Arts Smarts Excerpt

Boovbm! S f q p s u

2008-09

Bsujt

ÓTupszufmmjoh!jt!tpnfuijoh!! fwfsz!lje!dbo!ep/Ô Dale Gilbert Jarvis Storyteller St. John’s, Newfoundland

For the past three years, Dale has been working as part of an artist-teacher team to help students at Holy Cross Elementary perfect their storytelling craft. This year they added a twist to the project – instead of retelling other people’s stories, students learned how to tell their own. The learning process starts with the creation of a storyboard rich with images and, over the school year, children learn to tell the stories they’ve drawn from the heart. They test out the best ways to tell their tales with their classmates. They master the art of a long pause to build suspense. They practice vocal inflection to add a comedic flair.

In Dale’s experience, kids who struggle with language arts excel in storytelling. Children who grapple with lower literacy levels find speech to be freeing because they aren’t held back by words that need to be written or read. These kids shine as they experience what is often their first success in school. The process of working in the classroom is one of give and take. Just as Dale helps cultivate the skills of storytelling and literacy in his young pupils, in turn, these same kids teach him how to be a more effective teacher and richer storyteller. As an artist, Dale’s involvement in ArtsSmarts helps to shape his own craft.

Photo credit Bruce Carmody

Dale Jarvis’ art resides in the narratives he weaves from scary ghost stories and traditional Newfoundland tales. In the classroom, he helps children unlock their hidden natural ability in the language arts.

A sustained collaboration between practising artists, classroom teachers and students is critical to ArtsSmarts’ success. It’s not just what children learn, but how they learn it, that yields the powerful combination of excellence in learning and innovation. In addition to their artistic expertise, an artist brings new ways of thinking to the classroom. Teachers frequently comment that artists work differently than they do. Artists and other creative professionals involved in ArtsSmarts model the creative process of inquiry, exploration and reflection, have greater spontaneity and an insistence on ‘doing things right.’ When an artists’ expertise as both a skilled practitioner and thinker is melded with a teachers’ expertise in instructional design, an ideal learning situation emerges.

8

ArtsSmarts

Annual Report 2008-09

9