Creative Festivals Revisions: A Retrospective
DearChurchSchool Directors, Teachers, and Fellowship Festival Administrators,
Our work on revisions to the Creative Festivals is complete for this school year. It’s time for a retrospective.
The revision project began several years ago at my very first meeting with my staff, the Christian Education Coordinators and Associates. The meeting was at AntiochianVillage during the mid-winter meetings of the Fellowship of St. John the Divine. Fr. Purpura, Director of the Department of Youth Ministries, came in and asked if we had ideas for the next theme. Shortly thereafter a larger question was posed, “What are you going to do about the festivals?” At that point, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with the festivals.
My staff then informed me of the many complaints they had received from the teachers and Church School Directors. The Fellowship had heard the complaints each year as well, and didn’t know how to remedy the situation.
Complaints. Looking at the complaints, the main one was in regard to the theme—that the teachers had difficulty explaining it to the children. Metropolitan PHILIP chose the theme each year, and we could only offer suggestions; however, we took the action of writing lessons plans and have done so each year. Other issues that spanned the regions included: the desire to standardize the rules (which was voiced also by His Eminence), unfair judging, the question of whether we should judge at all, the lack of motivation of the older children since so few had won through the years, the notebook of instructions being overwhelming, plagiarism, entries of low quality garnering 1st place as there were no other submissions for that grade level, and the oft-voiced “winning entries unrelated to the theme” (for example: art entries winning on artistic merit only).
Our next step was to meet again having gathered all paperwork from each region and look at every aspect of the festivals.We met the next year and began the long process of going through each aspect of the festivals. Leslee Abud took the lead on the project, and gathered materials from each region.
Oversight. Our Department continued to meet, and speak with, the Fellowship of St. John the Divine at the midwinter meetings. At a meeting about six years ago, it seemed appropriate for the Department to take the lead for this program, with the assistance of the Fellowship, since the ChurchSchool was focus of the effort. The Department would continue the revision project, and the Fellowship would continue providing the Festival Coordinators and Chairpersons, and conducting the awards ceremony as well as paying for the awards. The question arose as to whether the revisions were binding on all regions. Our purpose in standardizing the rules was, and is, to offer the “best practices” as we have determined from reviewing the materials of the regions. If a region believes their practice is better, it is their decision.
Oversight of the Oratorical Festival and the Bible Bowl were, and continued to be under the Department of Youth Ministry.
The Committee. The committee, comprised of myself, Rosemary Shumski (who has taught church school preschoolers for years and administered the photography festival for the Eastern Dioceses), Vasiliki Oldziey (Christian Education Coordinator and Festivals Chairperson for the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America), and Leslee Abud (involved with the Creative Festivals for many years) met in January 2011 to review all the work Leslee had done. Leslee had read every email and reviewed every procedure of every region, and shared the key points with us. I had just hired Shelley Pituch (an elementary school teacher) to assist here in the office, and informed her that her first task was to be “The Closer” for the Festivals Revision Project. For the last year, she has kept track of all our deliberations, and worked on the organizing, typing and web-postings as well as on the content of the revisions (with myself and Rosemary) from her experience as a teacher. She has kept the website current, especially the section for Administrators which keeps them abreast of the revisions and asks for their comments. The input we have received has helped us edit our recommendations.
As we go into the festival season, we have reason to believe that our revisions have met the expressed needs. An evaluation form will be posted so that we may assess the festivals after this season, and make edits to the revisions.
My Assessment
We have done a very good job of addressing the complaints we had received. Our responses to these are noted in CF Revisions: A Recap. At least one region piloted the changes last year and were very happy with everything we provided. There are many, many improvements. We have taken the time to write job descriptions for the various positions to assist The Fellowship in finding personnel, and toward the smooth running of the entire program. We have formatted the Standard Identification Form and the Record of Participants Form so they can be filled out by computer. We have reduced a notebook of paper to three basic pages: the two forms just mentioned, and the Eligibility Requirements. The Creative Festivals website is a comprehensive and user-friendly resource for all involved. We provided a listing of ideas in regard to the writing festivals, “Inspiring Writing,” and we even posted some crafts to encourage artwork throughout the year. The above improvements were made over the last twelve months and are in addition to the lesson plans,“Using the Theme Throughout the Year,” posters, theme song, and curriculum cross-reference, that we have been offering in recent years. Our website today reflects all of the above improvements, and is a rich resource for Church Schools to provide an encouraging atmosphere for learning and expression of faith.
While the above changes have been well received, some recommendations have more of an impact on the way the festivals have been administered in the past, at least in some of the regions.
Achievement-Level Ribbons and “Raising the Bar.”In some regions, judging was done with rubrics. In others, there were no criteria. The complaint of children being judged against each other arose from the latter situation. Rubrics are commonly used in schools, and the children are aware of them. We considered the criteria of the rubrics that were used around the Archdiocese and simplified them. We also decided to increase the amount of children being recognized for their efforts by instituting gold, silver, and bronze level ribbons which correspond to achieving a certain score on the rubrics. It is hoped that the children will be motivated to keep trying their best to achieve a higher-level ribbon as well as trying for an award.
Although the ribbon program requires an additional person from the Fellowship to assist on the judging day, consider how much more worthwhile the ribbons make the judging portion of the festivals. Judging is the time-commitment of at least an afternoon. In the past this resulted in three awards per grade, and lots of entries that were thoughtfully evaluated to no end. This year each entry will receive a ribbon as a result of thoughtful evaluation, giving greater purpose to the entire judging process.
Whether the achievement level ribbons succeed in letting the children know they are being recognized for their efforts (rather than just for “trying” as with participation certificates), and whether this results in increased motivation will not be known for about two years. Related to this issue is that some of the children know they can submit “just about anything” in a certain festival and get an award. We have recommended that an award be given only if the entry is at a gold or silver level—no 1st place award for shoddy work just because it was the only entry for that grade and festival—we have raised the bar to make the festival awards more meaningful.
More to Be Done
I am well-aware that in many parishes Festival season is met half-heartedly. There are two problems yet to be addressed, and they are critical to the success of the CreativeFestivals program.
Overwhelming Numbers. First, the number of entries in some of the festivals is far, far greatertoday than when the program began.The job of the chairperson, in many dioceses, is difficult to fill because the workload is overwhelming. Somedioceses have decidedthat each parish willhold a judging event and then submitonly the best entries of each grade levelto thefestivals. The quantity of entries also impacts the work of the judges. Perhaps it would be easier to obtain judges if there were two or three sets of judges for a festival, each with a reasonable amount of entriesto evaluate, with a few of these willing to make the decisions for the run-off.Your ideas are welcome.
Creative Work Needs to be in Lesson Plans. Second, the children need to be doing expressive, creative work throughout the church school year. Creative work requires reflection, which has always been a part of faith-understanding. Hence, creative expression enhances understanding our Orthodox faith, and should be at the top of the list of "what to include in Church School lessons."
Art materials should be available in every classroom, and written reflection on the topics of the curriculum should be practiced often. To this end we have added a course to the OCEC Advanced Teacher Training, "Creative Expression for Elementary," and "Creative Expression for MS/HS." If you are a Church School Director, or teacher, please promote, or plan for much more creative expression for the children.
Finally, we postponed consideration of some regional practices--new festival possibilities, (such as videos), and new submission rules (such as small-group, or classroom entries). We also did not consider a very large question, namely,whether we should have festivals without any judging (since some feel competitiveness is not a good expression of our faith),as we are under the impression His Eminence definitely wants this aspect of the program keptintact. We did, however, remove the preschool and kindergartners from the competition; they are still in the Creative Festivals program but their submissions are kept at the parish and the children receive participation certificates.
On behalf of the Church School staff and children, I wish to thank all who have worked year after year on this program, most notably, the members of the Fellowship of St. John the Divine. We hope that the job descriptions, simpler rubrics, and the existence of the website will make it easier to administer the program. For the Church School Staff, we hope that our one-page eligibility requirements, knowledge of the rubrics, easy-to-fill-in forms, "Inspiring Writing," andon-goingart ideaswill be welcome additions to the improvements we already had in place. For the children, we hope the achievement-level-ribbons will give a boost to those who have been discouraged by lack of recognition through the years.
Finally, my thanks to Leslee, Vasiliki, Rosemary, and Shelley.
Most sincerely,
Carole A. Buleza