Arts teacher arranges virtual visits with virtuosos
For these Scarborough arts students, learning from home features virtual visits with virtuosos.
The online workshops came about after Alice Walter — who teaches English, drama and arts management at R.H. King Academy — spoke with the education manager at Tarragon Theatre about how disappointed everyone was about not being able to offer students the same opportunities as last semester.
In the fall, students went to the theatre, saw shows and their school hosted performers for sessions on topics such as songwriting. But after in-person classes were cut in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers brainstormed ideas about how to salvage those experiences for teens in the second semester.
“All of these things happen all the time. Every year, we try to do all of these enrichment opportunities,” said Walter, who is an assistant curriculum leader for the school in drama, dance and the specialist high skills major in arts and culture.
“We talked about how disappointing this is for the kids” after 75 students got to see Tarragon’s production of YAGA last fall, but shows were cancelled for this year’s students, she said.
But those talks led to newfangled lessons — virtual ones. Instead of seeing a show, students got the chance to virtually meet and talk to YAGA playwright/ director Kat Sandler and award-winning actor Seana McKenna.
Since then, teachers have arranged other Google meets — virtual meetings — with photographers, dancers, brand managers and even a Chanel visual merchandising executive from Australia.
“Artists are not doing the work they were doing before. They are trying to create content and a new space for themselves” but at the same time, they have more time so they can do more with students, said Walter, who has a small budget for speakers but said most don’t take a fee. Sandler and McKenna were up first, and students led the “interview,” with interviewing skills part of one of the units in their arts management class.
Each teen had to present a question “and they were very challenging and interesting — and saw Kat and Seana more than once say ‘let me think about that,’ ” Walter said. “It was so gratifying. The kids were complimented on their professionalism.”
They asked about the importance of an arts education, developing a personal creative identity through the arts and what Sandler thinks about when she’s writing.
“It upped the stakes for the class — it was a bit of an event,” Walter said. “All (students) had their cameras on. Often, I’m talking to a screen full of just circles with an initial in it. … They were up and prepared, which gave it that formality and excitement.”
The hour-long session also saw students talking about quarantine, and Tarragon’s Danielle Bourgon who talked about how it has “blindsided the arts community, losing that feeling of gathering that you have in theatre, that you have in school, and how important that immediacy is, how important that sharing is.”
Walter said the guests “who are video-visiting have been generous and flexible and the kids have benefited. Would these visits have been better in person? No question.”
However, she added, “many of them wouldn’t have happened.”
Grade 12 arts management student Shaheer Saif, said he was blown away when he saw YAGA last semester, especially by the small cast.
Saif, who is attending Ryerson this fall to pursue a fine arts degree in new media, was thrilled to help introduce the virtual workshop and the chance to speak to McKenna afterwards.
He asked her about the different roles she played in YAGA and told her that her acting “blew my mind.”
“I didn’t think they would meet with our class,” he added. “It was incredible. This was the perfect learning opportunity.”
The class “asked fantastic questions, and it got me to understand the experience and the time that it took to put together the play … We had the opportunity to ask questions and get behind the scenes and learn the mindset of these important characters.”