Fairy Godmother Update
March 2009
This month the Claiming Our Voices girls program added another jewel to its crown with the addition of Jamuna Sirker. She is working with 5th and 6th grade girls at Undermountain Elementary School in Sheffield. Jamuna, a recent transplant from New Orleans, is a playwright, director and artist teacher with broad experience in the creative arts. A clinician and teacher for students of every age from elementary to the college level, her work has been performed Off Broadway and throughout the south.
At Undermountain Jamuna will offer techniques in yoga, creative movement, creative writing, and drama. These disciplines are brought together to give voice to stories relevant to the lives of these young girls and to help them embody their stories, power, and voice. She feels that this program is especially suited for building self-esteem, body awareness, and creativity. In the next few weeks you’ll be able to see and hear more about her work and that of our other artist teachers on the web site.
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Empowering Girls
Making Art , Songwriting, and Creating with Fiber
February 2009
Reid Middle School in Pittsfield is the site of a new program on Thursdays as Crispina begins teaching sewing skills to students there. Girls – and boys, too — work with fiber artists, tailors, designers and stylists learning skills that are both functional and creative.
Creativity starts with skills. As babies we learn language before we construct our own sentences. And as artists of our individual lives, we master certain skills before we make our own art.
This semester singer songwriter Vikki True and fiber artist Crispina Ffrench join COV visual artist Senta Reis leading 5 – 8th grade girls in the first steps toward their own creativity.
Senta continues her blend of yoga and visual art with 7th and 8th grade girls on Wednesdays after school at Monument Valley Middle School. And Vikki begins a songwriting block with girls in 5th and 6th grade in February.
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Expressive Opportunities and Interventions for Teen Girls
January 2009
As a result of funding cuts and the current national obsession with standardized testing, too many middle and secondary schools are increasingly teaching students to adopt others’ voices through memorization and rote learning. Practices such as “teaching to the test” can slip into a teacher’s repertoire as schools’ test scores are published and they receive report cards tying achievement to funding. Students may find their opinions requested less often when well meaning teachers struggle to crunch an expanded syllabus into a limited number of weeks. Real inquiry and interest in the individual necessarily declines. And while many boys will make their voices heard, no matter what, many of our girls pay the price for these short sighted and ill-considered educational adaptations.
Expressive and visual arts programs have seen dramatic cuts in recent years. The one-two punch of less class time for verbal discussion and fewer opportunities for creative expression leaves many young women ill prepared for the intricacies of a media saturated culture obsessively telling them who they should be and what they should think. Young women suffer from eating disorders in far greater numbers than their male peers as they strive to find some way to “perfect” themselves.
Claiming Our Voices believes that adolescent girls must be provided with opportunities to explore and discover their voices through a wide range of possible expressions. They should have a safe and supportive environment in which to encounter and move past barriers to self-assured expression, and mentors who exemplify courageous confident womanhood. Every opportunity a girl encounters to express her voice–to uncover little known aspects of herself, to skillfully speak her personal truth in challenging situations, to discover who she is and what she knows to be true about herself and the world–strengthens her self confidence and ability to voice her truth, even as she braves conflict and interpersonal discomfort in her conviction to remain authentic to her self.
GET A LIFE: Creative Immersion for Early Adolescent Girls
To that end, Claiming Our Voices initiated a pilot project in the fall of 2008 with younger healthy and at-risk adolescent girls in 7th and 8th grades. In the Get a Life program, girls are given the opportunity to participate in expressive activities mentored by adult women artists, writers, musicians, actresses, performers, dancers, and activists.
Weekly classes catalyze around the belief that the creative experience, the act of listening to and trusting one’s internal impulse in any avenue of expression, builds voice and confidence and mitigates against teen pregnancy and other self-defeating behaviors. Such a program encourages girls to recognize their innate capacity for creativity and self expression as they explore their potential in a safe, supportive and stimulating setting.
Classes meet during a 1 1/2 to 2 hour after-school time period, divided into a more active programming (creative movement or yoga), and a more quiet time of writing, poetry, song writing, or visual art. In the fall of 2008 girls were grouped by grade level, with mostly 7th and 8th graders working together. In the Spring of 2009 plans are for a continuation of that age group, as well as programming for 5th and 6th graders.
Classes fuse intuition — identifying and listening to the inner voice — and creativity, allowing a girl’s voice to find expression externally through various expressive mediums.
The curriculum we are developing is applicable to any expressive art form. Some questions implicitely explored during any session may include:
When do I hear, or have I heard, the voice inside me?
How do I recognize it?
How do I feel when I ignore/listen to my inner voice’s cues?
Does my body give me any clues?
Does it feel like a “hunch” or a “gut feeling” or do I “just know”?
What situations/settings/times are richest for hearing my inner voice?
Do I have different faces/voices I show the world — an outer one and an inner one?
When I’m upset, how can I let my voice speak in ways that make me feel better?
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REPORT FROM GET A LIFE
The results of the Claiming Our Voices Get a Life program after-school program for girls has received praise from the students, parents, instructors and hosting organizations.
Here’s a look at what the girls created:
Instructor, JoAnne Spies wrote of the Get a Life project with the young girls from Youth Alive in Pittsfield:
I picked up on the inside/outside theme Senta started with and am using it in different ways as sub-text for my classes. The gift box is a small gold-wrapped box with a ribbon around it. It signifies the ‘present’ moment.
I asked each girl to pass it around and imagine what was inside.
“You are the Gift in the present moment,” I said.In the second session again there was a litany of “I can’t! I’m dumb! This is ugly!” as they were drawing, etc. etc. and we’re looking/listening to this voice head-on.
They told me that when a Youth Alive dancer says, “I can’t”, she has to step out for 30 seconds and hold a pose. So we came up with anytime someone says “I can’t” or a variation thereof (and there are unending variations which we take time to identify) they would hold the present box for 5 seconds and say to themselves, “I am a gift.” There’s much laughter with this, they zip through 5 seconds and I hope they’ll connect the idea of breathing deeply with counting slowly.A couple of weeks later, I gave examples of poems with rhythm, Nikki Giovanni, hip hop, etc. They experimented with their poems using rhythm. Here are a couple of excerpts from their poems:
I want to invent a telescope,
you got to watch and learn
I want to see outside the galaxy.
- AlexisListen to your heart so you can go for a ride
Know and then you’ll realize you were the gift all along, yeah. *
- Cheyenne* There was an Aha! moment for Cheyenne when I praised her last line ‘you were the gift all along.’
She said, “But it’s something you said already.”
“You understood what I said and made it your own. You used it in a new way and others can see what you said.”Other gifts & realizations:
“Your drawings and your words are messages to yourself from yourself.”“We help each other hear and understand what we are saying when we are together.”
Cheyenne’s mother was there at the end of class when Cheyenne added rhythm to her words and said she had never seen Cheyenne speak out like that.
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Instructor, Senta Reis wrote:
We began our inside outside boxes, which will take a few weeks, I’m sure.
Three especially nice comments:
“Can’t we stay longer?”
“I wish we had more than 6 more weeks.”
And when I told them we (COV) could talk and explore possibilities for the Spring, Jamie asked,
“What about the Winter?!?”
How’s that for positive feedback?
Many, many thanks to everyone who helped make the Get a Life program possible. We are deeply grateful.
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An Invitation to FAIRY GODMOTHERS to join Claiming Our Voices and our Berkshire girls
October 10, 2008
Last May Claiming Our Voices held our annual Tea Party. Nearly forty powerful and passionate women met on a rainy spring Sunday afternoon to remember our early teen years and imagine a way to support young girls in meeting the challenges we faced, amped up yet further by today’s hazards. And many more said they’d like to be kept in the loop as we rolled out this fall’s programming for younger adolescent girls.
So… here we go! This autumn Senta Reis and Joanne Spies, both veteran teachers and consummate artists, initiated Get a Life – An Immersion in Creativity for Early Adolescent Girls. These pilot classes for 7th and 8th graders meet weekly through mid-November. Monument Valley Middle School is hosting Senta, and Joanne is working with the Women of Color Giving Circle and Youth Alive program in Pittsfield.
This fall these girls are moving, writing, drawing, dancing, painting, drumming, and telling their own stories in song. They’re developing the talents they know they possess, and surprising themselves with others as yet undiscovered. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall to share the excitement of discovery with them?
Throughout the coming school year we’ll test out our conviction that when girls are presented with a safe and supportive environment in which to become more comfortable with their own creative voice, no matter the medium or situation they find themselves in, they become more fully themselves… and consequently, happier, safer, and more confident young women.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the arts are the first “extras” to be cut when school budgets are tight or families must adapt to financial strain. And in the middle school years, girls who were strong and confident just months before begin to question everything about themselves. They more frequently defer to the boys in class, and start to equate their identity with how they look and how they’re perceived by others. As they lose their grounding they often become more vulnerable to negative influences, and may fall prey to risky behaviors that limit future success. It’s a slippery slope, and one that we at Claiming Our Voices are determined to help level.
These days most girls, like us, are busy every minute. And when there’s a free moment, it’s often gobbled up by vegging out in distractions. Time focused on who we are inside – our talents and yearnings – is sorely lacking.Claiming Our Voices came into being in order to help bring us all back to ourselves, and help us remember and rely upon the community of women and girls who are always there to support and nurture our becoming all that we were born to be.
As in the story of Cinderella, when her fairy godmother’s gift of the glass slipper transformed her life, I’d like to invite you to come along with the Get a Life girls on their newest adventure, to be their fairy godmothers as they dance into their creative lives.
Will you join me in committing to keep these girls in your daily thoughts, holding the highest vision for their futures? When you sign and return the enclosed commitment letter you’ll receive a small crystal. Hang it in a window where the sun’s refracting light will remind you every day to send these Berkshire girls, and girls everywhere, your love and support.
We’re also hoping that many of our fairy godmothers will spread their wings just a bit wider to support the programming and people who make this work a reality. Several Berkshire women have initiated a $5,000 one-to-one challenge grant toward our budget of $10,000 to help fund this fall’s programming and its further development in 2009.
Every dollar you give will double to benefit girls throughout the county and strengthen Claiming Our Voices’ ability to help young and adult women step into the creative glass slippers essential for their own fulfillment and happiness – and ultimately for the world’s transformation. With your support, we will be launching additional Get a Life classes for 5th and 6th graders in January, and working to open a North County location in the spring.
I hope you’ll unite with Senta, Joanne and me in helping to fit these girls with the creative glass slippers needed to walk them safely into their adolescence. When you join the Fairy Godmother Circle you’ll be invited to be more than a fly on the wall. You’ll play a real part in these girls’ lives. And you’ll be invited to come help them celebrate at the program’s finale in November. So please, step up and help us support and inspire our girls and each other to claim the authentic voices our world most needs to hear.