26: Why Traditional Education Fails Students—and How Activist Artists and Educators are Turning the Tide

Threshold Questions and Delicious QuotesHow do you describe your work in the world?I often refer to myself as a midwife of creativity... I think of it in my dual roles as an educator and artist, as holding space for the birth of someone else's creative thinking and inquiry. And so I liked that idea that, if something goes wrong here I am to hold the space.What is happening when young people catch fire in a performance?..students, who have been marginalized or failing their other subject matters-- suddenly if they're center stage ... performing with brilliance it's a way for even other teachers to have an asset-based understanding of them, to really see them for them, their true selves.What is the art of teaching?The art of teaching ... is really this transmission of wisdom, right? If we look at human history, we're talking about a very different frame than the last hundred years of what education is and how we pass on ethics and values and cultures and art forms through education. Those were the primary ...tools for survival and somehow all of that seems a bit out the window with our Industrialized education frame.What makes Studio Pathways unique?One of the reasons we left the county office of education was to focus on the concept of reconciliation or reckoning. So taking it from, south African truth and reconciliation --- the knowledge that we really haven't had a practice of reconciliation this country, that's why we're facing what we're facing right now....Educators need to be able to do power analysis in the classroom. They need to understand what's happening between teacher and students, between genders and races, and they need to understand what that means and how that plays out and then their own role in either disrupting or perpetuating that.So that's a real key....And the way that we do it is through the arts. Jessa Brie Moreno is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director for Studio Pathways and has collaborated as a pedagogical advisor, instructional designer, and facilitator for leading-edge arts organizations and educational institutions nationwide. Studio Pathways' projects, partners, and clients include: Rise Up! An American Curriculum, The Kennedy Center, Turnaround Arts National, Othering and Belonging Curriculum for UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, Racial Healing Curriculum/WKKF Foundation, Instructional Designers/Zaretta Hammond, Favianna Rodriguez' The Center for Cultural Power, the California Spoken Word Project, Turnaround Arts National CA, California Alliance for Arts Education, Hewlett Foundation, Los Angeles Education Partners, Youth Speaks, Youth In Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora, Oakland Museum of California, and County, District and School Sites. In addition, Moreno has held posts as Adjunct Faculty with the California Institute for Integral Studies (BA, MFA programs) and San Jose State University (Theatre Dept.) is a founding member of White Educators for Racial Justice (WERJ) and has facilitated with RISE for Racial Justice. Moreno (alongside Rankine-Landers) formerly co-led the Integrated Learning Specialists' Program, professional development in and beyond Alameda County that supported transformative K-12 school change through the arts. Moreno served the California Alliance for Arts Education as a Local Advocacy Field Manager building community leadership networks for Arts Advocacy statewide. She was the founding director of both the Oakland Theatre Arts Initiative and of award-winning student theatre company OakTechRep. Jessa's directorial work has appeared in collaborations with CalShakes, Stanford, UC Davis, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. Professional Awards as a performing artist include an Emmy (Motion Capture Specialist), Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, Dean Goodman, and Shellie Best Actress Awards.Moreno utilizes a stance of "creative midwifery" to assist in the ethical "birth" of transformative practices in education, arts, and culture. She wrestles actively with a complex lineage as a sixth-generation settler colonist to Ohlone lands, fourth-generation artist, third-generation activist, and mother to two young women. She is a graduate of Scuola Internazionale dell'Attore Comico in Italy, holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Inquiry from CIIS, and a English Language Arts Teaching Credential. TranscriptCSCW EP 26 Jessa Brie Moreno  BC: [00:00:02] That's the sound of children playing together at school. Until very recently all across the globe, those echoing voices, were as common is the wind. Now, not so much. Hopefully that will be changing soon. There are very few who would disagree with the idea that our children, their safety, their ability to learn are of primary importance to all of us as a community. But sometimes, maybe I should say all too often, what we do in that realm, how we treat our children, does not align with that sentiment. This is particularly true with our schools, which many regard as the clearest reflection of how society values as children, and, by extension, nurtures and grows its future. The other sound that has been missing from our children's lives is the voice of the teacher. Together with them in the classroom, encouraging, cajoling, pointing the way, providing the substance, the way points, and the glue for their learning journey. Among many other things, Jessa, Brie Moreno is a teacher of teachers. Through a program. she founded with her colleague, Mariah Rankin Landers, called Studio Pathways. She describes this work as helping educators give birth to the rigor and magic inherent to the art of teaching. As a theater artist and teacher, herself, she knows this territory intimately. She also knows that if we, as a society, are going to deliver on the promise, embodied in all those joyous, unexpected voices. Once again, filling the air back in the classrooms and playgrounds of the world, our teachers will be at the critical center. We spoke about this and much more in early 2021. This is Change the Story, Change the World, a Chronicle of art and community transformation. I'm Bill Cleveland. Part One: The Art. Of Teaching So, Jessa if someone were to put a moniker on you, or your work what would it be? JM: [00:02:16] I often refer to myself as a midwife of creativity, thought creative energy. Yeah. I think of it in my dual roles as an educator and artist, as holding space for the birth of someone else's creative thinking and inquiry. And so, I liked that idea that, if something goes wrong here, I can hold the space, but, pretty much, it's your experience here? And I've got some guidance for you. BC: [00:02:46] In the field of creative midwifery, what are some of the skills or capacities that are serve you? JM: [00:02:53] I guess training I had in theater, I actually did training in Italian street theater a million years ago. And. Something about risk and disruption and attempting to be present with the soul or spirit of a thing is the precise energy that education is in need of. BC: [00:03:17] Yeah. So, you do have a significant relationship to education. So, before we go into some of the specifics. How did you come to this work that you do as a creative midwife? JM: [00:03:30] I think, at first, by way of necessity, like most teaching artists, or artists who teach, I needed a way to make a living at the time as a single parent, navigating, moving from being a regional theater artist to something that would give me roots in one place longer than three months at a time. So, I fortunately, my mother's also an artist educator, taught ceramics her whole life. So I think I had it in my bones, whether I wanted to or not. And then found my way to Oakland Technical High School – A big, comprehensive public high school in Oakland, California, where I got to start the performing arts program that's been there for the last 15 years now. BC: [00:04:15] So growing up your mom was a maker. (Lisa Reinertson) And were you interested and excited by that realm of work early on as a kid? JM: [00:04:26] It’s funny you asked tha,t because I was not. I told her I was going to become the president of a tall building with no art on my walls because art had ruined my life. Yes, rebellion, rebellion. BC: [00:04:38] Absolutely. JM: [00:04:39] But I did grow up also daughter of a single mother on the floor of my mom's art studio in clay. And she's the sculptor of primarily public monuments to peace. So, sculptures of Martin Luther King, Today's his birthday. She's his family's favorite...