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Remember why you wanted to teach in the first place?

Educate the Imagination

June 9 -11, 2006
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Atlanta, GA

Education Pre-Conference Schedule

Friday June 9, 2006

9:00-10:30
The Big Story: Michael Meade
The Branches of Mentoring, the Roots of Elders offers orientation and training in the core ideas and purposes of mentoring. The word "mentor" refers to "lived knowledge." It comes from an old myth in which Mentor acts as guide and teacher using inspired ideas and a keen knowledge of survival.

The mentoring process involves passing on living skills and essential arts for surviving traumatic experiences and the challenges of contemporary life. Through The Branches of Mentoring, the Roots of Elders people can discover and clarify what they have to offer in the way of teaching, guiding and mentoring others.

Each mentoring situation depicts a story in which both mentor and youth find their own way and even exchange places on occasion. Mentoring involves stories longing to be heard and waiting to be told. For mentoring is the way the story of culture is fashioned, exchanged, learned and reinvented.

11:00-12:30
Workshops and Presentations
(Breakout Sessions)

Myth, Metaphor and Music: Heroic Adventures in Creative Writing
Sheri Kling, Rebecca Perkins

As part of Rebecca Perkins' English curriculum on the Hero Archetype, songwriter Sheri Kling presented an "Arts in Education" program that took students on an exploration of the role of the artist as interpreter of events, the power of metaphor to transform, and using the story pattern of the hero's journey to discover one's unique gifts. This collaboration between educator and artist resulted in an enhanced learning experience that inspired students to express their own creative gifts in new ways. Participants will learn the details of this collaboration and share their own ideas about how the marriage of myth, metaphor and the arts can inspire students to communicate through story to generate empathetic response in others.

The Power of Teaching Creatively
Anne Ostholthoff

This session will engage participants in a journey of discovering their own innate creativity and the relevance of this for the classroom. They will be exposed to research based strategies for successfully teaching national content standards to students in grades PreK-12. They will specifically become familiar with the power that teaching through creativity and the integration of the arts can have on the social and academic success of our children, as well as the unification of school faculty teams.

The Creating Pride Mission is to ignite creativity in others through artmaking. Through the ArtsNOW Teacher Development initiative, the focus is toward school communities, helping teachers to create engaging work for students so our children succeed socially and academically. Through the Student Corporate Art program, corporate executives are offered the opportunity to positively impact school communities and children's lives."

In 1992, founder Anne Ostholthoff created a painting with 161 students in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. When a student asked, "Miss Anne, are we having art next week?" Anne said, "Yes!" For over 14 years the ArtsNOW Action Model has met the needs of schools and teachers to gain confidence in their ability to teach creatively. Creating Pride moved to its current Atlanta base in 1998, and in 2004 began serving the entire Atlanta Public School System. Since then, 26 schools have begun to implement the ArtsNOW Action Model impacting 13,376 children and 1,043 teachers in Atlanta, Fulton, DeKalb, and Cobb counties. Creating Pride is now offering workshops and on-going support to schools across the State and beyond. See their website for information (www.creatingpride.org).

Creative Connecting Through Symbols
Jeanette Wachtman

Symbols are one of the ancient archetypal expressions of art. Today they are an integral part of modern life whether it is a road sign, a company logo, a sneaker image, or a plus symbol. After a brief introduction to geometry and its implications, participants (in a hands-on art activity) will integrate geometric symbols, color and music to present a cooperative aesthetic experience. These same geometric symbols will disclose clues about the participants' life paths. Using an introspective activity revealed images will be expressed on paper in pictures and words. Participants will receive a hand-out which includes the geometric lesson and additional pertinent information.

2:00-3:30
The Big Conversation: Initiation Into Metaphor Carolyn Dunn, Heinz Insu Fenkl, Maren Tonder Hansen, O.R. Melling, Robert Swan

First it is necessary to know the stories. Then, in adolescence the stories and the images in the stories begin to reveal how multi-dimensional they are. This is the secret of developing capacity for both intellectual and emotional intelligence. It is the opening beyond literalism and materialism, the twin demons in our culture, whose influence yields fanaticism, ignorance of possibility, and a hunger that cannot be satisfied. What are the antidotes? How to we initiate young people into a way of being that frees them from these cruel masters?

4:00-5:30

• Myth Into Life
  Nancy Gibson, Meade Palidofsky, Case Conflict Resolution Crew
  
  Explore the process of bringing myth into life. This interactive closing session is facilitated by a group of dynamic youth leaders who have worked all year to bring their "Myth into Life". It features a selection of youth-written performances, teambuilding activties and a chance to share your story. This workshop explores an experiential process where you can get up and move. Enjoy the show and working with young people who are willing to share who they are and what they do in an energetic, committed way.

Click here to register.

Look for the K - 12 discount.
Verification of employment will be required.

For more information, call Brenda Sutton at 404 832-4127 or info@mythicjourneys.org

Presenters — Schedule — Register — What is it? — Fact Sheet

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*** Register between April 1st & April 30th and receive a FREE DVD of
War, Peace and the American Imagination!***