Champion Creatively...you build support for arts-infused education in your school community. Champion Creatively Alive Children Series ... page 4 Creativity ConneCts sChools with Families

Champion Creatively Alive Children®

FACilitAtor’s Guide

CreativityConneCts sChools with Families

Welcome to Champion Creatively Alive Children, a comprehensive training program designed to empower school leaders, teachers and communities with inspiration, knowledge and tools that can unleash the imagination and develop the originality of every child.

Crayola and the National Association of Elementary School Principals, in partnership with the National Art Education Association, have teamed up to help you champion creatively alive children. This flexible, customizable program will help you build support for arts-infused education in your school community.

Champion Creatively Alive Children SeriesCreativity Connects Us

Creativity Connects Schools with Familiesleveraging creative experiences to engage parents and caregivers

Creativity Connects the Worldusing the arts to build global awareness and understanding

the 4 Cs: 21st Century skills

Creativitydiscovering novel ways to think, learn and do

Critical Thinkingusing original ideas to solve problems

Communicationexpressing thoughts and feelings effectively

CollaborationWorking in partnership with others toward a common goal

arts-infused education advocacy

Championing the integration of the arts across the curriculum and school-wide

Free

Download

of all seven

Facilitator’s

Guides, videos,

PowerPoint®

Presentations

and handouts

The complete Champion Creatively Alive Children program is available at no cost to educators from Crayola and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

Crayola.com/CreativelyAlive

NAESP.org

page 2 Creativity ConneCts sChools with Families Champion Creatively Alive Children

Framing a Workshop or Presentation

ObjectivesAfter completing this workshop or presenta-tion, participants will:

• Be inspired to use creative experiences to deepen their under-standing of and oppor-tunities for family engagement.

• Know the 4 Cs of creative family engage-ment and plan how to use them within their learning community.

FACilitAtor’s Guide Creativity ConneCts sChools with Families page 3

Customize the Presentation

Sample Outline and Schedule for a 90-Minute Workshop*

10 minutes introductions and Warm-up exercise: Personal and Program Champions We remember

10 minutes Video and Brief discussion

10 minutes Hands-on exercise: Memory sketches

20 minutes Hands-on exercise: Visualizing a Child’s success in a Crystal Ball

10 minutes Hands-on exercise: “Help Me ... Help You”

20 minutes Group exercise: outside and inside the Box

10 minutes summarize Key Points and Plan Next steps

90 minutes * to modify for a shorter session, select the components that fit your schedule and needs.

4 Cs OF CrEATivE FAMily ENgAgEMENT

Champion• Educators and parents share the goals and responsibilities of helping each

child succeed.

• Adults serve as champions of children and advocates of arts programs.

• Educators and parents work together to expand opportunities for all children to reach their potential.

Conducive• Educators create an inspiring environment that fosters creative expression.

• School culture is a welcoming environment for family engagement.

Co-Educate• Educators and parents are partners in educating children.

• Educators help families make home–school connections and creative experiences for children.

Commitment• Educators are strongly committed to engaging families.

• Schools plan ways to sustain family engagement throughout the school year, with opportunities that fit various interests and lifestyles.

• Schools use the arts to engage families.


Delivering a Workshop or Presentationuse the PowerPoint presentation to support the workshop, intro-duce the exercises and discussion points, and keep the audience focused. the PowerPoint is a framework enriched by information you will share as the facilitator.

Introductions and Warm-Up Exercise start your session by introducing the objective of this workshop: to inspire educators to use creative experiences to deepen their under-standing of and opportunities for family engagement. Personalize this introduction so that it is relevant to your audience and shows your commitment to using the arts to engage families.

Warm-Up Exercise: ChampionPersonal and Program Champions We remember

use this personal memory exercise to get participants thinking about how children need champions to build their creative confidence—and how arts programs need champions to survive and grow.

• Ask participants to think of a person who served as their personal champion—someone who believed in them and helped them tap into their creative selves—or as a program champion—someone who advocated for arts programs that are critical to students’ success.

• Ask some guiding questions: Who helped you discover your creative capacity? Who made you feel as if nothing was beyond your reach? Who had high expectations of you and celebrated your originality? or, who stood up for a program that fosters students’ creativity and served as an advocate to make sure it survived or thrived?

• Have participants introduce themselves—in pairs, small groups or with the full group—and share the name of one person who served as a champion and touched their lives in a memorable way. Ask them to briefly describe how personal champions made them feel, what they did, or how they helped participants discover their cre-ative capabilities or nurture their talents. or have them share how a program champion advocated and built support for launching, sus-taining, expanding or saving a critical program.

Photo courtesy of Sunnyside Elementary School,

Minot, ND

Despite a devastating flood, which displaced almost 90 percent of sunnyside elementary school’s families from their homes, the Minot, ND, school went forward with plans to host monthly family nights—and used the arts to help families come together and heal. For a “Books and Blankies” night, families sat together making colorful, comforting fleece blankets, which they were encouraged to use at home for 20 minutes of required nightly reading. The school provided each student with their choice of two free books to rebuild or start home libraries.

FACilitAtor's Guide Creativity ConneCts sChools with Families page 5

Hands-On Exercise: ConduciveMemory Sketches

use this exercise to help participants consider the lasting impact of a creative or school experience and the importance of radiating a welcoming culture that is conducive to creative expression and family engagement.

• Ask participants to remember a per-sonal creative experience they had in school, either positive or negative, and think about how that experi-ence affects their creative confidence today. offer some examples: did someone make you feel your art-work or singing or playing a musical instrument or dancing was especially valuable? Were you recognized for a creative achievement or stellar per-formance? Were you rewarded with a leadership role? or did a teacher or another student make you feel embarrassed? did someone say, “We can’t hang that in the art gallery,” or “she can’t sing, move her to the back row”?

• Have participants use markers or colored pencils to create a visual rep-resentation showing what happened. it could be a quick storyboard, sketch or a symbol of the event (e.g., a performance stage, a hallway art gallery).

• Ask participants to share their sketches and stories with another workshop participant.

• Ask a few volunteers to share their experiences with the entire group.

• (optional) in the larger group, discuss the common themes about positive and negative memories. Facilitate this discussion with some guiding ques-tions from the PowerPoint.

Dispelling Mythsto get participants think-ing more deeply about parent engagement, use the PowerPoint to intro-duce some myths and realities that have been dispelled by research. if there is time, ask par-ticipants to generate their own myths and realities about parent engagement from their experiences.

Myth: Parents today are just too busy to get involved in schools.

reality: Parent–school relations have improved and parent involvement has increased over the past 25 years—but they remain a challenge for many schools.

Myth: supporting parent involvement is extra work that teachers just don’t have time to do.

reality: teachers in schools with high parent engagement have the highest job satisfaction.

Myth: Parent involvement is nice to have, but it doesn’t make a real differ-ence in student success.

reality: Parents in schools with high parent engagement are more likely to be optimistic that student achievement will get better in five years. they’re also more likely to agree that they work together with their child’s teachers to help their child succeed in school.

Source: The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Teachers, Parents and the Economy, March 2012

Video and Brief Discussionshow the Creativity Connects schools with Families video. Facilitate a brief discus-sion on how arts-infused education can increase family participation in schools. Ask for reactions and questions.


Hands-On Exercise: Co-Educatevisualizing a Child’s Success in a Crystal Ball

use this exercise to show that educators and parents share the same beliefs, aspirations and goals for children. this gives them common ground on which to build a relationship as co-educators who can work together to support student learning.

Ask half of the participants to take on the role of parents and the other half to take on the role of teachers, even though in their own lives they might be both. (Participants who are only parents or only teachers should take on that role.)

Dream. Ask each participant to think about a child they know well and imagine that child’s future. Prompt their thinking with some guiding questions:

• What are your hopes and aspirations for this child?

• What do you want this child to achieve? How will creativity help this child be successful?

• What would happiness and success look like? For example, would this child apply creativity as a performer on stage? An author writing a book? A scientist making a great discovery? An engineer designing an innovative technology? An entrepreneur running a business? A sports star? An environmentalist finding new water sources? A doctor helping others?

Create. Give each participant a clear plastic drinking cup, a clear plastic dessert plate, Crayola Model Magic® and Window Markers or Window Crayons. Ask them to use these materials to create a crystal ball that brings their ideas to life. First, have them envision the scene they want to show inside the crystal ball, viewing it as a window into the child’s future. Ask them to use the Model Magic to build characters and props on the plate that stand 3-d in the scene. then they can use Window Markers or Window Crayons to draw objects, words, symbols or icons on the plastic cup. Finally, they can place the cup over the scene, like a snow globe, to finish their crystal balls.

Share. Ask participants to find a partner, with those in the teacher role pairing with someone in the parent role. Have them discuss how their crystal balls illus-trate their dreams for the child they focused on. Ask them to discuss the similari-ties of their beliefs, aspirations and goals as teachers and parents.

As the facilitator, listen for patterns that emerge from these discussions. share some common themes with the full group. or, if you have a small group, ask each participant to share insights with the full group. Wrap up this exercise by noting that shared dreams for children can be a foundation for educators and parents to work as partners and co-educators.

Extending the Crystal Ball Exercisethis is a powerful exercise that can be extended in many ways. For example, you could suggest that participants:

• Share the crystal ball exercise with the child. Have the child create a crystal ball that captures his or her own vision of future success. then share the one you cre-ated and discuss your aspirations and goals to see how they are similar.

• Make the crystal ball exercise a classroom activity with students. use the crystal balls as visual reminders of chil-dren’s hopes, dreams and plans for their own lives. talk with children about what they need to do to realize their goals. revisit the crystal balls periodically to connect their ambitions to their progress—or find out if they have new aspirations for their future.

• Adapt this exercise to help students see how art impacts school success. this exercise works well in helping students see the impact the arts have on student engagement and academic achievement. Check out the Visions of our Future handout for some variations that will help your students become strong arts education advocates.


Hands-On Exercise “help me ... help you”

the crystal ball exercise sets up a deeper exploration of how educators and parents can work together more effectively as co-educators. use this exercise to help par-ticipants articulate the needs of both parents and educators. this exercise will gen-erate concrete ways they can help one another.

• Ask half of the participants to take on the role of parents and the other half to take on the role of teachers, even though in their own lives they might be both. (Participants who are only parents or only teachers should take on that role.)

• Have each participant fold a piece of paper in half vertically and, using colored pencils, label the left half “Help Me” and the right half “Help You.” on the “Help Me” side, ask participants in the teacher role to jot down the ways in which they feel they need help from parents, and ask those in the parent role to write what they think they need from teachers to help children succeed. on the “Help You” side, ask participants to write down what they believe they can offer to help those in the other role. As they construct their lists, encourage them to think of the 4 Cs of family engagement (Champion, Conducive, Co-educate, Commitment).

• Ask participants to share their lists in teacher–parent pairs. As the facilitator, listen for patterns in these discussions and share some highlights with the full group.

• (optional) if you have time, use the PowerPoint slides for this exercise to broaden the discussion with sample responses generated by other groups. these sample responses could be used either to spark their thinking before the exercise or to compare and contrast their responses with those of others.

Thanks to an adapted art class, nine students with multiple physical challenges at north side elementary school in Harrisburg, PA, changed the perceptions of other students, staff, family and community members about their creative capac-ity. The art teacher collabo-rated with aides, therapists and other teachers to adapt art projects to each stu-dent’s special needs. For one project, these students painted a stunning Aquar-ium Mural for the school entryway—and showed that students who had been defined by their differences, wheel chairs and lack of speech have as much artistic potential and ability as their peers. This project takes required family involvement in Individual Education Plans for students with disabilities to a new level.

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group Exercise: Commitment

Outside and inside the Box: Expanding the School Family Engagement Plan

use this exercise to help participants stretch their thinking about creative ways to engage families in schools and begin to plan to make it happen.

• start with a brief discussion about what a strong commitment to family engagement looks like. Ask participants to consider, “What is your school’s family engagement plan today? How could you deepen the partnership with parents by using the arts as a strategy for engagement?”

• use the PowerPoint to explain that, while there are many aspects to family engagement, this exercise will focus on four of them:

1. Communicating: Having effective communications from school to home and home to school about school programs and practices and student progress.

2. volunteering: Providing a wide range of volunteer opportunities for parents and other family members to offer their time and talents to the school.

3. Parenting and learning at home: Helping parents learn about child development broadly and for their child; involving families in creative experiences that inspire learning during school and beyond; and encouraging parents to enrich student learning by sharing their insights, knowledge and culture with educators.

4. Decision making: including parents in decisions on school-wide or classroom policies or programs that address their child’s specific needs.

• divide participants into small groups of about four to eight people. Give each group colored markers and a piece of flip chart paper, divided into quadrants, and copies of the Family engagement Plan template.

• Ask each group to think about and record what their school is doing now in each of the four aspects of family involvement. Have them record traditional activities “inside the box.” then have them brainstorm and generate bold, creative, “outside the box” ideas for the future—first individually, and then embellished and elaborated in their small groups—on the flip chart paper or handout. tell them to make sure all four quadrants are addressed.

• to move from a brainstorming session to an action plan, have each participant mark their favorite creative ideas using colorful markers. they could use a simple visual icon to communicate the ease or timeline of implementing an idea. For example, they could use a clock icon for easy, immediate ideas or a mountain icon for more difficult, longer-term ideas.

• in the larger group, have each group share their ideas. tally the ideas that get the highest number of “let’s do it now” and “big, audacious” ideas to find some consensus. if ideas build on an existing school activity, use a plus symbol to indicate support for a more robust version of current practice.

• (optional) if you have time, use the PowerPoint slides for this exercise to share some ways other schools are using the arts as a strategy to engage families.

• Wrap up this exercise by urging participants to use their brainstorming to develop a Family engagement Plan with their colleagues and parents, and to turn their ideas into action.

Outside the Box

DecisiOn Making

VOlunteering

Outside the Box

insiDe the BOx

learning at hOMe anD Parenting

cOMMunicating

Outside the Box

Outside the Box


“ Our project gave our students, teachers, families and community partners an opportunity to work together on a common theme across grade levels and curriculum areas, including visual arts, math, writing and science.”

—Justin Vernon, Principal,

Roger Clap Innovation School,

Dorchester, MA

Photos courtesy of Roger Clap Innovation School, Dorchester, MA

roger Clap innovation school in Dorchester, MA, engaged its students and school community in a Learning by Design project that integrated the arts, math and many other subjects. In collaboration with the Boston Society of Architects, the Dorchester Historical Society and other organizations, every student, from pre-school through fifth grade, took “learning walks” to study the architecture of their historic school building and neighbor-hood. They also studied the cityscapes and landscapes, comparing and contrast-ing paintings by artists Romare Bearden, Grant Wood and Faith Ringgold. They cre-ated their own cityscapes, landscapes and a culminating “Box City,” unveiled at a school-wide Arts Night celebration.


Summarize Key Points and Plan Next StepsKey Points• the 4 Cs of family engagement—Champion, Conducive, Co-educate and Com-

mitment—provide a structure for thinking about the roles and responsibilities of educators and parents in schools.

• Creative experiences can help break down real or perceived barriers, and inspire communication and collaboration, between educators and parents.

• the arts offer powerful ways for schools to connect with families and support student success.

Next Steps• invite participants to work together on an arts-infused Family engagement Plan.

• Begin by discussing objectives and tactics for accomplishing them.

• Assign tasks and deadlines.

• How will success be measured?

“ Parents become strong champions for arts programs and are some of the best advocates for arts-infused education when they see the impact the arts have on student learning. Engage parents in a variety of ways—as volunteers in school art expos and as key decision makers helping to influence the school board in seeing art as a priority.”

—Deborah Reeve, Executive Director,

National Art Education Association


Evaluateremember to distribute evaluation forms to collect feedback that will help you plan your next workshop.

Facilitator’s ToolsCreativity Connects schools with Families video

Creativity Connects schools with Families PowerPoint

Handouts for Printing or Photocopying• Visions of our Future (a lesson plan that helps students

become stronger arts advocates)

• Family engagement Plan template

• Creativity Connects schools with Families

• evaluation Form

Art SuppliesHelp participants explore family engagement in hands-on exercises with an assortment of art supplies. Choose color-ful, tactile supplies that make group activities memorable. try these Crayola products:

• Model Magic®, a unique modeling material that’s soft and pliable (approximately 1 oz. for each participant for the Crystal Ball exercise)

• Window Markers or Window Crayons

• Washable Markers

• Colored pencils

Find these supplies at an office supply store or retail store:

• Clear plastic cups

• Clear plastic dessert plates

• Flip chart paper

As an all-kindergarten school, mcilvaine early Childhood Center in Magnolia, DE, is focused on engaging families in the academic lives of their children and in the school community. The school has held monthly “parent parties” with hands-on activities, games and technology that provide practical ways to enhance academic experiences at home. Families leave each event with a take-home goodie bag filled with books, simple games, parent tips and manipulative materials—all connected to the curriculum.

Now, the school is integrating the arts into the parent parties, which draw parents and grandparents by the hundreds. Parents and students move from one “creation station” to another, working together on themed projects, such as colorful butterflies that support symmetry study in math and insect study in science, or painting “fabulous fruit” watercolors to encourage healthy eating choices. Creation stations proved popular with parents, who enjoyed the playful, creative time with their children and appreciated teachers’ helpful modeling of activities and conversations that get their kindergartners off to a good start.


About the Sponsorsthe Champion Creatively Alive Children program is a collaboration between Crayola and the National Association of elementary school Principals, with support from the National Art education Association and the Partnership for 21st Century skills.

http://www.crayola.com/

http://www.naesp.org/

http://www.arteducators.org/

http://www.p21.org/

Program Concept and development by Cheri sterman, director, education & Consumer relationships, Crayola

Writing and Design by Vockley•Lang

Photography except where noted by John Pinderhughes

Not for sale. Available for free at www.Crayola.com/creativelyalive

© 2012 Crayola llC. serpentine design® PowerPoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

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Champion Creatively...you build support for arts-infused education in your school community. Champion Creatively Alive Children Series ... page 4 Creativity ConneCts sChools with Families