CAPE After School 2020-2021: Sonja Moser / Olga Nuñez-Johnson

Our approach to online teaching

With kids in front of screens all day, we were sensitive to the likelihood of burnout. We wanted kids to be able to talk more, share more, interact more and move more than they might be doing in their other online "spaces." We were lucky to have a relatively small group of 8-10 students, many of whom had known each other or had been in our drama class before. This feeling of familiarity turned almost into a feeling of family by the end of the school year, as we allowed, then encouraged, students to speak about their lives with one another. We also wanted to cultivate a space to have fun to counterbalance the weight of the times, any difficulties families might be having, and the isolation of remaining at home. We adapted many of our in-person games to the virtual format, used online platforms to provide other movement theatre activities, and instituted class dance parties - all of which revolved around student choice (they chose which game to play, which exercise activity to do, which songs to listen to). We also cultivated a worry-free attendance culture, meaning that there was never any shame in missing class. We focused our energies on making our space an enjoyable place to be in order to draw kids into attending (which was largely successful until students started returning to school in larger numbers after spring break, at which point everyone's schedule just got wonky and other in-person activities started to become a bigger draw). For more background on our reasoning behind these choices, please see this CAPE essay written in response to our summer 2020 virtual camp teaching experience: https://capechicago.org/blog/if-the-coronavirus-was-a-person/

How did cultural capital play a part in our class?

Starting out as we did thinking about different cultures around the world, we engaged students almost immediately in sharing about their diverse cultural backgrounds, and we returned to this diversity with every conversation we had about festivals, traditions and celebrations throughout the year. How did the students with Romanian heritage, or Argentinian roots, or who were African American or Midwestern observe various holidays or events in the year? And how did we as Chicagoans intersect with the festivals and events that were common to us as fellow city-dwellers, even if these were not a part of our cultural heritage (like St. Patrick's Day or Chinese New Year)? And what were our individual family cultures around these events, or occasions such as the celebration of birthdays, or the coming of spring, summer, fall or winter? These conversations were such a large part of class, you could almost say the intersectionality of their cultures was the curriculum. Students became increasingly grounded in - and experienced the value of  - this diversity, feeling how truly BORING it would be if we were all the same!

Because we also shared out substantially on the small events of our daily lives, the class quickly became a place to celebrate our individual interests, hobbies and skills as artists and makers, An ongoing conversation developed amongst the students about their various art making activities and pursuits - painting, fashion design, youtube videography - and their entrepreneurial plans for the future, Their sense of themselves as activated artists and makers was strengthened.

Finally, students also came to understand that we, as students of Waters, of CAPE, and of drama, had created a distinct and powerful culture. We cared about one another and listened to one another and provided each other a place to come and be recognized and seen and heard. We were upbeat, looked on the positive side, were creative, and had a lot of fun. We had a great community, and more people should join us!