Here is the list of all the PWSC's 35 tools. To understand how our 35 trans- formational "tools" are used, click the links below. Each link is a response to a survey given to 15 Eastern Massachusetts urban, suburban, and rural school systems. We took care to chose communities with differing income levels and Massachusetts test scores. Their responses represent the goals these school systems want their schools to achieve. Clicking a link below reveals the transformational "tools" the PWSC designed to realize the goal selected. The uniqueness of each school culture means that our "tools" need to be adjusted or a new "tool" developed. These tools reflect our staff's deep well of experience and time spent working with Massachusetts K-12 schools.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
CAI'S LANGUAGE ARTS PROJECT
WHAT IT DOES
This project helps teachers (K-12) use simple classroom performing and visual arts activities and other expressive modalities to draw out feelings and insights their students want to express. Teachers harness these emotions to overcome their students’ speaking, reading, and writing challenges.
Teachers and students also learn to bridge the barriers between school climate, academics, and the arts. This motivates teachers and students to be more creative and integrate more of their thoughts and feelings when speaking and writing. One of the lesson’s goals is to help students establish a healthy balance between cognitive and emotional learning when they are communicating to themselves and others. This approach improves the students’ language arts and social development skills in both real and testing situations. Long exposure to this strategy helps students become life-long lovers of speaking, reading, and writing. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
PWSC artist/educators work in the classroom with teachers during the language arts lesson to model how to seamlessly combine school climate, performing arts, and language arts. As teachers gain more experience, they start implementing these lessons on their own. The lesson’s strategy is to harness students' feelings and insights that are evoked by compelling arts experiences and real classroom social issues. Students speak, read, and write about these feelings and insights within a community they own and are fully invested in — their Classroom Learning Tribe. The project's implementation combines the students' personal drives with support from the students’ peers, two highly motivating forces. These forces spur them to want to do their best when learning to speak, read, and write more effectively.
In classroom follow-up sessions, students and teachers work together implementing group building activities from the Tribal Rhythms® curriculum. The Language Arts Project has three basic components:
While students are learning these skills, teachers use the Second Step® Curriculum to help students study body language and voice tones to recognize their own and other people's emotions. Then students use highly effective and age appropriate discussion, brainstorming, and role-playing techniques to discover and share the thoughts and feelings all these experiences, lessons, and skills have brought up in them. Through these activities, students share their struggle with feelings, habits, thoughts, and actions that strengthen and weaken their Classroom Learning Tribe.
In the school library, students locate literature they like that mirrors their emotional and cognitive struggles to be caring, cooperative, and respectful members of their Classroom Learning Tribe. While these oral and reading activities are elevating the students’ communication skills, we encourage them to write about the feelings they are having about what they are experiencing.
"My favorite Tribal Rhythms activity was using the drum," wrote a student in Ms. Cameron's class, who up to this time had not written a complete sentence. "When I did the beat with the drum I felt very calmed down...sometimes I be very angry. But when I tap on the drum I calm down...When I'm mad my temples are burning. When I'm calmed down it’s cool. That is how I felt about the drum."
This project motivates students to communicate what matters to them — their thoughts, feelings, and actions that reflect their world.
Copyright © 2008 J. Curtis Jones and Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to CREATE AUTHENTIC, CARING SCHOOL RELATIONSHIPS among school staff, students, and parents:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
WHAT IT DOES
This professional development session is for teachers, parents, and admin- istrators. They learn how to lead their students or colleagues in making and playing beautiful melodious drums. They also learn how to use this shared drum-making experience to form authentic, caring school relationships. These relationships are needed during a school's transformation process. It presents lessons that merge language arts, science, and drum-making into one seamless lesson. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
This drum making and playing lesson is lead by PWSC artist/educators. It begins with the participants appreciating the quality music these handmade drums make by listening to the Tribal Rhythms® Community Building Music CD. Then the artist/educators lead school staff and parents in how to make drums with their students using the drum making steps outlined in the Tribal Rhythms® Creating The Village. Each step builds authentic, caring relationships.
There are session devoted to drum playing. Participants learn how to use the drums for music making, storytelling, dance, and academic and social development. Participants also learn to use drumming to develop group trust and a bond, release stress, and have fun. PWSC's follow-up sessions prepare school staff to merge drum-making, language arts, and science into one seamless lesson.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to ESTABLISH PARENT PROGRAMS that merge school culture and home culture:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
WHAT IT DOES
This lesson helps teachers form the kind of relationships with parents that:
Parents also learn how they can make important contributions to their children's academic and social development. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
Lesson one prepares students to be ambassadors who represent their Classroom Learning Tribe in their homes. In lesson two, students will be ambassadors representing their home and community in their Classroom Learning Tribe. to achieve these outcomes, classroom teachers and PWSC artist/educators will:
While performing the role of ambassador, students share enjoyable educational experiences with their parents (e.g., they tell stories about their Classroom Learning Tribe, explain how to make simple musical instruments, describe how they negotiate classroom agreements, and perform Tribal Rhythms Group Building Activities with their parents, etc.).
The process above is repeated as the students work with their parents to create ambassador portfolios and presentations that represent their home, family, and community to their Classroom Learning Tribe. The classroom teacher, art teacher, and PWSC artist/educator will work with the student and parent to make each presentation a success.
This lesson emotionally moves students to apply more effort, because they are performing for people who matter to them, and they are presenting material they care about. The lesson emotionally moves parents for the same reasons, and it shows how they can actively engage themselves in their children’s education. Teachers see how they can use this type of lesson to form a working academic relationship with their students’ parents.
Copyright © 2008 J. Curtis Jones and Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
THE TRIBAL RHYTHMS® PROGRAM
WHAT IT DOES
Tribal Rhythms is a process that uses the Theme of Tribe, group building activities, and the performing and visual arts to build community and satisfy the human need to belong. Tribal Rhythms unites what the student feels and cares about with the thinking that is required to learn (Cognitive Affective Coupling). This instruction strategy promotes a life-long love of learning.
The Tribal Rhythms Program is the gateway through which the PWSC's transformative process enters the classroom. It gives students and teachers the skills to play a leadership role in their school's transformation process. It is our main strategy for helping teachers partner with their students to manage change in their classroom. Tribal Rhythms' Classroom Learning Tribe provides the framework that houses Second Step® and Healthy Habits curricula and many other PWSC academic and social development programs and strategies.
HOW IT WORKS
Artist/educators from the Tribal Rhythms Company perform the Tribal Rhythms® Celebration, a dynamic participatory performance that introduces school staff, students, and parents to the spirit and meaning of our transformational process. It also introduces the artist/educators and school change coach who will work with and become part of their school community. The performance and the Tribal Rhythms® curriculum will establish a surrogate family atmosphere in the school by helping school staff establish Learning Tribes in each classroom. This sets the stage for dramatically improving teaching and learning. Tribal Rhythms artist/educators will model for teachers and students how to use the Theme of Tribe, group building activities, and the arts to make their Classroom Learning Tribe a real and powerful force in each student's life. They demonstrate for teachers how the Tribal Rhythms curriculum can help students successfully learn what the state's education frameworks requires.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
[Back to Healthy Habits Strategy]
.................."If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a ........................character. If you create a character, you create a destiny." André Maurois
WHAT IT DOES
A goal of the Healthy Habits Initiative is to develop habits that breed success and support teaching and learning. Another goal is to help school members see habits as being the glue that holds a culture together (values and attitudes also play this role).
Habits are the behaviors humans develop to adapt to stressful phenomena that happen within and outside of them. To significantly improve teaching and learning, habits have to be understood, and dysfunctional unhealthy school habits must change. This project helps participants learn the skills to realize these two important goals.
The Healthy Habits Initiative demonstrates why habits are not easily changed. It helps participants understand why we experience a habit's psychic and emotional push back when we try to change it. It also reveals why this resistance to change is necessary for people's emotional and psychic security. This knowledge helps school members appreciate the unprecedented power adult-made environments have on a child's development. They see more clearly why their student’s “bad” and “good” habits are often the product of adult-created environments and situations. The essence of this power is captured in this poem by Dorothy Law Nolte.
Children Learn What They Live:
For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
The Healthy Habits Initiative helps the entire school community understand habits and recognize the dynamics and settings that create them. This learning prepares school members to enhance teaching and learning by establishing the kind of environments that cultivate habits that foster academic and social success. The process begins with participants gaining a solid understanding of the three stages that lead to a habit's formation.
Participants in the Healthy Habits Initiative learn to stop blaming students for their unearned bad habits and lavish praise for their unearned good habits. Parents and teachers learn to stop trying to change students' habits by yelling at them, punishing them, and practicing other forms of doing to rather than working with students. Punishment and other do to strategies only create more dysfunctional habits such as lying, blaming and framing others, faking academic and social accomplishments, cheating, gaming the system, and tuning out helpful adults and peers.
The project helps adults do what works to transform dysfunctional habits, and that is preparing adults to work with elementary through high school students to create student-centered environments that they own. When students own their learning environment, they can feel safe enough to risk being vulnerable and risk doing and being something different. When breaking habits, students need this sense of safety to motivate them to take risks for change. These settings also offer each child the opportunity to succeed at being a child and each adolescent the opportunity to succeed at being an adolescent. Student-centered environments owned by the students themselves provide the best opportunity to develop healthy, success-prone habits.
Copyright © 2008 J. Curtis Jones and Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to ESTABLISH A SAFE, RESPECTFUL, AND MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL CLIMATE:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
WHAT IT DOES
This Tribal Rhythms® lesson helps teachers give their students the opportunity to play a leadership role transforming their classroom culture. Tribe Helpers give students a chance to lead and support the leadership of others. It gives teachers the opportunity to help students who are struggling socially in their class to gain peer status. Students who use disruptive anti-social behavior to gain attention embrace these constructive ways to get their status needs meet. This lesson gives every student the opportunity to lead. The investment taken to effectively implement this lesson results in more time focused on academic success. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
Most youths want to be helpful. The Tribal Helpers tool taps this desire to build a stronger Classroom Learning Tribe. The lesson starts with the Tribe Elders (all the adults who work with students) working with students to choose who will play leadership roles in the Classroom Learning Tribe. PWSC's artist/educators model for teachers and other Tribe Elders how to make certain that students with low self-esteem and other challenges are selected. Artist/educators work with the school staff and parents to give them:
The students select the Classroom Learning Tribe's goals, and then the Elders partner with the Tribe Helpers to manage the effort. A Tribe Log Book is made available and it outlines suggested duties Tribe Helpers might need to perform. For example, there is the keeper of the Tribe Talking Stick, Keeper of the Tribe Scrapbook, and the Tribe Scribe. In grades three through five, a student is chosen to be the Tribe Scribe and help the teacher record all the Classroom Tribe Council decisions and events in the Tribe Log Book.
These classroom tasks establish a situation where children can be successful yet challenged doing work the that is important to them and their tribe-mates. It gives students peer status and an opportunity to do something they really want to do while playing a constructive role in the classroom.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to BRING TOGETHER IN-SCHOOL AND AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS
WHAT IT DOES
Tribe Elders provide all in-school and after-school adults who interact with children a role in the Learning Tribe that gives them the capacity to work with children, so they can stop doing to children. The Council Of Elders gives the Tribe Elders the peer support and professional development to satisfy three psychic needs every student has to attain if they are to realize their academic and social potential (Ralph Linton). School students and children in after-school programs need to feel secure in the present and in the future. They need to receive positive emotional responses from school staff, parents, and peers. They also need to satisfy their need for stimulation, excitement, and risk-taking in a socially responsible manner. The Council Of Elders prepares Tribe Elders to satisfy these psychic needs so their students become emotionally and psychologically ready to succeed in school.
The council helps Tribe Elders work with students to make the Classroom Learning Tribe a vehicle for socializing students to "succeed at being children" and harness their success to achieve academically. Being a Tribe Elder gives school and after-school staff and parents a place in the Learning Tribe where the adults’ academic role can be most effectively played. To accomplish this outcome, the council teaches Tribe Elders how to invest in the Learning Tribe to make it a real and important part of their students' lives.
The PWSC School Change Coach and artists/educators are also Tribe Elders and they attend the Council Of Elders gatherings. At each gathering, adults learn from each other how the Classroom Learning Tribe can provide students with the leadership and institutional roles to attain social and academic success. Students are more able to make a positive contribution to the school's transformational process when the adults become skilled elders within highly functioning Classroom Learning Tribes. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
Every effort should be made to have all adults be a Tribe Elder and participate in the Council Of Elders. PWSC School Change Coach and artist/educators model the Tribe Elders' role skills in the Council Of Elders, the classroom, and in after-school sites.
Each Tribe Elder has a Tribal Rhythms curriculum to guide them in leading and implementing the Classroom Learning Tribe. The curriculum helps them present and model the values of caring, cooperation, and respect. It prepares the Tribe Elders to use the Tribe Council and other Tribal Rhythms® Group Building Activities correctly. These ceremonies give their students a sense of continuity and security that extends from lesson to lesson, classroom to school yard, school to home, grade to grade, and after-school to in-school. This consistency and familiarity gives children the ability to establish school relationships that promote better teaching and learning. Each Tribe Elder also has their School Team Building Process Manual to help them manage their Council Of Elders meetings and make group decisions.
The Council Of Elders places all adults on the “same page,” so what school children in school and after-school sites experience from one adult is consistent and is reinforced by other adults. Within the Learning Tribe’s surrogate family atmosphere, every child has greater “success at being a child." The Council Of Elders helps Tribe Elders change school and after-school sites from being adult places children are forced to attend to being places both children and adults share and own. The Council Of Elders is where the performing and visual arts, the Tribal Rhythms® curriculum, the PWSC’s School Team Building Process, Healthy Habits Project strategies, Second Step® Curriculum, and hands-on in-classroom coaching come together to make each adult a successful Tribe Elder.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
STUDENT ASSESSMENT COUNCIL CIRCLES
WHAT IT DOES
Assessment Council Circles are evaluation instruments used in the Tribal Rhythms® Program to give students a leadership role in both program evaluation and the school's transformation process. As an evaluation tool, the circles give evaluation team members information on the quality of the program's implementation and the effectiveness of the program's strategies. These circles detect and help measure the changes in students' social and academic skills, and they assess the overall effectiveness of the program's adult participants (i.e., PWSC artist/educators, school staff, etc.). They also give the evaluation team data to:
For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
PWSC artist/educators model for teachers how to implement Assessment Council Circles, so teachers learn how to conduct these circles for their own purposes using the Tribe Talking Stick, movement games, role-play and other reflection techniques that motivate discussion. When a PWSC program is being assessed the evaluation team joins the Assessment Council Circles and oversees the evaluation. Evaluation instruments will help students vocalize and demonstrate what they have learned. They will gather information on students' thoughts and feelings about their classroom Learning Tribe, the activities students do in their Learning Tribe, and other data of interest. Assessment Council Circles will supply the safe informal setting where evaluators can ask students what they want their school to be and what they need to be better learners.
Copyright © 2008 J. Curtis Jones and Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to HEAL FACTIONAL SPLITS that undermine teaching and learning:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
PULL UP A ROCK, LET'S TALK
WHAT IT DOES
It takes caring authentic relationships to achieve transformation. This thought-provoking professional development session helps adult participants examine and overcome destructive power relationships that stifle creativity, damage self esteem, and undermine teaching and learning. The performing arts and humor are used in this session to reduce the threat and fear this subject traditionally generates. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
Through dramatic storytelling and participatory music making, CAI artists/ educators lead participants in a moving tale that is geared to foster insight and empathy. In a story placed in a prehistoric setting, participants can safely examine cliques, bullies, and other hurtful power relationships. It empowers the participants to tap the magic of the arts to explore the dynamics of having more and less power. The dramatic story reveals how power relationships can destroy a classroom or school when the weakest is not respected and the strongest is not respectful. Having this professional development session increases each partici- pant's ability to:
- "place themselves in each other's shoes" and be more cooperative and respectful;
- appreciate the different strengths and abilities their colleagues bring to the team;
- understand why groups have and create negative power relationships; and
- use drama and role-playing skills to prevent negative power relations from continuing.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Below are the tools that the PWSC has used to MOTIVATE STUDENTS TO ACHIEVE ACADEMICALLY by integrating their most valued thoughts and emotions into their academic lives:
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
[Back to Healthy Habits Our Strategy] [Back to Specific and Generalized Responses]
WHAT IT DOES
Cognitive Affective Coupling evenly balances the high status of cognitive learning with the low status of emotional learning. Cognitive Affective Coupling helps place human relationships at the center of instruction strategy, and it expands social and emotional learning and character development.
When academics is alienated from its emotional fuel, higher order learning does not happen. There needs to be the drive to do the deep thinking and researching these subject require. Cognitive Affective Coupling reengages feelings, the students' most powerful motivator, and integrates it with what the students need to know.
Cognitive Affective Coupling equalizes the time spent on what students know with the time spent on what students feel about what they were learning. It provides classroom experiences and simulations that combine academic and social learning with what the students think and care about. By offering these experiences skillfully, students are socialize to appreciate knowledge and its acquisition, and they become life-long lovers of learning. Having this values and attitude is an absolute necessity in the global economy where constant retraining and schooling is now the norm for most successful wage earners and entrepreneurs. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
PWSC's artists/educators lead professional development and hands-on in-classroom sessions with students and their teachers. In these sessions, teachers learn to use the Tribal Council Circle, a classroom circle time strategy developed in 1970 that places human relationships at the center of instruction strategy. The Tribal Council Circle combines performing and visual arts experiences and simulations with academic, social, and emotional lessons. It places teachers on the path to realizing Cognitive Affective Coupling in their classroom. With professional development, school staffs learn to design curricula where there is an emotional component attached to each cognitive activity, thus preserving the principle that there are emotional components attached to our thoughts.
Cognitive Affective Coupling helps teachers to teach students to reflect on their learning process, and this prepares students to clearly and creatively express their thoughts and feelings. Teachers implement simple Tribal Rhythms performing and visual art experiences and group building lessons that are organized around what their students enjoy, know, and care about. This helps teachers learn about their students' emotional worlds — the places within and outside the students they want to be. With this knowledge, teachers expand their students' emotional worlds to embrace the learning of academics. If teachers want the best their students have to offer, they have to be where their students want to be. Applying this working with strategy helps students care enough about knowledge to become life-long lovers of learning.
Copyright © 2012 J. Curtis Jones and Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
[Back to Healthy Habits Our Strategy]
Below are the tools the PWSC uses to TRANSFORM SCHOOL CULTURE (to enhance teaching and learning):
School Team Building Professional Development Opportunity for Achieving Leadership, Consensus Decision-Making, and Meeting Management Skill
The write up below is an example of the kinds of "tools" that focus on the goal above, and it illustrates how all our "tools" are described to those who use them.
OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY
WHAT IT DOES
Open Space can help school communities achieve consensus on the ideas and strategies they want to employ. It is a great way to begin your school's strategic planning process or any planning or vision-making event where everyone's voice needs to be heard. It gives both adults and students the opportunity to come together around the ideas and strategies that will accelerate their school's transformation process. Open Space motivates school members to share the mental and emotional attributes they are passionate about. Applying this technology makes the transformation process more tangible and doable for the entire school community. For more information, call the PWSC at 617-524-6378.
HOW IT WORKS
A School Development Team or other school change group leads the process with guidance from PWSC School Change Coaches. If adults (school staff and parents) are doing open space, they should gather in a circle where they can see each other's faces. If there is not enough space to face each other, gather in a space where everyone can see and hear what is happening. If students are doing open space, it is best done in classroom circles where they can see each other's faces. In both cases, smaller spaces will be needed to house participants when they split up into discussion groups. Whether you are working with adults and/or students, the way Open Space Technology is implemented is fundamentally the same.
The process begins with Open Space Facilitators explaining how the Open Space process works. Then they present a question that focuses the participants on core school issues and goals. If Open Space is for adult participants, this might be the question, "If you had a magic wand that could give you anything you desired, what would you change in our school and why?" If Open Space is for students, the question might be, "What would make you want to come to school and want to stay in school?" The facilitators should present the question and lead a brief discussion to clarify the question. After the question has has been clarified, facilitators invite participants who have a topic and want to lead a discussion on it to announce their intention to do so. On a large paper they compose their topics along with time and place their discussion will take place. As participants present their topics, a marketplace of ideas is established giving each participant the task of deciding what topics they want to explore. If students are doing this activity, the teacher and PWSC School Coach may need to:
During the orientation, the Open Space Facilitators present the following directives that participant must follow.
- whenever it starts is the right time to start;
- whenever it ends it is the right time to end — when it's over, it's over; and
- whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
At a predetermined time, everyone comes back for the closing circle where each discussion group reports the highlights of their conversations. The Open Space Facilitators help school members identify which topics to address and why.
Copyright © 2008 Cooperative Artists Institute, all rights reserved.
Classroom teachers overcome their students’ speaking, reading, and writing challenges by using the arts and other expressive modalities to draw out feelings and insights students want to talk about, read about, and write about. For a project description, visit this web page, and see the photos below.
