So Much More than Art
We attended Our Focus: The Child and Creciendo Juntos: Educadores, Niños y Familias Conference this past weekend sponsored by Las Positas College and Chabot College. 
I often present at conferences like these but it was our first time as vendors. We didn’t know what to expect and were just fabulously impressed with the great turn out, around 500 attendees. We were also impressed with the intent and breadth of the conference format. There were presentations in English, Spanish and Cantonese. And during lunch great dragons and flying skirts dancing and drumming!
During the keynote given by First 5’s Deputy Director Gloria Corral, we were nodding our heads and dreaming about sharing our Claiming Face curriculum as a tool to build cultural capacity in classrooms! We also connected with many great educators and students.
My presentation was filled to the maximum with Continue reading »
Filed under Conferences, Power of Reflection | Tags: CLAIMING FACE, conference, educators, presentations, reflection | Comment (0)Take Our Educator Survey
Perhaps you have read about our Claiming Face curriculum and educator packets on our main website? We’ve been working hard over these last few months to assemble it into a valuable resource for teachers who are interested in using creativity as a tool for empowerment in their classrooms.
As we develop these packets, we want to look to educators to ask what is helpful to you around creativity in the classroom. Do you value it? Do you feel confident bringing it into your classroom? Do you have the resources to support you? What would be the most supportive? We’ve assembled a short educator survey of 9 questions to find out. To thank you for your participation, you will be entered to win a 11×17 archival art print of your choice from our available art illustrations. We’ll choose random winners on January 1, 2010 so feel free to pass the survey link around to other educators. The more responses the more winners.
Help us develop our curriculum: take our educator survey>>>
About the Curriculum: Our Claiming Face curriculum uses reflection and creativity as a tool for self knowledge and empowerment. It is created by the artist, Maya Christina Gonzalez, through her years of working in numerous classrooms across the country. The goal is to instill an internal perspective first. We know ourselves most deeply from the inside. While reflection in our environment is vital to a sense of belonging and is part of a developmental process, the aim of our curriculum is to provide children with the form and skill to know themselves especially when those external reflections do not exist. Our curriculum is unique in that it is both artist-based and kid-tested. The exercises and perspectives have literally been used with hundreds and hundreds of children and adults throughout the years. Read more on our site.
Filed under General | Tags: creativity, educators, empowerment, reflection, survey | Comment (0)Invisible Families
When I was a child, they didn’t teach about my family in school. They didn’t talk about my family on television or in the movies and definitely not in books. At least not the books I ever came into contact with at my library or school. If my family was mentioned at all, it was to condemn, ridicule, or shame. Why? Because I have a gay father.
The messages I heard repeatedly from my childhood were loud and clear in everything I read, everywhere I looked, and everywhere I went. I must be the only one. My family must be something I’m supposed to hide – a difference not to be celebrated, but embarrassed and ashamed of. My family, and therefore I, must be less than, unwelcome, an outcast, deserving of the harsh treatment because otherwise someone would try to stop it, someone would talk about it, someone would tell me it was ok, right? These messages followed me throughout my middle school and high school years and into college. Never once did I meet another kid like me, never once did a teacher acknowledge families like mine existed, never once did I not feel fear that someone would find out my secret and tease and shame me for it. My family was invisible. I was invisible.
At the end of my junior year of college, after I had told maybe a handful of people my entire life about my family, I was sitting at a computer researching scholarships. When out of nowhere I found an organization called, COLAGE. An organization for children who have lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender parents! I couldn’t believe it! I wasn’t the only one, I wasn’t an outcast! I wasn’t supposed to be ashamed. No, in fact, I could be proud! Proud of Continue reading »
Filed under LGBTQI Families | Tags: acceptance, empowerment, family, lgbt, reflection | Comments (3)I Know the River Loves Me
When we see ourselves reflected in our environment, something happens within us. We are calmed, soothed, validated in a way that has no thoughts or words. An osmotic communication that we are, we belong. So fundamental that it goes without saying, it is about being, being here now.
In the classroom, I have had the privilege of working with what I call the “stressed out” kids. Many of whom not only don’t see themselves in the white faces in the books at school or in the library, but sometimes not even in the few brown faces that exist. Their experiences are complicated and layered. Beyond their childhood awareness, their lives are rooted in the basic power dynamics of our culture that relate to race and economics and how those dynamics often affect communities and families. They are children, so they are brave and resilient and have taught me a great deal. And they have reminded me of many of my own lessons as a child and much of what my father taught me.
When I was asked to write and not just illustrate children’s books I was immediately drawn to share what sustained me as a child. In my first book, My Colors, My World/ Mis Colores, Mi Mundo, I began the conversation of finding one’s self, one’s reflection in nature. My father didn’t have words for what he experienced in the United States as a child. When he was 5 years old he was placed in an all English speaking school when he spoke only Spanish. There were no bilingual books or teachers or parents. Only him. From his stories I sensed that although he didn’t find himself reflected in the dominant culture around him, it was through Continue reading »
Filed under Power of Reflection, The Creative Process | Tags: children, creativity, reflection | Comments (2)
