Classroom Spotlight | Secondary Arts

by BIS / 2022.04.22 Friday / Published in NEWS, news & event

In BIS, we believe that art education is crucial to student development. Lots of scientific research show that arts are closely linked to almost everything that we want for our children: academic achievement, social and emotional development, civic engagement, and equitable opportunities.In our secondary school, Arts are delivered in subjects of both Visual Arts and Performing Arts. Our teachers from Visual Arts, Music and Drama department have shared their academic journey of this year.

Visual Arts

“When I started this unit, I did not expect the level of enthusiasm students took to the content. I knew many would be interested in making possible merchandise, but what the students took to more was the topic and how they were able to show inequality through their own perspectives. The level of creativity and fire they imbued in the creation their designs were pulled even higher with the incorporation of symbolism. From seemingly unordinary symbols that we all know and pass by in our daily lives, the students would transform them and modify them in new ways that completely changed audience perspectives.”

In Secondary Visual Arts at BIS, students have been introduced to the T-shirt design process with a focus on the topic of Social Inequality. In grades 7 and 8, students have the opportunity to analyze and reflect on aspects of their own life and world, think about what areas may be affected by inequality, explore why this inequality happens, who are be affected, and why the issue is important to them.

Music

“The harmonica is a tool, I could have easily taught rhythmic concepts with pencils and a broomstick. The creative process is the same. However, the harmonica provides a certain cultural connection.”

In Secondary Music at BIS, students have been introduced to the harmonica with a focus on Creative Thinking and Self-Management. From the start we have dedicated only ten minutes of each class to learn or improve a skill on the harmonica. Here, they can reflect on short time commitments, with consistency, can add to huge personal rewards. When we started, students may have taken a few class periods to learn to play a simple melody such as “Twinkle, Twinkle”. Now students are reading and playing some complicated music or creating their own music on the instrument. Students regularly revisit the simple melodies and can reflect on the journey they’ve taken to get to where they are and better understand the discipline it takes to achieve higher, faster, longer goals. Ten minutes per class to learn or improve a skill.

The harmonica is an instrument that can be researched and seen in popular music culture throughout the world. Students have found the harmonica in recordings of folk, blues, jazz, rock, rap, J-Pop, K-Pop, and the list goes on. Another connection students have made is that many recordings are of adults, not children or students at schools. Compared with the recorder-flute, recordings are rarely found in popular music or played outside of educational walls. Never has learning an instrument been so authentically interesting and accessible to all.

Drama

“The inspiration behind this course was to allow students to get a taste of the skills and traits they have spent the past two years developing, ultimately challenging them to keep growing in their skills to create something new, something that allowed them to communicate their own experiences with the Boston community and fan the interest they have in performance. As a teacher, I am grateful to be a part of a supportive academic community like Boston International School, where students and their passions come first and are given opportunities to try and fail upward in new ways before entering the international world.”

How do we, as teachers, create opportunities for our students to follow and develop their passions? How can students continue to grow as creative and innovative future global citizens? In 2021, Boston International School was faced with this very question. Students progressing from 7th grade Advanced Drama wanted to continue their performance-focused Drama education in their next academic year. Through consultation with the Academic Principal and Assistant Academic Principal, Boston’s Drama department was able to bring students’ interests and growing curiosity in film into the course catalogue for the 2021-2022 academic year with Advanced Drama Film Studies.

This is a course that guides students through a simulated film-making process, introducing the different careers that one could follow in film making. Students also put their theoretical learning into practice by working throughout the year to write, film, edit and produce their own short films as a class.

The first unit focused on script-writing, here students had the opportunity to take inspiration from any sources within their community and turn it into a dramatized script. Students were taught how to recognize and shape characters, develop story structure and were given a taste of what scriptwriting as a career would be like.

Thereafter, students begun analyzing camera shots and angles and the function of these. Now, the script that they had written throughout the first unit was beginning to take a more visual shape and students had the challenge of translating written words into camera shots. Paired with this, they were introduced into editing considerations and the collaboration and consideration that goes into planning a shooting schedule, facing challenges such as availability of locations, sharing space with other students on campus, light and weather conditions. Students were able to cast from within their class, so in tandem with writing, directing and producing; they also have the chance to continue with opportunities to be in front of the lens and develop their acting skills further into camera acting.

The final unit of our year will be focused on editing styles, marrying real footage with ideal shots in order to bring about the product in short film. Here, our students will be required to exercise both creative and critical thinking in making the tough decisions of which footage is relevant and helps to tell a story, and which footage will end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.