Educational relics and other dusty things..(Space Camp)

This past Wednesday I was in Ottawa Kansas at the Ottawa Community Arts Council, digging through photo-albums in the basement. The edifice is an old Carnegie library that was taken over by the Ottawa community after the library moved downtown. It happened that I was to meet Ben Wilkoff here as he was in the area visiting relatives in the Osawatomie area which was flooded along with much of eastern Kansas. Ben was helping as I pulled out albums showing the events of many years past and we looked through them for relics.

The relics were pictures of the many (17) years of adventure camps I'd done with kids in the summers encompassing almost two decades. You see, back then a photo album was an archive and events lived in the moment and in memory and got re-animated when one ran across the albums. We've all done it, been cleaning or looking for an item when we find an old album and lose an hour, lost in nostalgia. This was however a mission and Ben and I were focused. As we piled up the dusty volumes I thought about exactly what we were doing. I wanted to collect the creative approaches to teaching that I had spent my young energy so gleefully doing and breathe new life into them. I knew that kids had loved these experiences, that parents had video taped and that a program had grown over the years luring helpers who'd come from the ranks of the giggling children who'd attended. There was magic here if I could find a spark and re-ignite the embers in these dusty albums.

The OCAC (Ottawa Community Arts Council) had been my first teaching gig while I was still in college as a drama major an I considered teaching an acting job. I prepared the script, the stage and the experience, then I did three shows a day for that first class. I figured that this was how teaching worked and the kids who came to class got lost in the drama with me, transforming into chinese painters, astronauts, vikings, knights of the square table etc. I taught art but what we did was imagine and play. When I got into my first (real) teaching job in Inman Kansas, I came to see teaching in a whole new way. There was must more structure and the schedule ruled the day. I taught art grades 1-12 and traveled back and forth between two buildings and two worlds. One world was younger, with scraped knees and recess duty while the other was serious with lockers and detention and clear delineation between things kids were taught. I was the art department. I wrote art department on the rules, scissors, glue and other props so as not to lose them to others needing similar supplies. What I didn't realize was that with the simple addition of the letter "F", all of my things could say fart department. High school kids had a sense of humor and they expressed it in sometime secret but always effective ways.

I taught all year in Inamn but in the spring would send a list of classes I wanted to teach in the summer to Ottawa with a list of supplies I would need. I could teach anything I wanted in Ottawa so my educational imagination was unfettered. The difference between the way I taught in public school and the way I taught in the summer and the attending enthusiasm of my learners in both locations became more and more pronounced as I continued my tenure in both places. I loved the classroom, my classroom. Over the years I grew my department and it's resources, one line item budget at a time until my jr. high/high school art class included; cast jewelry, darkroom photography, ceramics (four potters wheels) graphic design, oil painting, water color, pastel drawing, pencil and life drawing, commercial art, sculpture, cartooning, charicature, chinese sumi painting, printmaking, computer graphics, movie making etc. In short, I had the one-man program I had always dreamed of. I had well developed units and I knew kids were becoming accomplished at the various media they were being exposed to. I was proud of what I was doing at the secondary level. At the grade school it was a different story. These kids had art once a week for forty minutes and lessons had to start fast and finish faster or go on for weeks toward completion. We did everything from sculpture to printmaking but I considered myself the icecream man of education there. They loved art and didn't get it enough.

Each summer as I'd arrive in Otttawa and meet up with m crew of helpers (all volunteers who had grown out of of alongside the program) it was like jumping into a cold spring. Creative ideas emerged and the "anything's possible" atmosphere permeated everything. We had no budget, no administration, no system, just excited people ready to create an experience for kids that they wouldn't forget. The currency for summer camp was duct tape and over the years I'd bet we used a thousand miles of the stuff. I'd take topical themes like dinosaurs, space or science and turn them into themed classes where the kids made artifacts to take home but more importantly htese classes always ended in a culminating experiece that was worthy of video taping. The vikings pillaged, the mission to mars astronauts blasted off, as did the return to the moon kids. The knights of the square table got the slay a dragon, battle black knights and save a princess. What I saw over the years was kids who returned to be in the program from as far away as Florida and kids grew up and became helpers who were masters of cardboard and duct tape.

Each fall I would try to bring some of the summer magic back to my classroom but find that a public school had a difficult time embracing such free thinking. Making a big mess was frowned upon and open ended processes do not fit neatly into weekly lesson plans. I did some of it anyway, capitalizing on the magic of the event or experience to light fires in the young imaginations at the grade school. It was always too noisy, too messy, to random or just too fun to be a good citizen in an ordered environment.

The more I did this summer camp thing, the more I realized that creating events to be remembered, mental albums to be recalled was the way I wanted to teach. I was living two lives and wanting both to be the same. The brain research I was doing supported the "learning as an experience" model and I fought hard to keep my daily teaching from being routine. I wanted all of our learning to have a context, a connection to real life and a drame or problem to solve for a reason larger than " I'm here to teach you".

I did many space themed classes over the years and found that kids always enjoyed space adventures. They were a combination of art, science, acting and adventure that parents and kids loved and returned to year after year.

The raw materials I asked for and the OCAC staff diligently found, appropriated or borrow were kindling for imagination. Over the years, the KFC bucket became a trusted friend, a place to house young minds living in the moment. We were recyclers on a grand scale, making everything from found object, due to our budgetary challenges.

As the kids designed helmets from the buckets, oxygen cannisters from the pop bottles, they imagined the space ship they would build to take them to Mars. We studied books and pictures about space travel as well as Mars. By Friday we would be ready for the mission.

The local grocery provided us with big boxes, once holding watermelons, (another great summer phenomenon) which through kid's imaginations became living quarters for the mission. Kids in small groups designed thier own pods with life support systems, scientific tools and comforts for the long journey.

The local hospital gave us blue paper/cloth material (the kid that sits atop an incision while they operate on you) which became the stuff our flight suits were made of.

Take one plastic cup, one one litre bottle, a few lids and some clay and you've got the makings for some of the artifacts we made.

The environments we created were attached together and we often added inflatable ones to allow for greenhouses to grow our vegetables. (Can anyone say teachable moments.) An old umbrella became our retractable antenna.

Through the generosity of local furniture stores, large cardboard was derived and it became the material we used to construct the space shuttle "Artemus"

There is something magic about being inside of your own creation. The environments we created provided separation between the world outside and the world of imagination inside.

As the helmets reached completion, it was time to paint them. I used walmart paint (cheap) and kids chose color schemes. They would add final details and decorations.

Some of the hemlets became quite elaborate and terms like "life support", "onboard controls" and computer scanning system entered the daily vocabulary.

While the plastic bottles served as oxygen cannisters, their bottoms made fine respirators and the sides worked great as face sheilds.

After paint, the kids added glow paint details, sticky vinyl (donated by the sign company and some even added wear so that the helmets looked used.

As Thursday rolled around the workshop looked like Santa's on Christmas eve, eve. We had to finish in time for the Friday Mission. Science, NASA and the world was counting on us!

When we boarded the shuttle there was excitement in the air. Parents served as aliens and mission control folks as tapes rolled and memories we made. Kids loved this adventure and learned about space, art, science and how to co=exist in cramped space. When I think of all of the possible curriculum extensions, I am amazed by what learning can happen when kids have a fun or engaging context in which to learn.