Strand Description
This strand is focused on how we leverage collaboration and creativity to grow as teacher leaders – particularly in times of uncertainty. We will explore various creative practices, examine the connection between creativity and learning (for both students and educators), and make things together. We will dig into the connections between imagination, equity, and justice and develop new practices for weaving more creativity and artistic play into our classrooms, schools, and daily lives. The two strand leaders are longtime friends and colleagues, and recently have been co-creating art as a reflective teaching practice. Neither of us have formal arts training, but long histories as crafters and makers. We have found this process of making things together, transformative, and we want to share it more broadly. There is no expectation that any strand participants have an artistic practice, just a willingness to collaborate and a curiosity about incorporating more creativity into their work/lives.
Strand Outcomes
Participants in this strand will develop an understanding of key concepts related to creativity and education. One of the outcomes will be some co-created pieces of “artwork”, however we will determine the process and nature of collaboration together. Each strand member will also leave with an action plan and/or personal framework for integrating more creativity into their own classroom practice or educational spaces where they operate.
Strand Leaders
Rebecca Buchanan | Associate Professor Curriculum Assessment and Instruction | University of Maine
Rebecca Buchanan (she/her) is an associate professor of curriculum, assessment and instruction, part of the School and Learning and Teaching at the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Buchanan studies teacher learning, broadly defined. She is interested in the intersection of personal identity, professional development, school reform, literacy and language. She employs qualitative methods and discourse analysis to investigate how teachers learn in and across multiple contexts by connecting their own personal and professional pasts with the present.
Margaret Clark | Associate Professor, Education | Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Margaret Clark (she/her) is an associate professor of Education at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Her research focuses on projects that nurture the healthy development of young children and provide support to the adults that care for and educate them. She examines how early childhood educators, and the care that they provide, is both visible and invisible in the current educational, political, and sociocultural environment. Her recent research focuses on how educators can engage in critical reflective practice and collaborative inquiry to support one another in what can be quite isolating work – both in homes and in school-based settings.
