Alex Sarian
(Suggested listening while reading this blog entry: Alice Cooper’s School’s Out...)
As I prepared to write this blog post, two things prevented me from truly being inspired:
1.) I am currently in pre-production for MCC Theater’s Summer FreshPlay Festival, a one-week event in which 10 teenage playwrights each receive a 25-hour workshop process with professional directors and actors in order to bring their plays to life.
In the past two weeks I’ve hired 10 directors, 12 production assistants, and almost 80 actors; and just as (seemingly) impossible, I’ve somehow managed to schedule a combined 250+ of rehearsals in a five-day period. Needless to say, this blog entry, while a refreshing break from pre-production, has been the last thing on my mind.
2.) I was asked to focus my blog entry on one of the following themes: research, evaluation, advocacy, arts integration, 21st century skills, partnerships, common core, assessment and/or national standards.
What’s fascinating about these two thorns is that in isolation, neither one of them would have fully stumped me from spilling my thoughts on paper. But combined…something just doesn’t feel right: the reason I put up with the stress of producing this festival (yes, it is my job) is because at the end of the day, it is arguably the most fun and rewarding of our annual education programs.
Simultaneously, not once in the past few weeks have I stopped to think about research, evaluation, advocacy, arts integration, 21st century skills, partnerships, common core, assessment and/or national standards.
So before I start feeling guilty about being a terrible Director of Education, let me ask this: why didn’t “fun” make our list of themes?
Perhaps I can blame this lack of inspiration on the fact that MCC Theater’s results-driven, in-school programming is on a summer hiatus; or perhaps I’ve been bitten by the summer fun bug—or is it the fact that I am not currently required to assess our school partnerships by correlating arts instruction to academic progress?
Admittedly, I am partly to blame.
As a member of the Arts Education Council at Americans for the Arts, I helped create the list of themes that should matter, and time-sensitive buzzwords that all arts educators should be thinking about when doing their jobs. Then how could we have overlooked what is possibly the most important of themes, the reason that out field is set aside from most others?
We take fun for granted. We take our biggest secret weapon for granted: FUN. Being creative is fun. Being creative in school is even more fun—AND as if that weren’t enough, it just so happens we can prove it.
But let’s not forget what we (and our grantwriters) are truly using these buzzwords for: to articulate what we seem to have taken for granted—and what I am rediscovering by producing this festival. We are bullied into using “research”, “evaluation”, “advocacy”, “arts integration”, “21st century skills”, “partnerships”, “common core”, “assessment” and “national standards” because “FUN” is not enough.
And as if that weren’t enough, let’s think on this—and if you disagree, please comment or email me—if we were to be 100 percent effective in implementing programs that prioritize these buzzwords, there is no guarantee that any of them will be fun (and we risk not having any participants). Yet, if we create programming that is fun and engaging, all these big-boy phrases will fall into place.
We need to stop using these words as guidelines for program development and more as guidelines for program assessment. We’re putting the cart before the horse by not prioritizing fun, ladies and gentlemen.
So in honor of summertime, I invite you all to stop what you’re doing, sit back, and ask yourselves if you are nurturing fun in your lives and the lives of those around you. If you’re not—try to (it’s easier than we think!). If you are, please let me know!
Happy summer from New York City!
Hurray for Alex – he’s having fun! And in the midst of doing a lot of work – even more to celebrate.
When people have fun – it gets contagious and people become nice to be around.
Thank you for admitting that you forgot fun when making up the list – so, now make sure it gets added in. Will ya?
Thanks, Therese! I’m on it – and with a smile.
School’s Out reminds me of Queen’s tune “Hey, Teachers- Leave Our Kids Alone!’… and your post is awesome! But let’s expand on what you suggest — that fun is not the only secret weapon the arts have. Although fun is high on our summer list (there’s so little of it in education, we’d better have it during the summer!), let’s re-insert the others while we’re at it.
Let’s add the way creativity develops our ability to feel, to love, to engage with life, to find it worth living. Couldn’t we go on and on? And why, pray tell, are these not as important as reading? Seriously!
The values of joyless people who can read, write, and make lots of money are choking our nation right now. Could we all please become more vocal in this and act on what we know is true? It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing!
And this is not a shameless plug but a pointer in a new direction: we’ve developed assessment software that empowers intelligent, feeling people to shift the paradigm.
Thanks, Mary-Helen! And I couldn’t agree more: fun should be had every day of the year, not just during the summer. I guess we all need some fireworks, hamburgers and time at the beach to be reminded of how important our work is and can be! I hope you’re enjoying your summer!
We know you well enough now that we don’t think you just write shameless plugs Mary-Helen!
Thanks Tim. Isn’t it time we start raising the right questions and taking the steps necessary to begin to move education in a better direction? Creative people, for example, NEED creativity in their lives almost as much as we need air – in fact you might say that it’s the creativity that keeps the air from stagnating. So why are we hesitant to demand that creativity be an integral part of our children’s lives?
The reins of our culture are in the hands of people who don’t have that need – and while that may have looked like a good compromise as our country grew out of infancy, it’s not looking very good now. Are we content to live with the results we have now? I think we as a people need to spend more time considering how we’re living and what we’re doing, to ourselves and to each other.
A great piece. We need to help reclaim the idea that fun matters. A colleague suggested this way to measure the quality of a school: “Is the rate at which kids rush in greater than the speed at which they run out in the afternoon?”
Thanks for your comment, Mark! It would be great if kids actually looked forward to coming to school – it’s a conversation that really needs to be had by everyone, from principals to teachers to janitorial staff to parents… truly a collective effort. I hope all is well in LA!
This is a great post – so often we operate out of a sense of fun when planning our programs – but that concept gets lost when we talk about assessing them. It is also interesting to think about the relationship between ‘engagement’ and ‘fun’ – are they on the same spectrum?
Yes! Whenever I think of the word “engagement” I think of the word “relevant” – as in ‘I can only truly engage an audience if I fully understand what is relevant to them’, which then begs the question ‘why can’t we all just have fun together?’