In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Dear Readers,

It feels like the school year just began, yet Thanksgiving is right around the corner!  It can be easy to get caught up the rush, the important projects, and the daily "to dos" that define our busy schedules at work. In honor of our upcoming national holiday, I am dedicating this post to a brief reflection on aspects of my job with Live It Learn It for which I am particularly thankful. 

Here are my top three:

1. My Co-workers
I am thankful for the opportunity to work with a committed, creative, and compassionate group of people.  I am appreciative of professional support this community provides every day- from
cutting and copying, to editing materials, to conversations about how to improve our programs and instruction.  This is a team endeavor! 

Live It Learn It Staff (though we are missing a few important members)

2. Our Mission 
I am thankful for the opportunity to work for an inspirational purpose-- to increase achievement and motivation for students who need it the most.


Live It Learn It students at the National Museum of the American Indian

Live It Learn It Students at the FDR Memorial

3. Our Destinations
 I am thankful for the opportunity to work with dedicated professionals representing local institutions and organizations and to benefit from the wealth of resources that this city offers each of us.

Thank you for reading and Happy Thanksgiving!

-Emily

Hooking Students In

Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey (1961), National Gallery of Art

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, one of our new programs this year is a special one. For the next few months, the National Gallery of Art is exhibiting a retrospective of the world-renowned pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. In addition to the exhibition, the Gallery also commissioned a play titled "Framed!" based on Lichtenstein's works. (You can learn more about the exhibit and play here.) Of course, when the Gallery reached out to Live It Learn It about bringing in some of our DCPS students, we popped at the chance! (Get it?)

Students share what they learned about Lichtenstein in the classroom

There was one practical dilemma to consider: How in the world were we going to plan an academically rich and engaging trip knowing there would be nearly 500 other students also there each day to see the play and exhibit? Sure, we were worried, but we were also confident that our approach to experiential learning and museum engagement would not only get our students hooked, but keep them there. 

I think we were right.

We conducted the first of our Pop Art trips on Wednesday. After our students viewed "Framed," which was a big hit, we waited patiently as the self-guided groups rushed out of the auditorium. By the time we made it upstairs to begin, a few of them had already walked through half of the huge exhibit! 

Hoards of students filed by us as we found a seat in front of the Lichtenstein painting at the entrance to the exhibit and reviewed everything we'd learned about the artist in the classroom. Once in the galleries, the students were excited to see--up close and personal--the paintings they'd just seen in the play and back in the classroom. They discussed popular culture and turned Lichtenstein's early Pop art works into advertisements. They practiced cropping, a technique Lichtenstein often employed, as they sketched their own versions of his black and white paintings. Downstairs, students viewed works by other Pop artists like Andy Warhol, and tried their hand at curating their own exhibit focused on Pop art. 

One caption created by a student read:
"One spray takes away gray!"

Amazingly, one problem we did not run into (but had anticipated) was fighting through the crowds. Live It Learn It had planned focused, engaging, and academic activities for each of our stops in the exhibit space. And thankfully, since the other crowds blew by, we had most of the exhibit space to ourselves and were able to have real conversations about the art.  In fact, students were so engaged that they didn't want to leave! They continued to discuss Pop art and Lichtenstein over lunch provided by National Gallery, and eagerly shared their reflections on the play.

All in all, I think we were able to hook every single student. And every teacher knows that is no small feat!


*Live It Learn It would also like to give a huge THANK YOU to the National Gallery of Art staff for rolling out the carpet for our students, and for all of their help planning this wonderful experience!*

Out of One Classroom and Into Many

By Chris Magnuson

"How does it feel to be out of the classroom?"

My friends and family ask this question frequently as they start a conversation about my new position at Live It Learn It.  They know that I have been a classroom teacher for the past ten years and they are interested in how the transition is going.  I usually surprise them when I say: "I am out of my own classroom but I am usually teaching a lesson in another teacher's class at least once a day."  I then explain how Live It Learn It has been a great organization to work with since I can still teach and interact with students regularly while at the same time work on programming on a larger scale.  

Testing the clarity of the Potomac River with students
from Patterson Elementary School. 

I am now working in more schools and classrooms than I could have ever imagined.  Instead of working with my usual cohort of 100 students as a middle school social studies teacher,  I am now working with hundreds of students in grades 4th through 6th. This is amazing because I now see how the lessons, activities, and even songs we teach as Live It Learn It have a broader impact throughout the city.  It is a different type of teaching which also raises questions that I did not grapple with in my own classroom.  I find myself thinking more about how to make the educational resources of DC accessible and meaningful to students I have yet to meet.  I wonder about how we can systematically create an educational community of learning outside of the classroom; where field trips and museum studies are the norm and not an add-on or exception.  Most importantly I grapple with how we can tap into the rich educational resources in this city to improve the wonder, excitement and love of learning for all students across the city.     

While I am thinking about large-scale programmatic issues, I am also excited that I can step into another teacher's classroom on a daily basis. This helps me stay focused on how students interact with our  programming and it keeps me grounded in the reality of the students we serve.  It is an honor to work with Live It Learn It now that I truly understand the systematic impact we are making one classroom at a time. 

Exploring mosaics at the Library of Congress with students from  CW Harris Elementary School .