Myself as a Collaborator

What a neat ice breaker! Today I started a course on collaborative learning in the PME (Professional Masters of Education) program from Queens University. Our professor asked us to create a digital artifact that represented us as collaborators; it was an open-ended assignment and we could 'answer' it in any way. Here's my artifact:

The center photo was a very silly selfie taken by the saxophone player on the left, just before a rehearsal. The photo on the far right was taken at one of our elementary feeder school concerts when I had gotten a grade 4 student from the audience to conduct one of our pieces. I love the expression on her face... 'I can't believe I'm doing this!' Continuing clockwise, the photo at the bottom right is of a dress rehearsal before the Christmas concert where I was encouraging students to 'feel the room' and make adjustments to their playing to counteract the differences in acoustics from our classroom.

Down the left side, starting at the top: the first photo is of my girls heading through the gates at Harvard on a band trip to Boston last year. The second in the column is a photo of my desk as I coordinated a live multitrack recording of students in my online AP Music Theory class. The third photo in the column is a shot of a shipment of music team sweaters just after they arrived - I love how spirit wear makes teens feel a part of something within the larger high school... they ask me to reorder every year! Finally, the last photo is of myself and my husband just before we performed at the annual benefit gala for the school along with four alumnae musicians from the program. I love the coming-together of that night... it's an annual reminder of the strength and ties of community that support any school (whether well-off or not).