What is Design Seminar?

I updated the left sidebar with CAPE's description of this program we're participating in, but I've also spent a good long while thinking about what the program means to me on a more personal level.

Full disclosure: I work for CAPE in another capacity- as a research assistant- and so I've been exposed to CAPE's language, ideas, and practices for longer than many of the other Design Seminar participants, and I'll be the first to admit that exposure, which has and continues to complement my academic and personal research in arts education, has me feeling so prepared and so excited to take on the additional role of "teaching artist".  Since last spring I've experienced a degree of jealousy toward the artists whose in-classroom work I've been observing and recording as a researcher, because the ideas and the projects they get to explore with their teaching partners and students are so interesting and innovative and worthwhile, and their impact can often be seen immediately, right there in the moment.  Also, I'm a big fan of collaborative work/art/play but I spent many, many months working in isolation on my thesis; seeing people similar to myself (and incredibly different!) getting to teach and learn the way teacher-artist pairs do made me genuinely pine for such a project and voila!  Such a project is in the works.

So within the boundaries of "such a project", I hope Stephanie and I will be able to work with each other and our students to develop and address Big Questions that have broad implications for all our lives starting right this moment.  I also hope we can model for our students what collaborative learning/teaching/making/doing/asking/exploring can look like, in ways they can understand and articulate.  On top of all that, it's been a long time since I was free to focus on my own art-making and I'm kind of out of practice... I hope to find fresh inspiration and motivation through working with a class full of young people and their very energetic teacher, Stephanie.