feel about climate change.  The kids had all sorts of ideas and questions. One of the big questions was, why aren't adults doing anything about this?  They would share an idea and wonder why adults don’t do that? I think it was this beautiful amalgamation of relationships over a long period of time between the county office of education’s arts initiative, the leadership of these various districts, and teachers getting involved and involving their students. And anyway, it was a really nice coming together and our changing planet has really built on all of that. So Cally, I think you're exactly right. It's really fundamentally about relationships. Because otherwise, how does one gain entry? How do you progress if your principal is thinking  you're supposed to be working on the standards and preparing for the high stakes tests in reading and math.  The teachers interact with each other and find resources for the students to interact with each other.  When they spoke to the kids, they discovered climate change was on their minds.I think the notion that these kids are too little, or it's too scary, or it's too frightening is false. We need to talk more to kids, meet them where they are, and get them to be good observers.  The center of inquiry is observing.  Discovering Connections to Grow Good IdeasLouise Our Changing Planet is spreading. The Alameda County Office of Education, serving 18 school districts, has contracted with IDEAL to do more professional development for more people. In California, there is a statewide Environmental Literacy Initiative that IDEAL is connecting with. It’s important to follow these relationships as well: from the city of Alameda, to 18 more school districts across Alameda County, to a statewide Environmental Education Initiative, to other projects that are happening all across the country.  It's really person to person, talking about what matters. The teachers and the facilitators were so surprised to see how much climate change was already on children's minds. Of course! Children drive around in their parents cars, and they're hearing about extreme weather and reports on climate change on the news.  They're looking out their windows and seeing flooding and scary weather and hearing adults talking about things. Our children need the chance to learn what climate change is about and that actually they can have a role. That's providing a sense of purpose and agency to not only the students, but the teachers as well.  Links and Resources Mentioned: Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership - IDEALOur Changing PlanetCalifornia Environmental Education InitiativeFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

    49 min
  8. 8. Tapping Intergenerational Creativity and Wisdom Through Native American Leadership

    05/10/2023

    8. Tapping Intergenerational Creativity and Wisdom Through Native American Leadership

    Tapping Intergenerational Creativity and Wisdom Through Native American LeadershipIn our culture, talking about the weather is considered small talk and unimportant. And yet, it's so much a part of our lives. Maybe the weather isn't small talk. Maybe it needs to become central to our conversations because it is central to our lives. One of the things we may need to do is integrate our schooling with our lives. The BYU Arts Partnership’s Native American curriculum initiative is one place where this is really happening.  It was started in 2017 in an effort to improve teacher professional learning curriculum by removing culturally insensitive or stereotypical content.  The initiative began with a question to the eight sovereign nations in Utah, “What do you want the children of Utah to know about your tribe?” Resoundingly, all of the tribes said that they wanted the children of Utah to know, “We are still here.”  The native tribes feel invisible.  Lesson plans were created in collaboration with the tribes, and bear the tribal seal of approval on them.  Working with sovereign nations is all about relationships, and honoring the timeframe.  One of the common threads in these lesson plans is that Native Americans have a kinship with the earth. They see everything is connected. and this kinship worldview says that what happens to the trees happens to us, and how we respect the animals and how we live in harmony. We're all connected. We're connected to the weather. There's a reason and purpose in that web of life. At last summer’s conference, Native artists told the story of their life. As they shared their stories, everyone became more aware and sensitive and human together. Everyone's stories emerged as relevant and powerful.  After the conference, a group of teachers went to Capitol Reef National Park to learn about how to bring the environment to children. Ben Abbott, a professor at BYU of ecosystem ecology took the teachers out into the wilderness to look at the artifacts from indigenous people hundreds of years ago. Going into the desert with this environmental scientist who studies global issues and permafrost and how the world operates brought such hope for this planet, and helped teachers fall in love with the planet again. Teachers can't teach the Native American lesson plans, until they understand sustainable living and fall in love with the planet. How do we help children fall in love with nature and the outside world as part of schooling? We must bridge the gap between what's happening in schools and what's happening in life.  Learning from Native American tribes and spending time in nature provides teachers the experiences to connect the curriculum and science to make it more relevant for kids. There are many examples of this happening that are ready to be shared more broadly. We Are Here.  We Each Have A Story.Louise I love this description of what teachers are doing.  They're taking children out into nature and using the arts to help them, look, see, express and connect. But what must happen first is what the tribes said:  an acknowledgement that we are here.  Children need that too. I am here and I have a story. And I think that's a big missing piece in school. We get so focused on the curriculum, and the curriculum will emerge when the teachers and the children show up authentically.  When we are present, there is the opportunity for potential to manifest. But when we are not present, the opportunity for potential and possibilities to manifest actually collapses.  Lois  Four Arrows is a 76 year old Native American thinker and writer who says that he is optimistic  because he thinks optimism is about living in the present, and letting go of outcomes. I think it's fascinating to look at the lineage of Native Americans thinking which has been so diminished in our contemporary consciousness, to the point of it almost being non-existent, or if it does exist, it's like magical thinking or New Age. The truth is, this is human thinking. I keep thinking of Joanna Macy saying that this is the third turning, with agriculture being the first and the Industrial Revolution being the second, and then this being the third. If human beings get this one figured out it's going to be a real change in human consciousness.  Indigenous Wisdom Is An Essential Resource to the Present Heather One of the things that Ben Abbott, scientist and professor at BYU tells us is that scientists will describe research on water and say, water research is young. We've only had two or 300 years to really research what we know about water.  They are talking about the Anthropocene or this contemporary time as the only time that we have presently studied water and what we know about water.  But Ben Abbott reminds us indigenous people have studied, worked with, understood, and been in relationship with water for way longer than present research or empirical study in the way that we've adopted in this contemporary age. We have so much more information if we turn to the experience of indigenous people. Cally The teachers who work with us in our programs are often describing how they're healed through bringing the arts into their life. Truly, if we're not healing each other, as we live together on the planet, if we're not creating systems that sustain us and sustain each other, we're not going to sustain humanity on this planet. At the BYU Arts Partnership we have made a conscious effort to be present and responsive and to serve with love and distinction.  The 1000s of years worth of information that we can gather from our indigenous people is so valuable. The people who show up to be with us come with their background knowledge, their information, their history, and we have to honor and be present with all of it.  Lois I've just started the book, The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. David Graber was an anthropologist at the London School of Economics and Wengrow is a comparative archaeologist who studied Africa and the Middle East at University College London, and is also a visiting professor at NYU.  The Dawn of Everything is a reinterpretation of the historical timeline. The point they're making is that the story that hunter gatherers were small roving bands, and people settled and developed agriculture and civilization  is such a simplistic story. We need to move beyond it to see the whole potential of human possibilities. The first part I'm reading is about the indigenous critique. It's fascinating to me, because I've known that Benjamin Franklin went to the Iroquois Confederacy, and got ideas about democracy that influenced our Constitution, for 30 years. But I did not know that there was this thing that's called the indigenous critique.  Indigenous people organize their communities through conversation, and everyone has a voice in a non-hierarchical conversation. They were critical of the Europeans, the French, the English and the Spanish, because they had money. Because money led to power. Because nobody was free. Everybody was beholden to the hierarchy of power and money.   These powerful monarchs in the Native American critique claimed that they were free because they can all sit and talk to each other.  Nobody can be compelled to do anything. They didn't have prisons, or judges. What they had was conversation. This guy, LeHaunt, recorded the conversations with this one indigenous diplomat, who was regarded by everybody as an amazing interlocutor.  This guy could talk his way in and out of anything. Even though the native people did not valorize individuals, this guy rose in European minds. He lived in Paris for six years and this guy, LeHaunt, wrote a book about conversations with this fellow. It was in the 1600s, in the 17th century, and the book was widely read all across Europe. And it influenced the Enlightenment philosophers like Locke, and Rousseau. So all of these ideas that we think of as Enlightenment ideas about equity and equality, and democracy and human nature, can be tied directly to these Native American ideas. And yet again, we eclipsed them.  Who knows about that? I'm so glad for this book.  Cally When we made our agreement with the Paiute Tribe, to create their lesson plans, one of the things they requested was to see the lesson plans taught in a classroom before they approved them. So we traveled down to Cedar City where many of the Paiute children attend school.  Probably 20 to 25 of the leadership of the Paiute nation came to observe and watch. They were so inspired to watch these lesson plans unfold. Many of the children who were Native American had not been taught about their culture, because their parents and grandparents came through the boarding school era, when you kept secret that you are a Native American. So in their own culture, they don't know when to celebrate their Native American culture, and when it's a shameful thing, because that's what historical trauma does. Some of the Caucasian students did not realize that their friends were Native American, and some Native American children who were learning about their culture for the first time.  It was remarkably healing because it was so relevant to that community. Catastrophe, Culture and ResilienceHeather I think that indigenous people, and certainly native communities in our area, have great wisdom on how to deal with overwhelmingly difficult challenges. We have a partnership with the northwestern band of the Shoshone, and they've shared with us about the massacre of all their people with only 30 to 40 people of their community left.  But they are still here today. What lessons can we learn from them to have only 30 to 40 people of your population left, but to continue to exist and be resilient, moving forward? Cally The Shoshone massacre was the largest massacre of Native American lives in US history. Every year they have a commemoration ceremony on the land. They now own the land

    56 min
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About

Conversations with members of GenZ, Millenial, GenX, Baby Boomer, and the Greatest generations to surface the creativity and wisdom needed to improve education and understand, adapt to, and solve the issues we face now and in the future.

Information

  • Creator
    Heather Francis, Lois Hetland, Louise Music, Cally Flox
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2023
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2022 BYU ARTS Partnership
  • Show Website
    CHLL Podcast