The Art of Teaching Artistry

This post come from the multi-talented Marissa Byers, our Sheepish in Big Shoes. Kids! Our performances of Big Shoes make us celebrities. It's adorable to see the students lined up in the halls or in the cafeteria wave at us with enormous smiles and stare as if they were starstruck. Of course some of it wears off as we become teaching artists in the classroom- and they realize we're there to discuss science, but this is when the real deal begins to happen.

Inside the structure of raised hands, personal space, and eyes, ears, mind and body focus, they are encouraged to speak like an actor, sing like an opera singer, move like a dancer and create soundscapes with percussion instruments. My teaching partner, "Miss" Marine and I have found our groove. We take the students on journeys through the earth's ecosystems, have them become the weathering and erosion process of a mountain becoming a cliff, show them how to be a ferocious consumer monster in our imaginary food chain, and our most recent success- the Rock Opera, which actually isn't rock music, but a song about the formation of a volcano and how magma becomes lava rock. It is set in two parts (melody and accompaniment) to the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen. Thanks to my wife, Jacqui Causey-Byers, we have beautifully written and concise lyrics that the students seem remember effortlessly. It sounds amazing in the classroom with 20+ kids singing! Residency work as a teaching artist is challenging and tiresome, but seeing the intelligence and the imagination of the kids take flight is exciting- and by far some of the most rewarding work I've ever experienced.