Expanding Boundaries and Taking Risks
Taking risks within the learning environment requires a willingness to:
- Think deeply about a subject or problem
- Share that thinking with others to hear their perspectives
- Listen to their critiques
- Build on those experiences toward a solution or solutions
The charts below suggest ways to extend learning opportunities beyond standard practice, focusing on the pros and cons for students and teachers.
Print and distribute the charts so that each participant has at least one chart related to his or her discipline. Take notes on the risks and benefits of several of the enrichment activities, and share them with the group.
After several charts have been filled in, discuss the following:
- Which of the enrichment activities resemble things you are already doing in your classroom? Discuss with the group what the outcomes have been for students, and for you.
- Which enrichment activity seems the most challenging? Think about how you might modify it to integrate it into your own practice. Share your ideas with the group and get additional suggestions from your colleagues.
Enrichment Activities
Print version Selection of Material | Most often the teacher selects the material for students to study, interpret, and/or perform. |
| | What if students were asked to select some musical compositions and explain the rationale for their choices? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
Auditions | Auditions typically progress with callbacks that involve fewer and fewer students, culminating in the posting of the cast list. |
| | What if callbacks continued to involve all candidates? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
| | What if before auditions for the next project, the director discussed with each student the reasons why he/she was or was not previously cast? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
Rehearsals | Various ideas for blocking and interpretation are suggested and tried in a rehearsal, and eventually the director decides which ones to pursue and build upon. |
| | What if the director explained the reasons for those choices? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
Choreography | Dances are choreographed by the teacher, or groups of dancers develop their own pieces. |
| | What if students were given the responsibility of choreographing a dance with other student performers? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
Combined Productions | Arts students from different schools encounter each other at festivals or competitions. Members of honor choirs and bands are selected from several schools. |
| | What if teachers from two schools collaborated on a dance or theatre production, working with a cast and crew made up of students from both schools? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
Jurying | The teacher or a local artist frequently selects student art works for juried exhibitions. Beyond the established criteria, reasons are not given for special awards. |
| | What if a group of students from two schools juried an exhibition of each other's works? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
| | What if explanations were given for the selection of best of show and 1st, 2 nd, 3rd place awards? |
Risks for teachers and students | |
Benefits for teachers and students | |
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