Window on the Work

Welcome to EFA's Window on the Work for the upcoming performance of The Okee Dokee Brothers!

The purpose of the Window on the Work is to provide educators and teaching artists with contextual information pertaining to the focus art works presented by the Education for the Arts' Aesthetic Education Program. This information can fuel the process between classroom teachers and teaching artists in the development of lesson plans by offering additional viewpoints (windows) into the work of art as well as connections to the broader arts world and existing school curriculum.

PLEASE NOTE: Videos provided are NOT intended to be shown to students before they see the show or shared in public spaces. These are included for teacher planning and research purposes only.

Question & Answer Discussion with the Okee Dokee Brothers

We collected questions for the Okee Dokee Brothers from our students and teachers. Click the yellow button to watch an entertaining video where Joe and Justin answer our questions:

Q & A Session

Podcast: Being Connected to Families is an Honor

There's No Business Like Podcast

Ep. 71 - The Okee Dokee Brothers: Being Connected to Families is an Honor

Before we kick-off this week’s interview the Pod Squad gives their opinion on camping, and the team congrats Josh on his appointment to the board of NAPAMA (https://www.napama.org/). The Okee Dokee Brothers join the podcast to be interviewed by their number one grownup fan, Katie Miller! They share how they started the group, their adventure albums, engaging with their fans to market their shows, turning down a GRAMMY nomination, and more.

Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing make up The GRAMMY Award winning group, The Okee Dokee Brothers (https://www.okeedokee.org/). Joe and Justin record and perform family music with a goal to inspire children and their parents to step outside and get creative.

Theme song is composed by Vic Davi.

This project is funded in part by Michigan Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Michigan Arts and Culture Council.

Our Commitment

Education for the Arts aligns with Kalamazoo RESA’s commitment to being an anti-bias and anti-racism (ABAR) service organization. We strive to embody our core values of collaboration, innovation, compassion, trustworthiness, and respect; principles woven into all of EFA’s work, as outlined below.

In pursuance of this goal, we are committed to personal and organizational growth. We also recognize that in the learning process, we will make mistakes. As a learning community, we invite our staff, partners, and community stakeholders to graciously hold us accountable to further our collective growth.

WORKS OF ART / REPERTOIRE

In an effort to provide rich and meaningful engagement with the arts for all K-12 students in Kalamazoo County, EFA purposefully seeks out and selects works of art for our annual repertoire that represent a broad range of human experiences across many different cultures with the belief that such engagement deepens students’ understanding of the world and fosters empathy and critical thinking.

TEACHING PEDAGOGY

EFA believes that a work of art is inseparable from the person(s) who created it. We therefore acknowledge that:

Works of art are created through a series of choices made by the artist(s) applying their craft;
Works of art are therefore deeply intertwined with the identities and experiences of the artist(s), coupled with the historical context in which the work of art was created.

We encourage our Teaching Artists and partnering educators to lean into conversations about culture, heritage, and history that can sometimes be challenging and uncomfortable. The process of dismantling oppressive structures.

AESTHETIC EDUCATION

The Aesthetic Education program:

aims to encourage students to think like the artist, to understand the creative process, and build empathy for others;
strives to design an educational experience that allows students to deeply connect with the work of art by thoughtfully studying contextual information;
encourages educators to be inquisitive and intentional learners as well.

In this light, we embolden and challenge AE teaching artists and classroom teachers to carefully construct lessons and activities in ways that embrace and honor important information surrounding the work of art and the artist.

Teaching artists and classroom teachers are not expected to be experts in the artists’ identities and context prior to exploring this work, nor are they expected to touch on all of the topics that may have influenced the artist. EFA is committed to supporting you in furthering your knowledge so that we can deepen student learning as they explore each work of art.

WE WILL SUPPORT YOU

The Window on the Work includes
- historical context that influenced the artists and the techniques used
- a list of books and other resources that could be used in the classroom
- a reading list that gives more information on a topic from an adult lens
EFA will seek out experts that hold deep knowledge in these subject areas that will be accessible to TAs at brainstorming session(s).

THIS WORK OF ART

As we study the work of the Okee Dokee Brothers, we have the opportunity and responsibility to include discussion of the following topics in age-appropriate ways:

Native American and Latin American cultures and art forms
The genocide of Native American peoples and the appropriation of their cultures
African-American influences on music
The African diaspora
The concept of Manifest Destiny and it's impact on native people and cultures