This fall when I arrived on campus, I knew that I wanted to think about cycles of learning. In my previous work, it had become clear to me how important the flow of ideas is in electrifying learning. My final writings for my undergraduate degree were about “The Creativity Circuit.” In that work, I considered the ways in which artists who teach are inspire their students and are inspired and how this nurtures growth in both.
Since I finished that writing, I have taught for quite some time and had just let it sit and grow with me. So when I began at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I began reading James Baldwin, Paulo Freire, and Carla Rinaldi, perhaps I was already primed to think of students as capable, inspiring, and generous to their own learning. Even so I found in each of their writing a great deal to draw me back to the consideration of how teachers and learners collaborate in the classroom.
My guiding question has been about the centrality of collaboration:
In what ways are collaborative cycles of learning shaped by personal, disciplinary, cognitive, and sensory differences?
This project about music came out of the desire to center the collaborative process, beginning with a circle-drawing routine, to set into motion an interdisciplinary and cross-media learning process.
What you see on this website is the beginnings of setting up an open-source student-driven making process in which older kids will be able to scaffold their new skills to some younger kids. It is not done yet! So stay tuned