Access
Introduction
Through field trips focused on visual arts, and unique classroom experiences like Google Expeditions and Mystery Hangouts, the students I taught in 2015-2016 were exposed to people and places they would not otherwise be able to meet and experience. The socioeconomic disparity of these students was a barrier that prevented many of them from even visiting other parts of their city, let alone other states or countries. With this in mind, I sought experiences, both inside and outside of the school building, that served to integrate their learning with engaging and impactful access. Additionally, in March of 2020, students and teachers all over the country were forced to begin rethinking the normal school model when the Covid-19 pandemic brought extended school shutdowns. I, like many others, have found ways creatively to provide access to my students. In this section, you will see the activities I planned and executed to bring various opportunities to my students, past and present.
Access Opportunity 1: NOMA and StudioBe
Visual Art Perspectives
For the final ELA module of the school year, students explored the creative impulse as they read biographies of visual artists in different mediums. In addition to reading about the artists, students encountered photographs of the work of each of these artists. My pre-lesson challenged students to define what could be considered art. Students generally begin with traditional art forms like painting and sculpture before branching out and expanding their definitions. This poster was displayed at the front of the class with the plan to revisit with additions at the end of our art unit.
My students first learned about abstract art with the book Action Jackson by authors Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan about famed author Jackson Pollock. My students began every day of this unit by creating observations and questions about a new piece of visual art.
I selected another book to pair with Action Jackson that would provide a different perspective to abstract visual art. Radiant Child is an elementary text that tells the story of childhood and life of Puerto Rican-Haitian American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. My students wrote about how Basquiat's “messy” style of art-making, was an comparison to Pollock's splatter technique.
To supplement the ELA curriculum I provided students the opportunity to see a different perspective of nonconformist art by showing them examples of similar artists in person. I planned two field trips that would let my fourth-grade students experience two exciting worlds of visual art. First, they got to visit the New Orleans Museum of Art where they display one of Jackson Pollocks' paintings. One week later they got to visit Brandon Odom's StudioBe, to see a different medium of visual art. It was rewarding for students to see the juxtaposition of the two visual art facilities. My students later reflected on how "sad and scary, some of the murals were, but also how powerful and made them want to "change things."
The artwork in the museum and sculpture garden is curated and spans centuries, recalling historical movements and trends.
StudioBe's contemporaneous and topical art is on display all over the city, for all to see.
NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art)
I contacted the New Orleans Museum of Art and scheduled a visit for a free class tour. As a title 1 charter school, I was able to apply for bus reimbursement. This meant my students did not have to pay anything for this field trip. This visit to NOMA was a chance for my students to see classic visual art in the traditional city museum setting. Most of my students had never been to an art museum before so to prepare them we discussed the went over the rules and guidelines that NOMA has on their website.
The New Orleans Museum of Art
Permission Slip, bus reimbursement, and NOMA guidelines.
NOMA had many paintings of artists that students have only read about. Students recognized works by artists we had studied like Degas, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Miró, and O'Keeffe. My students were most thrilled to get to see "Composition (White, Black, Blue, and Red on White)" by Jackson Pollock.
Student examples of the art scavenger hunt handout
For the trip to NOMA, I designed a scavenger hunt that allowed students engage with the subject and material of different installations. I gave them a handout asking questions about several works of art that they could locate within the museum, and left a space for them to answer a question about each piece they found. Exposure to historic works of art reinforces a lot of the content we learn in social studies, especially concerning European perspectives and primary sources.
The Snake Charmer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the historical paintings featured in the scavenger hunt
My homeroom students posing together and in front of some of their favorite paintings.
StudioBe
The next field trip was to the StudioBe gallery in the Marigny neighborhood. This trip was funded in part by a KidsmArt grant that I applied for. Brandan “B-Mike” Odums is a New Orleans artist that has been incredibly influential, especially in the ninth ward of New Orleans, where my school is located. Mr. Odums’ media is primarily spray-painted murals. He has done some enormous pieces in New Orleans that are dynamically political and poignant in the black community. I’ve used pictures of his paintings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Oscar Grant to teach about the Black Lives Matter movement and the Civil Rights movement.
Brandan "B-Mike" Odums of StudioBe
Before the StudioBe visit students had extensive background knowledge from social studies class on some of the historical figures and events they would see portraits of, including Martin Luther King, Emmett Till, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Seeing these images and events from so long ago presented by a contemporary, local artist emphasized the relevance of the material we had been learning in class. It also helped them connect the past to current events they had learned about in and out of school, like the Trayvon Martin shooting.
Odums' mural of Black Lives Matter icons
News about people like Trayvon Martin affects our students, and we address it both academically and culturally through arts integration.
Odums's mural “Wall of Peace” on the historic Grand Theater (derelict after Hurricane Katrina) is just down the street from our school. This social justice monument is something most students see on their way to school. I wanted students to interact with visual art from a New Orleans native that strives to deliver important lessons about social justice and inequality in our country and to juxtapose it with the more traditional visual art that students experience throughout the year. B-Mike met us at the mural location for an up-close look at the spray paint art and insight to the figures painted on the wall. The visit to StudioBe and Wall of Peace served as an interesting comparison to the New Orleans Museum of Art. I loved how B-Mike was present at his studio to directly speak to my students and explain graffiti art as a positive and relevant visual media that has had historically negative connotations. When my students asked B-Mike questions at the end of the tour, some were able to relate the social justice messages that they had read about in the Basquiat book “Radiant Child” to B-Mike's calls to equality and justice, expressed through his powerful murals.
Odums' Wall of Peace, located just off the highway in New Orleans East
Students and chaperones inside of StudioBe, Odums' art gallery
Finally, it was time to create our own art. My students learned about the color wheel and painting techniques. Pictured below are my students experimenting with splatter painting and then creating their own Jackson Pollock style paintings on Seesaw.com.
Bringing the students to see a Jackson Pollock painting in person and meeting renowned activist/muralists Brandan Odum created a moment for these students they will never forget. It was a pleasure to introduce them to this eccentric and non-conformist art in person. I was eager to see how it would inspire their own art.
Access Opportunity 2: Google Expeditions
For this access opportunity, I planned to bring the field trip experience to my students. My students got to visually experience different states, countries, biomes, and even other planets with virtual reality field trips. I signed our entire school up for a beta education program called Google Expeditions, which included in-person teacher training sessions with Google representatives. This virtual reality experience allowed students to connect visually with various geographic features that we learned about in class, both physical and sociopolitical. I found Google Expeditions through a Google+ community and signed our school up for free, which entailed filling out an application and getting other teachers to do the same. Because several teachers from my school showed interest in this service, the Google Expeditions team was happy to come out and provide support as we learned how to use it.
In 2016, Google was preparing to release its virtual reality for education app. I discovered they were test piloting a virtual reality program through Google Expeditions. Along with interactive VR videos, students used 3D goggles for a truly immersive experience. Wearing the 3D goggles was highly engaging and let students visit places that were beyond their reach, as well as things that were difficult or impossible to reach physically. For example, these students raised in the warm Louisiana climate were surrounded by falling snow for the first time in their lives. We supplemented our unit on Greek mythology with a virtual tour of Athens and supplemented our unit on physical geography with a virtual tour of the moon, the International Space Station, and Earth's coral reef. My kids got within 100 yards of a tornado in Oklahoma and 100 inches from an African elephant.
Google representatives spent a full day at the school helping teachers learn to use Google Expeditions
I am invested in 21st-century skills such as media and technology literacy, which Google Expeditions lends itself to with its mobile learning opportunities. I love implementing gamification to boost engagement with content we are learning in class, and Google Expeditions fits in with this perfectly. Ultimately, these skills will serve them as they become independent, critical thinkers in a world saturated by technology.
Google Expeditions allowed my students access to explore nearly 600 available tours on their own.
Google Expeditions makes it possible for teachers to take their classrooms on virtual reality field trips to amazing places like the Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu, and to delve into museums, underwater landscapes, and outer space
My students were active participants in this learning experience. Their post-experience reflections include their observations and inferences from their knowledge of the text as well as what they observed or discovered after visiting various locations by way of virtual reality. Students learning about underwater exploration were able to crystallize earlier lessons when they saw the sea from the perspective of a scuba diver.
Students enrich their ELA lesson on Jacques Cousteau biography
Two 3rd graders reflect on the VR experience of scuba diving
Not only was this an incredibly engaging moment that students shared, but it was eye-opening for so many kids that had only read about these historic or geographic places. In some cases, these locations were impossible, like different planets and inside the human anatomy.
Access Opportunity 3: Mystery Video Chats
In 2016 I started using Mystery Hangouts and the Google+ community to connect with teachers and their classes from around the world. Mystery Hangouts is a video chat platform that would let my class have conversations with other students that they would not otherwise meet or learn about. The teachers of the other class and I would decide on a time and structure to our mystery hangout then conduct a fun question and answer meet and greet. There was an enthusiastic world-wide collaboration available with a goal to increase opportunities for connections around the globe that support cultural awareness and recognition of diversity.
My first step was to make a post on Google+ about my class, city, and the best times for us to talk. I later would go into further detail about what kind of class I would like to connect with. I am usually interested in other 3rd-5th grade classes so that my students can interact with other children around the same age. Seeing what other students are learning, look like, and have to say is a real-time cultural exposure that may not be otherwise possible.
Different posts to the Google+ Mystery Hangouts community, first to gauge interest, then to zero in on specifics
In the video below my students are having their second Mystery Hangout meeting with a class in St. Louis. Our class video-chatted in real-time, and we interviewed each other. Most questions were about our city. I set up a geography quiz (similar to the "20 questions" game) that has our students guess where the mystery class lives. Interacting with students in St. Louis helped students learn about the Midwest region for our social studies class. My students were surprised to learn that although the Saint Louis class was over 600 miles away from them, Saint Louis and New Orleans both shared close proximity to the Mississippi River. I hope to build a network of teachers that do this more often and can recommend another class on a different continent.
Students took turns asking questions of their distant peers
Sample questions that students were given in preparation for our conversation
Another approach we experimented with requires students to prepare by researching interview questions about the other class's location with a more poignant inquiry. One specific challenge that comes up in this situation is that the other class sometimes wants to ask my New Orleans students about Hurricane Katrina. This can be emotionally trying for some students that know of disheartening stories their families went through, and additionally, my students weren't yet born in 2005 and have less to say about it than their older siblings.
Students can ask region-specific questions in order to narrow down the location of the mystery class
A lot of teachers are interested in these types of opportunities, and can even use these live chats to spread the word among colleagues
The opportunity to meet through platforms like Mystery Hangouts stokes enthusiasm among students and teachers alike. Lessons about a region that students can barely imagine come to life when they are able to learn, socialize, and laugh with students from those areas. My students got to exchange insights and stories with kids they would never have gotten the chance to meet.
I posted this photo on Google+ of a few students as a way of introducing ourselves
These are experiences my students would not have found on their own but with my guidance had adapted easily. Our Mystery Hangouts continued throughout the school year. As video conferencing has become more of the norm in recent instruction, opportunities like Mystery Hangouts has set them up for success. Students learned how to engage with other students through digital meetings and teach other students about our city and cultures.
Access Opportunity 4: Turnaround Arts Showcase
I feel passionate about arts integration as a daily expression in all my classes. In my class, arts education isn’t just a flower, it’s also a wrench, a tool that can be used to tackle some of these persistent, pervasive problems. I use improvisation, reenactments, and creative movement are how we further engage in the content. Readers’ Theater is a weekly gem that promotes fluency, and confidence. There are also weekly opportunities for musical and visual art that I see a correlation to quantitative results in assessments. Late in the academic school year of 2016, I helped create an amazing outside opportunity for my students with arts integration and two celebrity artists.
I was aware of my school's interest in a valuable arts integration program called Turnaround Arts that was looking to create more of a presence in New Orleans. The Turnaround Arts program emphasizes the success and need for the arts in low-performing schools. This is a national program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts which "aims to impact underserved elementary and middle schools through arts education programming that is specifically designed to address the systemic challenges facing these high-poverty school systems." I emailed the Turnaround Arts Network Coordinator, suggesting two of the three designated celebrity artists come to New Orleans to work with my class. Our school was fortunate to host actress and activist Alfre Woodward and New York Times columnist David Brooks. My request proposed my class would reenact a Peace March event that we previously participated in against neighborhood violence. I was overwhelmed with the news that my class was chosen to work with Ms. Woodard and Mr. Brooks. We were chosen to put on a performance for the whole school as a launch for a larger New Orleans base for Turnaround Arts.
4th graders practice a choreographed protest with Alfre Woodard and letters to the Mayor edits by David Brooks.
My research for this opportunity led me to incorporate Mrs. Woodard's performance skills and Mr. Brooks's writing expertise. These two notable individuals spent two days with my class, coaching my students in how to powerfully raise their voices in action and writing. Alfrie Woodard spent 2 days with my 4th graders stylizing the protest with choreography and creative movement. In the video below you can see her demonstrating breathing techniques and voice projections. My students were personally coached by an academy award nominee on voice projection and synchronicity of their statements and message.
David Brooks personally coached my students with a letter-writing activity to the then Mayor Landrieu. Mr. Brooks acted as editor, looking over their shoulders as each 4th grader showed him their letters. He made valuable suggestions and additions to make the writing stronger or more purposeful for the intended audience. In the video below you can see Mr. Brooks giving one of my students a pep talk before she would go on to read her letter to Mayor Landrieu.
Access Opportunity 5:
Distance Learning During National Crisis
On March 13th, 2020, my school closed its doors to all students per Louisiana Governor Bel Edward's executive order concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Uncertain when or if we would return this school year, I made plans to deliver physical and online resources to my students for distance learning. This section chronicles the access opportunities I have created for my students during this world-wide crisis.
Access to Food
On Mondays and Wednesdays, I either help distribute prepared food at the school or make drop-offs at family residences throughout the city. I called my students' families to remind them that Lyft was offering free ride codes to and from Food Distribution Sites in Orleans Parish. My school began offering grab and go breakfast and lunch on Wednesdays for any member of the community who needed food. Nola Public Schools listed the current locations in the city and their food service start day at https://nolapublicschools.com/covid19/nutrition. With donations from Second Harvest and Nola Public Schools, some teachers gathered at separate tables in the cafeteria to put food in deliverable boxes. I called parents for the first two weeks and informed them of the food programs that were available during the planned four weeks of shutdown.
Access to Technology
Louisiana Department of Education reported that 35 parishes reported that more than 50% of their students do not have home internet. 33 parishes and city districts reported higher percentages. Before leaving the school building that Friday, I took home as many library books as I could in hopes that I could bring them to students’ homes. I also made copies of some of my workbooks for students that I knew would not be able to get to the online class that I was planning to build. I called every parent and was able to drop off dozens of ELA and math materials to families' porches.
After two weeks of distance learning, I got word that our school's Chromebooks were finally made available to families for pick up. I personally called each of my students' families to let them know about the Chromebooks and as well as internet resources like portable hotspots and information on free wifi from Cox Cable that were being distributed from the school.
Ten of my students picked up Chromebooks and internet support after week two of the school closure. I saw students jump into the class assignments and reading but they told me over the phone that they were not able to download zoom because of network firewalls. I hosted Google Hangouts, which my students had been familiar with, but I wanted the advanced feature of Zoom. I researched a workaround and made a youtube video on how to use Chromebooks with Zoom using the "Join with Browser" feature.
How to use Zoom with Chromebook Video I made
A daily email/text message on Class Dojo to parents reminding how to apply for distance learning devices.
Access to Daily Curriculum
My students were already familiar with many of the online platforms since I had provided them access in class. Students with devices at home could log onto Google Classroom for our daily lessons and assignments. My lessons were available on a variety of devices. Students could access the daily reading and writing assignments with computers, tablets, and even smartphones. The students without internet access work on their library book reading that I dropped off and discussion questions over the phone in a small group or one on one conferences.
Example of a regular school schedule for students/parents to support building daily routine
10:00 am daily Zoom meeting for assignment instructions, writing feedback, and questions
4 paragraph essay writing prompt for Wednesday 4/22/20
Sample Question and Answer from Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Since my students did not have access to their own copies of a common anchor text, I borrowed several ebooks from the New Orleans library and created youtube videos of me reading them. Students without read-aloud accommodations were encouraged to mute the videos as they read along.
Students responded to writing prompts in Google Docs, responded to questions in Google Forms, and also provided arts-integrated activities in Google Slides. My students got to share some of their reflections on Flipgrid.com and Padlet.com where they can make comments and give 'likes' to each other's' posts. Below are two examples of student-edited Google Slides and book reflections on a Pardlet page.
Examples of Google Slides that students edit and add to.
I set up Padlet and Flipgrid pages to give students the opportunity to have a class discussion about our text.
Access to Differentiation
Through our video meetings, I saw that some students' participation was very low and reserved. Those students often reported feeling stressed out in the large Zoom class meetings. We have our 10:00 am Zoom meetings for direct instruction, questions, and math practice but then students are expected to do much of the online assignments on their own time. Some of my students were falling further behind after the first week without the small group accommodations that they are usually provided in my class. So, relieve some of this pressure I created another 11:00 small group meeting for some of these students that were feeling nervous about the class discussions with large video meetings.
The 11:00 small group meetings were targeted at students with different reading levels that performed better with more peer discussions and time to dedicate to reading fluency practice and a slower pace for assignment directions. In this smaller setting my students were able to have more talking time and less likely to be interrupted. I also created differentiated assignments targeted at the reading skills I felt they needed most. Above are screenshots of small group guided reading sessions.
One of my students was regularly getting one-on-one Zoom meetings twice a week from me. This student is hearing impaired and I was finding it very difficult to relay all my instructions via the CHAT feature in Zoom. This student's ASL translator, Mrs. Lisa, was employed through an agency instead of directly through my school and was not getting paid when the school shut down. Countless emails to my school administration helped ensure this student should not go one more day without her legal accommodation and after only one week, Mrs. Lisa was able to join a Zoom one-on-one (actually two on one) lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
1:1 and small group session for differentiated lessons
Access to Socializing
The Zoom meetings we have at 10:00 did not leave much room for socializing. I sent a survey out on Google Classroom to ask about how distance learning was going for them One question asked what they missed during this time. All of the students wrote about missing friends. So I set up an afternoon Zoom time that served as a socializing. We often spend this time just talking to each other and sometimes playing online games like Jackbox.tv, Kahoot, Gimkit, Quizziz, or using the whiteboard feature to play Pictionary.
Students overwhelmingly write missing friends on a distance learning class survey
I invited guests like the violin class to join our social hour zoom
The bi-weekly video that I make throughout the school year about school happenings and events has not had anything to report since the closure, so I sent out an email requesting teachers to make videos about what distance learning looks like for them. I created a brief video for teachers to share with their distance learning classes, giving students access to some of the other staff members they don't get to see as often as their lead instructors.
Access to School Events
There were several school events that my students are missing out during this school closure. There is our Arts Integration showcase, our Draw-A-Thon, middle school dances, and end of the year parties. I have set up two events so far that were incredibly engaging that the whole school was invited to. One was a school spelling bee that was open to staff, students, and parents. We had over fifty participants in the spelling bee, from grades one through eight, competing against adults. Each student received words from their own grade level's list of spelling words. One of my students took home the digital trophy.
Poster for the school spelling bee
Facebook post showing Spelling Bee participants. All students and staff are blurred
The other school-wide event that I created and posted about is to honor April as national poetry month. Students submitted videos to Flipgrid, emailed poems, or read them over the phone which I recorded. I am compiling a video file that I will make public to our school's Facebook page (with appropriate permissions) after the April 30th deadline.
Samples of student poems for our school Poetry Jam
Access to Art
Even though students are not able to interact with our classroom art supplies, I am researching and creating opportunities for students to make art at home that they can present for assignments. My students created digital tableaus and drawings, paper dolls, baking projects, board game creations, and storyboards. Below are some examples of those arts integration opportunities.
Intro to fractions project (Cooking with Fractions)
Tableaus with Google Drawing
Creating scenes from our text with items around the house.
Creating chapter summaries with StoryBoardThat.com
Conclusion
One of my goals as a teacher is to give my students a better sense of not just the vastness of the world and of human experience but to give them the sense that, if they want it, they can access and contribute to global culture. Each of the access opportunities that I have outlined above achieves this goal in fun and exciting ways. Showing students a formal art museum in contrast with a local artist, one making a direct impact on his own community and beyond, tells students that they, too, can strive to make art that matters to other people. Google Expeditions puts students, virtually, in the driver’s seat of incredible experience, and hopefully gives them a taste for real-world exploration. Showing them the ease with which we can access our global community online through Mystery Chats teaches students that if they have the will and something to say, they can share their own world with others. Bringing celebrity artists and experts to collaborate with was a memorable and newsworthy endeavor. Finally, I am providing my class with stability during the "New Normal" of distance learning. These access opportunities were carefully designed for my students so that the experiences we have together will have the greatest impact on them.