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 3rd graders at Lincoln School
playing music.
Program with jazz violinist India Cooke, Spring 02. |
In the fall of 2001, VALA began to conduct training seminars for teachers and artists participating in VALA programs. The purpose of these workshops is to introduce teachers to tools for using creative arts such as drama, music and painting to inspire the writing of poetry by young children. | |
| The fall seminar began with a morning session
in which poet and artist Tina Rotenberg collaborated with theater
arts specialist Sheila Balter to create a poetry workshop combining
theatrical exercises with the analysis of poems by Langston Hughes.
A presentation of the Harlem Rennaisance and the blues recordings
of Bessie Smith and Howling Wolf formed the background for
writing poems. The session was followed by a dialogue between teachers and
artists, focusing on strategies for improving communication and collaboration
between them. In the afternoon session, the roles reversed, with three teachers presenting topics to artists, including classroom management, bilingual education, and age-appropriate education. |
 Musical score collectively created
by 3rd graders at
Lincoln School, which they subsequently performed. Program with jazz violinist India Cooke, Spring 02. |
|
 3rd graders at Lincoln School
playing music.
Program with jazz violinist India Cooke, Spring 02. |
This spring of 2003, VALA organized an afternoon workshop for teachers at Lincoln School in Oakland which focused on a book of poems by San Francisco poet Sarah Menefee. Her book Like a Diamond presents short one and two line poems that powerfully evoke the experiences of homeless people. To view the poems that emerged from the workshop, please click here. | |
| In the spring of 2003, VALA conducted four
separate two hour workshops for Richmond classroom teachers and artists
from the Richmond
Art Center. Artists tied their workshops to Open Court Reading
Program themes, such as Haiku and the American Garden, Communication:
American Sign Language, and Back through the Stars. Sheila
Balter, actress and director, collaborated with Tina Rotenberg,
poet and artist, to tie together garden imagery with the writing of Haiku
poems. Poet Pat Reed and painter and set designer Amy Trachtenberg
built dioramas from grocery store boxes and hung objects with thread
from the top of the boxes to create the illusion of outer space. Participants
drew the objects in these boxes with pastel crayons. They were then individually
handed envelopes, each containing a unique collection of words from which
the participants created poetry evoking imaginary landscapes of outer space.
Native American painter Sean Nash presented an overview of Indian
art and history since Mayan times and used his own paintings to illustrate
different issues regarding the various periods of Native American glyphic
representation and sign language. These workshops went so well that the
Ed Fund,
which helped sponsor them, wants to repeat their success with new workshops
in the fall of 2003. VALA would like to thank ARTS Ed (the arts education branch of the East Bay Community Foundation), the City of Richmond Arts Commission, and the Ed Fund for their generous support of these workshops. |
 3rd graders at Lincoln School
playing music.
Program with jazz violinist India Cooke, Spring 02. |
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