One of my classes last semester was small enough that we could all take on a common issue. We chose to address the lack of community at the Academy. Many of the students in the class, and in the research conducted by the class, expressed a feeling of isolation within their major and a lack of social connection at the school and with peers.
We identified several challenges in creating opportunities for community, including the new class schedule, high percentage of commuter students, lack of school support for social events, and difficulty in communicating with the student body at large about things happening at the school.
The class came up with a brilliant idea to address these issues and to provide students with an active forum to discuss issues related to the school. They developed several online outlets to provide information and news about what's what at the Academy, and called the sum total of these sites "Behind the Canvas."
Again, there was a concern about how to keep this going after seniors involved in the project graduated and moved on, so we wrote up a proposal for a new student organization. At the beginning of this semester, the organization was approved, and the members are now collecting information and creating posts on their Facebook, Myspace, You Tube, and blogger sites.
The sites will officially launch as part of the Spring Arts Festival at the end of February. Behind the Canvas will also have an open "video confessional" during the event for students to come by and video tape their own messages to post on You Tube and link to the Behind the Canvas sites.
We hope you'll all take advantage of this opportunity to get connected and have your say.
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2 comments:
This is really exciting. The Art and Activism class is wonderful in itself in its ability to get the students involved and address issues that they have with the school, but this is above and beyond. I already see people writing notes about issues they have on facebook and I think it is a great idea to get it all in one place where something might actually be done about it! I hope everything goes smoothly and you all do very well. And I hope the Health and Safety Committee has as much luck!
Thanks, Heather! I hope you'll stop by the Behind the Canvas launch at the Spring Arts Festival. We're going to have a video confessional-style booth for students to record their comments about what they love/hate about school.
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