SoTL Grant Report for Preserving Legacy through Repertory
Awarded December 14, 2010 – completed June 24, 2011
Abstract:
Preserving Legacy through Repertory is the proposed title of a series of professional development activities including a Summer Teacher Institute for public school dance teachers around the region. Activities will feature the learning of dance repertory by Martha Graham, a master 20th Century American artist featured in the NC Standard Course of Study. Former Graham Company member, Kim Jones and Dance Chair Pamela Sofras, have received a $15,000 NEA American Masterpieces Grant to reconstruct a Graham masterwork for UNC Charlotte dance students during spring semester 2011. The master work, Primitive Mysteries was created in 1931 and is considered Graham’s first masterpiece performed during the decade of the birth of American Modern Dance, 1930-1940. By highlighting the beginnings of the new art form, UNC Charlotte faculty may provide an innovative direction for dance educator professional development based on historical modern dance masterworks previously unavailable to teachers. Jones and Sofras request SOTL funds to support a week-long Summer Teacher Institute in addition to the NEA grant supported Educational Performance and school lecture/class tour. The grant would cover instruction, workshop expenses and teacher stipends so that public school dance educators may have the opportunity, to see a masterwork, study it in more depth and see the work presented in their own classrooms. This first series of activities, professional and pedagogical, will provide a model for future teacher workshops, aimed at bringing public school arts teachers to campus and dance professionals with masterworks into the schools. All activities will also be open to current graduate and undergraduate licensure students.
Report:
During the spring semester 15 Charlotte Mecklenburg Teachers, participated in activities made possible by a National Endowment for the Arts: American Masterpieces Grant and our university, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant. Beginning in March 2011, Kim Jones, Pamela Sofras and students toured 5 different middle schools throughout Charlotte Mecklenburg serving approximately 290 students with the 7 dance educators in each school. On Friday April 15, the Department hosted an Educational Performance attended by 345 students and teachers from 8 different schools from all parts of Charlotte Mecklenburg and representing Elementary, Middle and High School children. In each of these activities, the tour and the more formal Educational field trip, students saw a live performance of a Graham work. As was indicated by more than one teacher, this was the first ever live performance of dance their students had seen.
The events for teachers culminated with the week-long professional development workshop presented by Jones and Sofras from June 20-24 2011. Fourteen teachers, 2 UNCCharlotte graduate students and 2 UNC Charlotte undergraduate students participated. Each teacher received 3 CEU’s of credit from UNC Charlotte’s Office of Continuing Education. Formative evaluations were taken each day and one summative evaluation was given at the last session. The summative evaluations are included with this report.
Cheryl Maney, the Dance and Art Curriculum Consultant for CMS introduced the workshop on the first day. Debra Kaclik, the Head of the overall arts and physical education departments came on the second day to speak to the teachers and encourage their work.
Each day the teachers followed the schedule outlined below:
9:00- 10:30 Technique Class (Graham based)
10:45 - 12:15 – Repertory (Excerpts from a Graham Masterwork)
12:15 – 1:00 – Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 – Technique Analysis and Fundamentals
2:00 – 3:00 – History and Video viewing of Modern Dance from the 1930’s
3:00 – 4:00 Lesson Planning and evaluation
Each morning technique classes progressed in skill development and challenge. The Graham movement repertory introduced in the second session came from the master works, Primitive Mysteries, Steps in the Street, Chronicle, Appalacian Spring, Night Journey, and Maple Leaf Rag.
In the afternoons, teachers viewed the master work they had just learned excerpts from, and they worked with specific lessons created for middle school students that Sofras had previously written and taught throughout the country.
In summary, teachers were given actual movement experiences and new vocabulary to use in their classrooms, as well as historical information with video resources and viewing. Lastly they were give lesson plans (for their classrooms) pertaining to the specific works they were learning and seeing, that required them to synthesize the learning as they created original movement phrases and studies based on each day’s activities.
All of the sessions were digitally documented and Sofras is currently working with Joel Blackwelder to complete a DVD for each teacher as a reminder of the experiences in the workshop and to allow teachers to have a visual resource for future referral. The timeline for completion of the DVD is before school starts in August.
As a culminating assignment, each teacher will prepare her own lesson and teach it to the appropriate classes. Sofras will accumulate the lessons and make a Graham handbook to be available through Cheryl Maney (Art and Music Curriculum Consultant) to all CMS Dance Educators, roughly 30. The preferred medium is digital and on-line but Sofras will retain hard copies to make a handbook. The estimated completion of this handbook will be May 2012 as each teacher has been instructed to write their lesson(s), teach them, and revise them after they have been taught successfully. The time in the year when each might be ready to introduce Martha Graham and her work will vary, therefore it was important to allow the full year in order to prepare the lesson handbook.
In October, Sofras and Jones have been selected to present the outline and conceptual base of this workshop as a national model for bringing Classical Masterpieces into the Public School Classroom. The proposal is included here. We have been awarded a 1 hour session at the National Dance Education Organization conference held in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Summary:
The activities surrounding the project, Preserving Legacy through Repertory have been highly successful and teachers have indicated they would readily attend and support such workshops and professional development activities in the future. Jones and Sofras were able to introduce live masterpieces of Twentieth Century modern dance to children who had never seen live performance and were able to train their teachers to better present lessons required in the Standard Course of Study that pertain to American Modern Dance.