Friday 2 December 2011

Trickster Learning Curve

This has been an amazing and exhausting and fun and educational week. We had an artist in residence program called Trickster. I was telling my mom about it and she said, "Oh, so they come in and you get the week off?" Well, not exactly. I make a plan for the week, then they come in and change it all, and add 80 or so extra things to to do lists! :) .....but it is all worth it. It is an amazing experience.

I have seen Trickster a few times with our own kids at their school, but this was my first experience as a teacher. It was amazing to watch the Tricksters get our crazy ideas that seemed to spread over a myriad or topics into one story. Our theme was Nights of Character and every class had a character virtue to focus on. Our virtue was integrity. I worried all week that we wouldn't touch on integrity enough in our play. Our Trickster was amazing at letting the whole play totally come from the kids. It was their ideas, their humor, their understanding of integrity....all wrapped up with hunting rabbits, farting in tents, and things like that....and in the end, it was a lot of fun and it all made sense. I did a lot of letting go and did my best to try to learn from the process. I am a planner and don't let the kids lead as much as they got to this week. I really think the strength of this program is that they are masters of letting the kids take the lead.

It was very inspiring!

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