• How did your team conceive your project? How was inquiry introduced to students and how did you integrate the inquiry process into your project?

I was so excited to work with Lucia! We had an instant connection and realized we had many similar interests. At our first PD meeting we were given time to meet in break out rooms and ask each other prompts about each other's careers. After finding similar themes in our responses we continued to pursue the idea of empowering our student's voice! We introduced "Empowering Every Artist Voice" by communicating in our first zoom session that we value their voices and that we truly believe they have important messages to share! Just because they are young, doesn't mean their voices shouldn't be heard!

• How did your team’s project change?

In the planning process we remained consistent to our project! I think we were able to remain on the same team project because each member (teachers and students) were passionate about what we were working towards.

• How did you integrate English Language Arts into your projects?

We integrated English Language Art into our projects using the following strategies:

-Journaling: Free writing to prompts

-Poetry: reading and writing poems to find our own voice

-Text Analysis: Text being artwork, videos, reflection prompts, and body language

• What did you learn about your students and how they learned? What did you learn about the way you teach?

I learned a lot from this wonderful experience! I learned that each person has their own personal preferences. In this group particularly there was a lot of diversity in preferences. Some preferred digital art while others preferred more hands on activities. Yet, despite the means of it, everyone was able to accomplish the same goal through differentiation. This was a reminder to me that differentiation is a best practice for EVERY student's success. My biggest take away from this experience is that every voice should be empowered and listened to! Although each voice isn't the same; some voices are louder than others while others are soft and thoughtful, they all are important and should continue to be acknowledged and valued.

• How did your team conceive your project? How was inquiry introduced to students and how did you integrate the inquiry process into your project?

We co-conceived (what an interesting way to put it... two "mothers" to birth this idea into a community of care!) the idea through mutual curiosity... Ms. Garcia has expertise in music (specifically Mariachi) and I was so keen to give an aural/audio integration to our "Big Question!"

Beyond that, we greatly resonated with a shared teaching philosophy based on truly caring about our students' voices and interests. We were grounded in respecting their innate wisdom!

• How did your team’s project change?

The biggest change, for me, was guided by what the students responded to. We were very careful and respectful to align with their genuine interests and capacities, even if that meant scrapping or re-thinking the original frame of a project. In other words, while the questions remained strong and true, their project-based incarnations were always open to change- I really appreciated Ms. Garcia's generous flexibility in that regard!

Another big change, for me, was, I think, conceptual framing- instead of having an "overarching final product" that we were building up to, each day was approached fresh, with an inquiry-based prompt and a series of experiments/ tools/ tutorials that we then used to respond to that provocation... even when the artwork appeared only tangential to the initial prompt, that was ok! Very "the journey is the destination."

• How did you integrate English Language Arts into your projects?

As "the artist" in this equation, I felt super supported by Ms. Garcia's expertise to let me know when we were hitting this organizational standard! We integrated writing as an organic way to organize thoughts in preparation for a drawing or before sharing our ideas verbally.

• What did you learn about your students and how they learned? What did you learn about the way you teach?

I learned about the balance between freedom and structure! I am super in favour of letting students lead ahead of me- but sometimes, they really liked me giving them a bit more structure.

Echoing Ms. Garcia- it was beautiful to learn about each student's personality and to crafts projects that worked for every learning style!