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Welcome!
Governors Institute for Arts Educators
Community of Learners 2
When
we were asked to describe our communities and also to create
interesting titles for these communities of learners, the
working title for this one was Resources and a Process
for Teaching About Historical and Cultural Contexts in the
Arts . This
title was rejected because it is too long. I wanted
something shorter, snappier and yet something that would
convey the essence of what the community is about and would
be doing. I realized that any topic of interest that is
riddled with jargon makes people feel dumb and therefore
intimidated. I
thought I might borrow from the world of commercial
publishing and title it "Embedding Standards for
Dummies". Coming up with titles is always a creative
challenge. I also considered calling it The complete
Idiots Guide to finding free resources. However I
rejected these two options They both only reflect part of
the communities thrust and I never did like the self-help
books with titles like that. They offend me. In a short
flash of irrational desire to be original I briefly
considered replacing "idiot" and "dummy" with "bonehead".
Historical and Cultural Contexts for Boneheads. Nope.
That too offends me. Perhaps
I might back up two generations of self-help titles. In 1936
Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and
Influence People and a plethora of "How To" titles
followed. Maybe I should give this community project a "How
to" title. "How to embed standard 9.2 into instruction
without losing production, exhibition or critical response
time".....rejected.....two long and awkward. Then
I began to wonder.... What
exactly is it that makes the current crop of self-help books
so successful? Two publishers, Hungry Minds inc. creator of
the Dummies books and Alpha Books which puts out the idiots
series, have crammed bookstore shelves with more than 1000
titles. Aside from a transparent attempt to be "edgy" with
their titles what are the style characteristics of these
publications? So I did a little 9.3. That's critical
analysis. Here's what I found. These
books have: I
wanted the results of this group to be a resource so that
people who are no longer in school can satisfy their
curiosity and instructional needs. I wanted the community to
offer something for the total novice and at the same time
provide something with some real meat in it for the person
with a genuine interest. People need to have their
continuing education on the fly. They don't have the leisure
time they used to so rather than sign up for another course
they need to be able to teach themselves. Then
I took another look at my own plans for community 2. Guess
what I found? But
i still don't like those terms The
words made simple and made easy came into vogue in the
sixties. I thought I might cash in on a whole range and
title the community "How to embed Historical and Cultural
Contexts into instruction without losing performance,
production or critical response time...Made easy...and made
simple...for Dummies...and idiots...and boneheads.Clearly
this is too long....too complicated...and the last three
phrases still offend me.As
you read the printed description which you should all do
before you sign up for a
community.
You will see that the present evolution of the title
is.Embedding historical and cultural contexts made easy.I
thought about shortening it to 9.2 made simple Perhaps I
should just call it 9.2.