New York State Funding for Arts Education Partnerships - SAP

Westport Central School with Adirondack History Center Museum and Essex County Historical Society

The "Woman of the Past Moving Forward" program provided an exciting and contagious learning environment.  The template of Edna West Teale’s life provided opportunities to explore the hardships and capacities inherent in rural life from the late nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth century. Students in turn learned how to use the arts to engage the community in understanding of and dialog about Edna’s life events.

8th graders composed music about the oppression of dissonant voices after the teaching artist presented an acting workshop on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Traveling productions of the story were popular in post-Civil War America, but the initial intent and anti-slavery message was lost over time. Also, each 8th grader produced a primitive style painting of a modern activity such as a basketball game or a trip to the mall.

The sixth grade teacher helped bridge the theatre work that the kids loved with the need to have empathy with or “think like” Edna to create meaningful scrapbooks about world events such as WWI and II, invention, diseases and religious persecution.

Parents were invited to the Gallery Walk/Performance. The 8th grade chose the title of the evening - “Living Hard” - after discussing the infant mortality, poverty and day-to-day struggles that were part of Edna’s life. The fourth graders performed vignettes representing themes from Edna's life and times. Fifth graders performed a play, representing voices of the ancestors who settled here, adapted from stories from Adirondack tales written by Edna. Sixth graders showed their scrapbooks. Eighth graders their musical piece about oppression, accompanied by a depiction of a traveling production of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The collaboration between Westport Central School, the museum and Lindsay Pontius improves every year, and all of the goals of the residency were met both artistically and educationally.

The key learning that occurred during professional development and planning session was that we are all resources for one another. The team was impressed that the products that we envisioned in the planning session exceeded expectation. The most successful elements of the program are its flexibility and its ability to tailor itself to each grades/teachers needs.