Professional Development Academies in Education

Professional Development Programs in Information Studies

UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies is home to two departments. Each is a leader in their field, helping to pioneer what's next in the Education and Information worlds.

UCLA Ed&IS faculty are at the forefront of their fields, addressing issues of equality, access and social justice in the fields of education and information. Their scholarship has an international reputation for excellence and commitment to addressing the most critical issues facing our society.

An ecosystem of K-12 teaching schools where UCLA partners to develop, study, share, and advance innovative best practices.

The work at UCLA Ed&IS is guided by the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve. Learn more about our mission and values, our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our faculty and students, our history and more.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are defining features of UCLA Ed&IS and we embrace them as a source of strength.

Department of Education 2023 Information Sessions

Department of Information Studies Programs

Department of Information Studies 2023 Information Sessions

Learn more about the undergraduate and graduate academic programs we offer, when program information sessions are being offered and how to apply.

Professional Development 
Academies in Education

UCLA WSLA emphasizes women helping other women to build their leadership capacity and expand leadership roles for women in K-12 organizations.

UCLA Women’s School Leadership Academy*

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE University Women's Leadership Academy

UCLA University Women’s Leadership Academy for Mid-Career Professionals*

The Academy for Excellence in Medical Education is a partnership between the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM) and the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies. Our mission is to promote excellence in the field of medical education.

Academy for Excellence in Medical Education

Coaches Supporting Coaches.
A leadership program centered around equity, relationships, and supporting the personal and professional growth of others.

Professional Leadership and Coaching Academy

An innovative program designed to help participants tackle critical issues currently facing California Community Colleges.

UCLA Women’s Community College Leadership Academy

Learn More About Our Faculty and Research Centers

UCLA has been a leader in the study of education practice and policy since its inception at the turn of the 20th century. Faculty members in the Department of Education not only conduct research at the forefront of their respective fields, but are also deeply committed to teaching and the preparation of future researchers, policy analysts, teachers, and administrators. 

A distinguished faculty committed to research and teaching and excellent research centers and institutes offer extraordinary opportunities for student endeavors. At the heart of the department is a commitment to diversity, pluralism, and social justice.

About the UCLA Department of Education

Professional Development Academies

The UCLA School of Education & Information Studies held its commencement exercises on June 15 in the Los Angeles Tennis Center on the UCLA campus. Wasserman Dean Christina Christie led the celebration of the Class of 2024, acknowledging its numerous members who are the first in their families to earn a college degree and greeted their guests, who may have been visiting the University for the first time. The Mariachi Band of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts at Alexander Hamilton High School entertained the audience preceding the ceremony. Cicely Latasha Harlins Bingener, a candidate for the Ph.D. in Urban Schooling, and Taylor Meeks, a candidate for the B.A. in Education and Social Transformation, represented the graduating class with their remarks.

The presentation of candidates and hooding ceremony were presided over by Professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, chair, UCLA Department of Education, and Professor Todd Franke, interim chair, UCLA Department of Information Studies. Jasmin Platon, a candidate for the master’s degree in library and information studies, concluded the ceremony with a performance of the UCLA alma mater, “Hail to the Hills of Westwood.”

“It is a profound honor to welcome you here today,” said Dean Christie. “As an Ed&IS alum, once lecturer, faculty member and now dean, I know well our deep commitment to social activism. We are intentional in our actions to bring about social, political, economic, and environmental change through various forms of advocacy, including research, teaching, community engagement, and protest, to address issues of inequality and justice and oppression, working toward a more equitable and just world.”

Forty-six PhDs were recognized from the Departments of Education and Information Studies, and 212 master’s candidates represented UCLA’s Teacher Education Program, Principal Leadership Institute, Transformative Coaching and Leadership, Student Affairs, and Education programs. Seventy-two MLIS degrees were awarded to graduates in the Department of Information Studies, and 115 UCLA undergrads from a variety of disciplines were honored for their work in the Education Studies Minor program. In addition, 90 undergraduates were awarded their bachelor of arts degree in the Education and Social Transformation Major program, and six were recognized for their work in the Information and Media Literacy Minor program.

Christie acknowledged the absence of students and faculty who were not in attendance.

“As an act of protest, some of our community have chosen not to attend today, and some have not been permitted to be here,” she said. “But all of our distinguished students and faculty - inside and outside of our stadium - are honored in this ceremony for their remarkable work as scholars and practitioners in subjects that serve as the foundation of our democracy: education and information studies.”

Dean Christie underscored the importance of not only the skills and knowledge gained by the graduates, but of the personal experiences and connections that benefitted their time in SEIS.

“Graduates, as we celebrate your extraordinary achievements, I ask that you take a moment to reflect on your journey as progressive scholars and practitioners, not just in your development of knowledge and expertise but also in the deep, meaningful relationships you cultivated while pursuing your degree at UCLA,” she said. “In education and information studies, we are entrusted with significant responsibility to promote democracy, justice, access, and equity; to teach and learn; bridge gaps; connect ideas; and unite people.

“This work requires a creativity that is deeply rooted in your ability to understand, empathize, and collaborate with others,” Christie said. “It is through our relationships that we discover the context of the information we manage. Through our interactions, we learn the educational experiences to meet the diverse needs of each learner. Every data point analyzed or lesson developed is a human element, an opportunity to impact a life, a community, and dare I say, the world.”

Christie noted the complexities of the world that the graduates are entering, and emphasized that, “In such times, the art of listening – truly listening – to diverse voices is not just valuable, it’s vital. It is easy to stay comfortable within the confines of familiarity, to engage with those who share our views. Why is this important? Because in the stridency of an increasingly divided world, engaging the conflicting viewpoints with empathy and openness is revolutionary.

“Listening to others does not mean you must agree with everything that you hear,” she said. “Rather, it means understanding the underlying emotions and experiences that shape differing perspectives. Let us consider compassion and kindness not just as virtues but as practical approaches to dialogue. Imagine the power of embracing these practices in your future endeavors. Whether in a library, classroom, boardroom, community meeting, or online forum, challenge yourself to listen actively. In doing so you will likely find that more often than not, everyone has something of value to contribute. It is the basis for inclusive dialogue and decision making [and] allows us to navigate the complexities of today’s world with a balanced, informed approach.”

Dean Christie pointed out how the graduates, “… are uniquely positioned to influence how societies, communities, and individuals learn, interact, and evolve.”

“Let your legacy be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you understand, how you relate, and how you enrich the conversations in which you are engaged,” she told the Class of 2024. “As you move forward, remember that each of you has the power to influence the discourse in your fields and in our communities. Use that power wisely. Your role as agents of change is not just to partake in conversations, but to change their nature, making them kinder, more compassionate, and more inclusive.

“This is how you will lead with strength and heart,” said Christie. “You stand on the precipice of a new chapter, with well-developed tools to influence and innovate. I am excited to see the paths you will pave and the changes you will facilitate and inspire. Congratulations on reaching this milestone. Here is to your journey ahead – may it be brave, may it be bold, and above all, may it be humane.”

Meeks addressed her fellow graduates, encouraging them to look back at the beginning of their time at UCLA SEIS, and to recognize how far they have come.

“For me, I’ll always think about how I was a shy and extremely quiet girl, who was literally crying to her parents, begging them not to leave her in this new place when I first got to Los Angeles,” recalled Meeks. “And now, I want you to think about yourself and how you are now. I want you to celebrate the great achievements, both academic and non-academic, you’ve accomplished to get to where you are today.

“As we say goodbye to our time in the School of Education and Information Studies, it is important for us to recognize the invaluable skills the school has given us. From learning how to use our education… for action in our community, to being able to help others achieve their dream, one overarching theme reigns supreme: generosity. The School of Education and Information Studies has allowed us to be generous with our time, our knowledge, and our resources to help the world around us gain access to a better life.”

Meeks described explaining her major to others, and her realization that her degree stands for more than preparation for a teaching career.

“The first thing[s] I get asked when I tell people that I’m majoring in Education and Social Transformation at UCLA is, how do you define the term social transformation; if I want to work with children or if I feel prepared to be a teacher,” she said. “My answer to that is simple. The coursework and life experiences in the past few years have prepared me to be far more than just an educator. By no means am I saying that being an educator is a simple feat, but our growth as individuals starting with our time at UCLA is something that I feel we should celebrate today.

“Although we persevered through the countless readings, discussion, and wide variety of educational issues that have brought us to where we are today, it is important to remember the “why” that brought us here in the first place,” Meeks said. “Some of us may have realized how much our ideas have changed or been refined into what we think about concerning our world today. Many of us have expanded on this initial feeling that we want to be changemakers for a better future within our communities, while others may have felt the call to serve elsewhere from where they initially intended, whether that be geographically or changing careers to best pursue how they want to foster social transformation. I feel prepared to set foot into the world, with confidence and power that came along with the growth [and] hard work that I’ve endured to get to where I am today. Each one of us has got an individualized story of how we got to where we are, and I’m so happy to see it celebrated through this graduation today.”

Bingener is a double Bruin (’97, M.Ed.) with her teaching credential from the UCLA Teacher Education Program (TEP). The Inglewood kindergarten teacher shared her experiences, including marriage to a fellow Bruin and raising four children - one of whom now attends UCLA – and of earning her Ph.D. as a non-traditional grad student at the age of 50, the first in her family to achieve an advanced degree.

“I’m a little grayer, a little less tech savvy, a lot more hot flashy,” Bingener quipped.

In her remarks, Bingener recounted the lessons she learns regularly from her young students, and exhorted her fellow graduates to realize that they are “extra.”

“If you have ever spent time with a four or five-year-old, you know that extra is just who they are,” she said. “Their natural passions, their enthusiasms have not been corked by the weight of time and experience. When they’re happy, they’re extra happy! And when they are sad, they are extra sad. They are extra honest, too. They are extra loving, and pretty often, they’re extra loud. But their unapologetic boldness reminds me daily that none of us was born to play small, nor mute our thoughts or words or our actions as if we do not matter.

“They are also some of the best teachers,” said Bingener. “My careful observation is that young ones move on purpose and [with] purpose. They are unencumbered by doubting themselves and they have unwavering faith in others. They’re not paralyzed by their need for perfection. They collaborate, they create, they innovate in a climate of impressive mutual trust, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

Bingener highlighted the graduates’ aims in coming to UCLA, “…to do something extra: to learn more, research more, transform more, support more, explain more, grow more, lead more, be more. Our pursuits have taken us through pandemics, protests, and no doubt, a host of personal triumphs and maybe even some tragedies to bring us to this exact time and place. And that sounds pretty extra to me.

“Today, we are embracing the joy of one phase of completion and anticipating the wonders that yet lie ahead,” she said. “Don’t give in to fear. Wonder what is possible when we enjoin our imaginations in inquiry and action; when we insist that impossible is only a temporary condition. When you arrive at the next destination, I invite you to tap into your four- or five-year-old self and embrace your extra. Ditch the doubt. Trade up for trust. Put on your purpose and then, partner with others. Lean into and lead with love. Declare to yourself and everyone, ‘I’m educated and I’m extra!’ Congratulations, Class of ’24. Extra is who we are.”

For more of the SEIS Class of 2024, visit Instagram. 

Congratulatory remarks by Wasserman Dean Christina Christie and student speakers highlight resilience, achievement and opportunity.

UCLA Ed&IS Class of 2024 Celebrates Commencement

While thousands of students from across the nation presented their work for the first time at this year’s annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), it is unlikely that any of them were as new to academia than a group of 13 fifth graders from the Oakland Academy of Knowledge (OAK). Led by UCLA alumnus Laurence Tan (’02, M.A., Teacher Education Program), a fifth-grade teacher at OAK, and Jeff M.R. Duncan-Andrade, professor of Latina/o Studies and Race and Resistance at San Francisco State University, the students shared their findings on “Researching the Reparations in Schools: Urban Youth as Researchers of School Quality,” in an AERA Presidential Session on April 12.

The focus of the students’ presentation was an examination of school equity, in particular, the Black Reparations Initiative implemented by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in 2021, and how it has impacted OAK, the last predominantly Black elementary school in East Oakland. In preparing the students for their presentation, Tan employed a youth participatory action research project model (YPAR) and raised funds to bring the group to the conference in Philadelphia through a GoFundMe campaign. His efforts caught the attention of Oakland’s KTVU-FOX, and the station boosted contributions with an online articleand later, interviewed Tan and his students in-studio after they returned from AERA.

The students spent weeks on their research, which included reading Duncan-Andrade’s book, “Equality or Equity: Toward a Model of Community-Responsive Education,” and interviewing renowned scholars on what educational research says would make schools more equitable. In addition, they interviewed 100 community stakeholders, including students, school staff, and families, for their study.

Among the experts that Tan connected with his students were Tyrone Howard, 2023-2024 AERA president and UCLA professor of education; Gloria Ladson-Billings, the first Black woman to be tenured as a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's School of Education; and Pedro Noguera, dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. These scholars were featured in the video that the OAK students shared at AERA.

The students’ findings showed that only one other school district in California has passed such an initiative to address educational inequity for Black students, and that only 7% of U.S. teachers are Black, with 2% of them Black men. The study also revealed that although OUSD provided funding for the Black Reparations Initiative, the extent of the effort has been for select schools in the district to hire teacher on special assignment to support Black students. OAK was one of the schools selected, but to date, has not filled that position.

“As Black people, we have not actually experienced any real change in our lives,” stated the OAK students in their presentation. “We appreciate that our district acknowledges their failure to support our community, but it also feels insulting to have them own up to their failures, say they’re committed to doing something about it, and then leave us with nothing more than a piece of paper with false promises.

“Because we know something different is possible, we often wonder if the education system is even serious about giving us what we need and deserve. It seems to us that this is a will and a skill issue. Without the will, our school will never full adopt the skill. We choose to do all this work with our research because we want that to change.”

A scholar of culturally responsive teaching, Tan was a co-founder of the Roses in Concrete Charter School in Oakland, part of a small group that designed and planned the school. He also previously taught at 122ndStreet Elementary School in Los Angeles, and founded the Watts Youth Collective.

Currently, Tan also works with OUSD as a consultant with the district’s equity department on creating and implementing a 3rd grade ethnic studies curriculum pilot and serves as an adjunct in the school of education at the University of San Francisco and at Santa Clara University, teaching a course in urban education.

Tan earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry/cell biology and sociology, with a minor in ethnic studies, music and teacher education at UC San Diego.

UCLA TEP alumnus Laurence Tan (standing) prepared fifth graders from Oakland Academy of Knowledge to present their research at AERA in April. The students conducted a research project around a Black reparations initiative in Oakland Unified School District and its impacts on their school. 

How did you introduce the idea of college-level research to fifth graders?

Laurence Tan: In my second year of teaching, I was asked to participate in John Rogers and Ernest Morrell's summer seminar series, a six-week intensive where they take students from the more marginalized high schools [in LAUSD], and we would do youth participatory action research projects [for] at UCLA. That introduced me to the YPAR process. That was very powerful for me. It expanded what was possible in teaching and how to make things more meaningful. Every summer, not only did I come back and become a facilitator of a research group, I was bent on bringing some of my former [5th grade] students - I had them participate and help run and facilitate the groups.

After that, I thought, “Well, if they can do this in high school, I can make this doable in the fifth grade.” So, in my second or third year of teaching, back in 2004 or 2005, I had my fifth- graders do a YPAR project, and we presented it at UCLA. I always had a sprinkling of middle school, high school, and maybe a couple of elementary [students], so there was this natural mentoring pipeline. High schoolers could help the middle schoolers and middle schoolers could help the elementary [students], so it wasn’t necessarily all adult-driven.

How did you prepare your own fifth graders to present scholarly research at AERA?

Tan: Teachers have to face the constraints of schedule and time, and everyone’s scripted program has priority over everything else. I used my reading group… [students who] could already decode and read words, but that didn’t make them on grade level.

I took struggling readers, and they flourished. Was it easy? No. Were they able to do it? Obviously, not at a graduate student level, but they were able to take this complex text, understand the main ideas, make connections, and make their critiques and analysis. There is something to say about meaning and engagement. Just because they’re struggling, it doesn’t mean you [can’t] engage students in meaningful work and still tackle those literacy skills.

Some of the folks that came with us [to AERA] to support were my actual students back in L.A. [They were] able to say, “Hey, this is what we went through,” and [my fifth graders] were excited to do something outside of the box.

I often challenge the students: “Hey, this is something that is usually reserved for college folks, what do you think?” We’ve tackled Paulo Freire, the second chapter of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Every time I introduce something that’s going to be far into their future [as students], they dig it. They’re like, “Yes, challenge me. Let me see what this is.”

How did your education at UCLA prepare you to give your students college-level experiences, as well as connect them with the nation’s top education scholars and experts?

The biggest thing I can say for UCLA has been the networking and the connections and the support. What drew me to the program was the social justice piece, that was number one. Number two was that there are a lot of solid faculty and folks. A lot of doors have been opened to me because of the people I’ve been able to build with at UCLA. That’s how I met Ernest Morrell, John Rogers, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Tyrone Howard. Tyrone has been in my corner almost from the beginning, for the last 15 years, into my teaching and starting to [present at] AERA. He has always been enticing me to come to the academy. 

The work I’ve done has not gone unnoticed [by] people I would cite all the time. Last year, I got hit up by a couple of people in AERA. I’m in the middle of teaching, and they were like, “Yo, you just got a lot of love from Gloria Ladson-Billings.” I asked a couple of people what happened, and they said that [she] dropped my name: “You want real? Just look up Laurence Tan.” Geneva Gay put me in her book.

The work speaks for itself. But again, those connections [at UCLA] allowed me to give those opportunities to my students. When we say we interviewed experts, some of these are at the top of their fields. A lot of that happened during spring break. The students gave up their spring break to Zoom in, every day at 9 o'clock. One kid was Zooming in from Puerto Rico on his vacation. Even the [students] who didn’t [attend AERA] still participated. If you have meaningful work, if you have things that matter, students will rise to the occasion. We flew in on Thursday and they were up until 2:00 in the morning, so they even experienced a college all-nighter. One of the students [said], “I don’t know if I ever want to do AERA again.”  But others are like, “When’s the next opportunity?”

Above: At this year's annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA),  fifth graders from Oakland Academy of Knowledge presented their research on the impacts of a reparations initiative for Black students in Oakland Unified School District, under the guidance of UCLA alumnus Laurence Tan and Jeff M.R. Duncan-Andrade, professor of Latina/o Studies and Race and Resistance at San Francisco State University (at podium). 

TEP alumnus facilitates college-level experience, connects students with national experts on education, equity.

Laurence Tan: Oakland Teacher Brings Fifth Graders to Present Their Research at AERA

With the passing of Prop. 28, the already high need for music teachers in California schools is expected to grow. The UCLA Teacher Education Program (TEP) in Center X, collaborates with UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music (HASOM) to produce committed, high-quality music educators to fill that demand, with the only music education program at a public university in California, where it is possible to earn a teaching credential in a four-year undergraduate degree program.

Lily Chen-Hafteck, UCLA professor of music education, oversees the program from the HASOM side, working with Emma Hipolito, TEP director. Chen-Hafteck, who currently chairs the Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), says that the unique and rigorous program seeks applicants who are, “… strong musicians, have strong academics, and are passionate about teaching music and working with young people.”

“One of the objectives of TEP is to support novice teachers in acquiring the ‘knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to provide rigorous academic content and high-quality learning experiences to K–12 students,’” says Hipolito. “The Joint Music Program embodies that mission. Music Education students continue to hone their own knowledge of music while simultaneously learning to teach. Under the leadership of Drs. Chen-Hafteck and (Joanna) Gamboa-Kroesen (UCLA assistant professor of music education), this program can serve as a model of rigorous teacher preparation, rooted in a deep knowledge of content and a culturally responsive approach to K–12 music curriculum.”

UCLA Professor of Music Education Lily Chen-Hafteck is a special assistant for curricular reform for the Herb Alpert School of Music, and chair of the Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission of the International Society for Music Education. 

“There are a lot of requirements for receiving teaching credentials and so to be able to complete a BA in music education with a teaching credential in four years is very, very tough,” Professor Chen-Hafteck says. “This year, we have received 96 applications, and we’re going to accept around 15 students. We have auditions to assess how well they play their instruments or sing, plus music education interviews to evaluate their potential in teaching.”

Students have to meet high standards in order to be accepted into the Joint Music Education Program. Chen-Hafteck says that those who have entered the program are often considered among the most rewarding to teach by her HASOM colleagues.

“These are young people who have had a good experience in their music education and talk about how it has helped support them through difficult times,” she says. “They have had wonderful music teachers, and they want to be like [them] to help more students. Each year, the music education cohort are very close, because they are all passionate about teaching and helping others. I’ve heard about other majors where the students are very competitive, but in this group of music students, they have built a supportive community together, helping each other and appreciating each other’s unique capacities. My other music colleagues who teach both performance and music education students are often impressed by our music education majors, who are so strong in terms of their disposition and attitude towards learning.”

The Joint Music Education Program provides students with a California Subject Matter Waiver in music, and they complete their teaching credential during their fourth year of undergraduate studies. Professor Chen-Hafteck says that undergraduates declare this major upon entry to UCLA.

Siqi Zhuang and Julian Dohi (L-R), undergraduates in the Joint Music Education Program, learn to play and teach the clarinet to K–12 students. 

“There are some performance majors who may change majors or add a second major when they realize that they want to teach and our music education program is actually very interesting and rigorous,” she says. “The program is very well-designed and packed in all the requirements,” she says. “In the first two years, they have music theory and music history courses, performance ensembles, private lessons on their instruments or voice, in addition to their music education courses in learning approaches, vocal and instrumental music pedagogy. In the third year, they started some field experiences and in the final year, they do student teaching.”

Chen-Hafteck, who previously taught music education at Kean University before arriving at UCLA ten years ago, also serves as special assistant for curricular reform to Eileen Strempel, inaugural dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Professor Chen-Hafteck has been charged with starting a task force to put forth recommendations to align the school’s curriculum with EDI standards. Having taught a Fiat Lux seminar on “Celebrating Cultural Diversity of Immigrants through Music,” she says that, “It is important to allow students living in a multicultural society to study music of diverse cultures. A goal of the task force is to update the music curriculum that is culturally responsive to the student population.

“After two years of hard work with the task force, our curriculum now offers music theory and musicianship courses that are more inclusive of diverse musical styles, not just Western classical music,” says Chen-Hafteck. “There are so many ethnomusicology ensembles that are available in the School of Music, as well as a pop music ensemble in the Music Industry Program. I feel that participating in such diversifying musical experiences is important and should be supported. We are still working on updating the ensemble policy that will allow this.”

Professor Chen-Hafteck played the piano at a young age and began her teaching career as a high school music educator in her native Hong Kong. A Fulbright Scholar, she achieved her Ph.D. in music education from the University of Reading, U.K. and received postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and the  University of Surrey Roehampton, U.K. She says that her international experiences showed her that everyone is born with the musical abilities to learn any music just like the linguistic abilities to learn any language. It is very important to provide a nurturing environment at a young age so that children can develop their musical potential. Therefore, she was especially interested in teaching and researching early childhood music education.

Natalia Rael and Johannes Eberhart (L-R) are undergraduates in UCLA’s Joint Music Education Program who aspire to become music educators. 

“It’s so important to provide pre-schoolers with quality music education,” Professor Chen-Hafteck says. “A lot of times people tell me that, ‘Oh, I can’t sing. I can’t dance.’ And why? When we were born, we could all sing and dance and move to music, but throughout the years, we were somewhat discouraged. A teacher may tell you that you sing out of tune, and you never want to sing again.

“This is actually bad music education. There are some schoolteachers who only want the best ensemble. They weed out students, and those students are deprived of the joy of music making. And so, if from early childhood you were given the opportunity to receive a good music education, that would give you the seeds to enjoy music making. I’m not talking about singing or playing like professional musicians… but music for everyone… for all people, because music should be something that we can all enjoy.

“When I work with my students, I tell them they are capable of [giving their students] the best music education. Whether they can help students learn depends on how they teach and design activities that are appropriate to the age level of their students. Little children are capable of enjoying complex music and complex rhythms, as long as the activities are appropriate to them. For instance, they love moving to music and so movement activities will be best for young students to learn music.”

Professor Chen-Hafteck hopes that the infusion of funding from Prop. 28 will serve to fill the gap of well-trained music educators in California.

“There are just not enough music teachers,” she says. “Our students have been getting jobs before they graduate, there is such a high demand. And our students are so good, we prepare them very well. I wish our program can be bigger, and we can have more of my students going out to make a difference in the world.”

The Joint Music Education Program is a partnership between the Teacher Education Program at UCLA Center X, and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

UCLA Ed&IS Magazine: Teaching Music Teachers

Transforming schools as hubs for connecting children with nature and climate solutions is critical to raising environmentally conscious citizens and protecting the future of the planet, according to experts and educators at the inaugural Nature-based Education Summit, held at UCLA Lab School on May 4. The importance of fostering a healthy relationship between children and nature was a theme echoed throughout the event, hosted by the Alana Foundation and the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies.

The natural setting of the UCLA Lab School served as backdrop for a discussion by thought leaders on raising children to protect the future of the planet. 

UCLA Lab School was built in 1950 and designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, pioneers of mid-20th Century architecture, who utilized the natural setting of the northern end of the University to advantage, including a redwood forest, Stone Canyon Creek, and 28 species of trees. Environmental thought leaders, educators, activists, and policymakers gathered at the site to discuss the primary role of nature in play and learning, as well as the transformation of schools and communities into spaces of climate resilience.

Wasserman Dean Christina Christie welcomed guests to the Summit and underscored the role of schools in helping to shape the future of the planet. 

“We are honored to have the opportunity to help gather experts, create connections, and facilitate the discussion around such critical topics,” said Christina Christie, Wasserman Dean of SEIS. “Schools and educators play a central role in helping shape the future of our planet.”

Ana Lucia Vilela, founder and president of the Alana Foundation opened the event and helped relay the critical importance of motivating others to expand nature-based education throughout schools and communities.

“The idea is to inspire and connect the nature-based education community in the U.S. and around the world,” said Vilela. “The first essential is an intense love of nature.”

Ana Lucia Vilela, founder and president of the Alana Foundation, addressed the Summit, saying that, "an intense love of nature" is needed to inspire and connect the global education community. 

Lais Fleury, head of partnerships with the Alana Foundation, a socio-environmental impact group of organizations that promotes and inspires a better world for children, was direct in her assessment.

“We only protect what we know and love,” Fleury said. “There is an urgent need to continue to nurture the connection between children and nature.”

Observing that climate change disproportionately affects children, summit topics included “How Green Schoolyards Create Economic Value” and “Schools as Spaces of Climate Resilience and Health for Children and Cities.” In addition, best-selling author Richard Louv underscored passages from his best-selling book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Dune Lankard, founder and president of the Native Conservancy, discussed the harmful environmental impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. 

Keynote speaker Dune Lankard, founder and president of the Native Conservancy, emphasized the importance of connecting children to the environment as he discussed the catastrophic impacts to Alaska’s Prince William Sound from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. An Alaskan Eyak, Lankard highlighted his native experiences and environmental work – including the preservation of the salmon habitat in Alaska in order to sustain the future of his ancestral region, its indigenous people, and sacred places – accentuating the important role indigenous wisdom plays in nature-based education.  

“There’s still oil beneath the surface, still dead areas in Prince William Sound,” Lankard said.

UCLA Lab School demonstration teachers Noelani Morris and Chris Wilson and Assistant Principal Renata Christina Gusmão-Garcia Williams articulated how environmental education is enhanced by an inquiry-based approach to learning and how to develop a love for nature with young students, highlighting gardening projects within the school’s Climate Justice Education Program. In addition, best-selling author Richard Louv’s remarks underscored passages from his best-selling book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

“In the sustainable gardening projects we’ve done this year, we’ve often asked children to consider the question: ‘What is your relationship to the land?’” said Wilson. “We really do view the environment as another teacher.” 

A panel discussion was moderated by Cheryl Charles (at podium), co-founder, president, and CEO emerita of the Children & Nature Network. (L-R) Chris Wilson and Noelani Morris, teachers, UCLA Lab School; Lais Fleury, head of partnerships, Alana Foundation; Renata Gusmão-Garcia Williams, assistant principal, UCLA Lab School; and Tashanda Giles-Jones, STEM4Real instructional coordinator and environmental program specialist, Environmental  Charter Schools.

 Experts and educators at the inaugural event on May 4 highlighted the importance of fostering a healthy relationship between children and nature. 

UCLA Lab School: Nature-based Education Summit Emphasizes Importance of Climate Instruction

As an award-winning photojournalist who chronicled the Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament in 1986, Jeff Share knows the power that grassroots movements have in addressing the most pressing issues facing society. Today, as a thought leader in the field of critical media literacy, he has published, “For the Love of Nature: Ecowriting the World,” a new edited volume that empowers students and teachers to address the challenges in finding ways to continue life on earth in a sustainable way.

“For the Love of Nature” is inspired by an article that Share read by Gavin Lamb, a writer and researcher in ecolinguistics and environmental communication, as well as a group of Share’s undergraduate students, who created a peer teaching project to discuss environmental justice. The book’s international cadre of contributors – among them many of Share’s UCLA students and colleagues – have in common a passion for nature and a commitment to promoting social and environmental justice for all through a variety of genres including video, journals, letters, comic strips, poetry, and more. The book also provides lesson plans and resources for K-12 teachers to engage their students in ecowriting.

Share, who is a lecturer in the UCLA Teacher Education Program and Education and Information Studies undergraduate programs, taught bilingual education in the Los Angeles Unified School District for seven years. He later joined the nonprofit Center for Media Literacy as the regional coordinator for training. Share’s research and practice interests include preparing K-12 educators to teach critical media literacy for social and environmental justice.

Share’s books include “Media Literacy is Elementary: Teaching Youth to Critically Read and Create Media,” "Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference," and “The Critical Media Literacy Guide: Engaging Media & Transforming Education,” which he co-authored with his UCLA colleague, Distinguished Research Professor Douglas Kellner.

Share is a Fulbright Specialist and English Language Specialist for the U.S. State Department and has taught critical media literacy and environmental justice in India, Argentina, Mexico, China, and Germany. In 2021, he was honored with the Elizabeth Thoman Service Award from the National Association for Media Literacy Education, which recognizes those who have significantly contributed to the field of media literacy. A UCLA alumnus, Share earned his Ph.D. in education philosophy in 2006. He achieved his master’s degree in media literacy and bachelor’s degree in liberal studies at Vermont College.

What planted the seeds that created “For the Love of Nature”?

Jeff Share: I read an article by Gavin Lamb that was about this idea of ecowriting, writing about the natural world… looking at the positive as well as the negative and exploring our relationships with nature. The article moved me a lot, so I chose to make ecowriting the principal assignment for my environmental justice class (Ed M135). The assignment is open-ended so that students can conceptualize writing in any way they want and can create all sorts of responses. I've had a wide variety of work submitted for the ecowriting projects, all different examples of students’  reflections about their relationship with the natural world.

The first time I asked my students to create ecowriting, I was blown away by the quality of the work they produced and decided that the poetry, stories, and different pieces they've been creating should be published, because they’re so good. I contacted Gavin Lamb and he was wide open to the idea so I started talking with other colleagues who are working in the area of critical media literacy and environmental justice. I ended up pulling together a terrific collection of essays by scholars from Australia to Rome, exploring the power of writing about nature and using writing as a tool for reflection and expression in many different formats, from video essays to cartooning to just pen and paper writing.

I started bringing it all together and reached out to an editor I had worked with in the past, Shirley Steinberg, and she liked the idea. She said, “You know, if you add some lesson plans, we can turn this into a great little book for teachers.”  So, I contacted my teaching assistant at the time, Andrea Gambino, who with another colleague, wrote up some wonderful lesson plans. We included those at the end with a collection of resources that followed a section with examples from my students’ ecowriting. We  published about a dozen short stories, letters, poems, and different pieces that my students had created during the environmental justice class.

When the pandemic started, I connected with eight of my students who wanted to think through different ways of exploring critical media literacy and environmental justice. Andrea and I met with these students every week to support them in designing a lesson that they then taught to their peers. After that ended, we talked about having them write a chapter about the process they went through of teaching their peers about environmental justice. The eight students collaboratively wrote one chapter in the book which I really love because it's a powerful reflection about what they learned and gained from the process of peer teaching.

How does the book’s diversity of perspectives and genres make ecowriting seem more accessible and essential to building a deeper understanding of the earth’s crisis and possibility?

Share: Many of the essays are written by people with a background in critical media literacy. There is a strong sense of criticality through questioning the role of the dominant stories and narratives about how we interact and relate to the natural world.

One of the authors is Antonio Lopez, a pioneer in the field of ecomedia literacy, who has been combining critical media literacy with environmental justice for a long time. I’ve presented at several conferences with Antonio and Theresa Redmond, another author included in the book. Melissa Greene-Blye is a professor from the University of Kansas who wrote a terrific chapter about Indigenous perspectives. The essay by Rebecca Solnit, which was something our Dean Tina (Christie, Wasserman Dean, SEIS) helped to acquire, does a beautiful job of framing the need for critical hope as a collaborative action. Through the narrative of storytelling, we can analyze media representations and recognize the need to rewrite and create new stories to provide counternarratives that challenge unsustainable ideas and practices. 

The student examples are all new stories, different ways of rethinking. One student wrote a letter to their councilmember. Other students wrote diary entries, poems, a letter to Mother Nature, a short movie script… all sorts of different pieces that are powerful expressions of our concerns for the planet, for each other, for our fears about the climate crisis, and our desire to contribute something to change the trajectory.

There are two student examples of digital ecowriting. “I Am a Drop of Water” is a digital poem by Yaying Wu, a student from my environmental justice class. There is also a link to a video poem by a group of students I worked with in Germany. Last year, I was invited to teach a critical media literacy class at the University of Münster in Germany for a week. It was a short, intensive class with pre-service teachers. For their final project, the students walked through the botanical garden in the town of Münster and then worked collaboratively to create video poems. There’s a link in the book on page 132 that has a QR code where you can see and hear one of their poems.

In many ways, the book has a lot of SEIS in it. First off, it was inspired by the environmental justice class I teach to undergrads and includes many examples of their ecowriting. There are also a couple of Easter eggs, little wonderful treasures sprinkled about. There’s a quote from Annamarie Francois’ (SEIS associate dean of public engagement) sister, Kumu Lehua Hawkins, who I interviewed about the power of language and words - she talks about the spirit of aloha. There is a short essay by Rose White, a teacher I used to work with who also taught in our teacher education program.  And the cover of the book was designed by Justin Brown, Andrea's fiancé and a student at UCLA. I love how he designed the artwork for the cover. It brings me great joy to have this all together in one book.

Do you think that having gone through a global pandemic has brought these issues to the forefront, with people spending more time at home and in nature?

Share: I haven't done research on that, but it’s hard to imagine that it didn't have some type of impact because it gave us much more time in the same place to explore our surroundings. A lot of people started taking more walks and going to parks, finding spaces where they wouldn't be at risk of catching the virus.

But at the same time, now that the pandemic is less of an issue, I'm still seeing tremendous interest from the students. Their passion is powerful and the ecowriting they are creating is just amazing. Students have written and performed songs, designed clothing and jewelry, and choreographed dance and ice-skating performances. One student created a book out of homemade paper with California wildflower seeds embedded in the paper. Then, she wrote, painted, and drew in the book. Her plan is to bury the book so that one day it will grow and bloom.

How does critical media literacy about the environment enhance the study of various majors across campus?

Share: The environmental justice class is taught through a critical media literacy lens. We look at the environmental climate crisis not so much as a problem of science, but more as a problem of communication, culture, economics, and politics. The hard sciences have already documented the problem and demonstrated what we need to do to solve it. Therefore, it is the humanities that need to help us as a society make the paradigm shifts necessary to change our thinking and actions.

One of the things we explore are how Indigenous cultures have for thousands of years lived sustainably with the environment. We compare and contrast the Western Capitalist worldview that encapsulates an ego-logical perspective - a logic of human domination - versus a more sustainable Indigenous worldview that is based on an ecological perspective - relationships of reciprocity and interdependence with the natural world. We discuss what we need to do to move towards a more socially just and sustainable future.  

We're living in a culture based on endless growth, overconsumption, sacrifice zones, and harmful extraction and exploitation of our natural resources and people. On a finite planet, this way of life is scientifically not sustainable. The climate crisis is heating the oceans and atmosphere, and contributing to extreme weather events around the world – all of these impacts are being caused because we're living in a way that is not healthy for humans or the planet.

I begin the book with an analysis of the overview effect, where astronauts and cosmonauts who went up into space and looked back at the earth experienced an intense moment of consciousness raising about just how important, fragile, and sacred our planet is. They talk about crying and feeling this deep emotional effect. My hope is that this book can help those of us who cannot travel into space, to experience a greater appreciation of our environment through ecowriting. We need to find ways to reconnect with nature and develop that sense of sacredness in the natural world so that we stop exploiting it and start living with an understanding of our interconnections and interdependence with each other and all of nature.

New book presents international perspectives on the natural world, ways to teach and promote environmental and social justice through storytelling.

Jeff Share: Ecowriting to Preserve and Honor the Earth

Securing Our Future: Financially Empowering the New Generation event on April 18th, presented by the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies’s CalKIDS Institute and the Asset Building Clinic (ABC), brought together students, educators, and practitioners to provide updates on the CalKIDS Program and share research being done at ABC, while also celebrating ABC’s 9th birthday. Attendees came from all over Los Angeles, including UCLA, Cal State LA, LAUSD, Academic Advancement Program (AAP), Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment, Barrio Action, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, National Association of Social Workers, and Haven Neighborhood Services. Throughout the event, speakers and organizers challenged attendees to take tangible steps toward ensuring a brighter future for children in their communities.

Nayiri Nahabedian, the Executive Director of the UCLA CalKIDS Institute, gave the opening remarks introducing the California Kids Investment & Development Savings Program (CalKIDS) and the UCLA CalKIDS Institute. Through the CalKIDS Program, newborns born after July 1, 2022 and eligible students have access to a child savings account into which the state of California puts a seed deposit. All California newborns receive a CalKIDS account that has already been seeded with an initial deposit of up to $175 that they must then claim by the time they are 26 years old. In addition, eligible students (youth who are low-income, in foster care, or are unhoused) who were enrolled in 1st-12th grade in the 2021-2022 academic year or first graders in subsequent years also receive a Child Savings Account up to $1500. Accounts can be claimed and eligibility can be checked on the CalKIDS website.

Nahabedian stands in front of guests to deliver opening remarks and shares the importance of the CalKIDS Program.

Nahabedian emphasized that while child savings accounts with an initial deposit are now available, it is crucial for all of us to ensure that children and families are aware of the accounts and engage with them. This engagement will not only yield concrete financial benefits, but also social and emotional advantages. She referenced the SEEDS for Oklahoma Kids study, which demonstrated that having Child Savings Accounts contributed to improvements in mothers’ outlooks and improvements in children’s social-emotional development, among other benefits. 

“Poverty is very much a policy choice. Opportunity is very much a policy choice,” Nahabedian stated. She underscored that with CalKIDS, Governor Newsom and California have made a significant commitment toward the well being and success of all California kids. Yet, Nahabedian stressed that a formidable challenge remains. In fact, throughout the event, presenters emphasized that mere knowledge or access is not enough; rather, it is incumbent upon us to support families in claiming these accounts. This is in part a goal of the newly established UCLA CalKIDS Institute, which serves to support, amplify, and evaluate the CalKIDS program.

Guests gather for roundtable discussions with the aim of formulating an actionable implementation strategy for integrating newfound skills.

Dr. Joanna Karczewska, Associate Professor of Social Work in Cal State LA then introduced the Asset Building Clinic (ABC), a new partner of the UCLA CalKIDS Institute. Established by Dr. Karczewska in 2015, ABC aims to empower individuals financially so they can, in turn, financially empower others. ABC’s model, Karczewska explained, was not limited to just sharing financial education or event resources, but creating opportunities for people to take action using the information and resources. Dr. Karczewska encouraged attendees to engage with their local agency partners for ongoing financial programs tailored to underserved communities, citing organizations like Barrio Action, Central City Neighborhood Partners (CCNP), Eastmont Community Center, and LIFT-LA among others. Additionally, ABC supports thesis projects for Cal State LA students pursuing their Masters of Social Work (MSW), provides the Financial First Responder certificate training for social work undergraduates, and offers peer and professional financial coaching.

Following Dr. Karczewska’s remarks, Vanessa Olivares, ABC’s professionally trained Financial Coach, ABC Club Co-President at Cal State LA, provided an update on ABC’s progress since their last Community Event in 2019. She highlighted the growth of the Financial First Responder certificate, which has over 500 people trained to date and the establishment of the ABC Club, a student organization branch of ABC at Cal State LA.

Subsequently, two MSW Candidates from Cal State LA presented the results of their research projects conducted in collaboration with ABC under the supervision of Dr. Karczewska.

Dr. Joanna Karczewska, Associate Professor of Social Work at Cal State LA (left) and Eleanor Bray, MSW Candidate at Cal State LA (right). Dr. Karczewska introduces Bray before presenting her research project titled “He Told Me How to Spend My Money: Healthy Relationships and Financial Capability.”

Eleanor Bray delivered a presentation titled “He Told Me How to Spend My Money: Healthy Relationships and Financial Capability,” focusing on economic abuse in intimate relationships. Bray described various signs of economic abuse and its prevalence among both adult domestic violence survivors and teenagers. Bray stressed the importance of addressing this issue and provided guidance for teens, parents, teachers, and community members on how to identify and combat economic abuse. She suggested:

“As a teen: Increase your financial empowerment by taking a course on financial capability; learn the red flags of abuse!

 As a parent: Order a credit freeze for your kids to help protect them against identity theft; bolster your own economic knowledge with a financial capability course.

As a teacher: Include economic abuse in discussions around domestic violence; be a safe place for young people to disclose their experiences.

As a community member: Take economic abuse seriously!”

More information is available on Bray’s page on ABC’s website.

Following Bray's talk, Nancy Zelaya gave a presentation about outreach efforts for the CalKIDS program, called A Current Snapshot of School Outreach for CalKIDS: Challenges & Opportunities. In her research, Zelaya contacted 49 East LA and Boyle Heights schools in LAUSD to see what their current knowledge was of the CalKIDS Program, Opportunity LA, ScholarShare 529, or any special child accounts for higher education and if any outreach programs were currently underway. Zelaya found that while there is interest in CalKIDS, there is a need to increase outreach. Earlier research with local community providers, funded by the John and Dora Haynes Foundation, demonstrated that underserved community members need opportunities for deeper engagement to transcend barriers of trust and understanding of the financial system. This is not surprising since the intended beneficiaries of CalKIDS and earlier programs like Opportunity LA rarely have access to financial products specifically designed for their families to build assets. CalKIDS can reorient families' understanding of the future they expect for their kids, which is no small task! Community organizations and ordinary members of the public could help and Zeleya encouraged attendees to do so by creating opportunities for people to connect to CalKIDS, such as by sharing the marketing toolkit that can be found on the CalKIDS website, asking schools and other institutions to engage in CalKIDS outreach, and in helping friends and family claim their children’s accounts.

Following the presentations, attendees gathered around a birthday cake celebrating ABC’s 9th birthday before returning to roundtable discussions, during which people engaged in lively discussions on how they would implement the suggestions given during the talks.

Dr. Karczewska, Founding Member of Asset Building Clinic, celebrates its 9th anniversary with cake. 

Students, educators, and practitioners learned about the CalKIDS Program and research being done at ABC to support a brighter future for all of California’s children at an event on April 18.

UCLA CalKIDS Institute and Asset Building Clinic (ABC) Share Promising Practices for Financially Empowering CA Children

As a learning scientist, Professor Ananda Marin draws upon Indigenous ways of knowing and sociocultural theories to develop research on learning across everyday activities such as walking through a forest, and professional realms of knowledge such as teaching and musical performance.

Marin’s study “Reimagining Teaching/Learning Relations Alongside Improvisational and Ensemble Performers” is funded by a Spencer Foundation Large Grant. The study draws on co-design methodologies and how research collaborators (i.e., improvisational artists) play a central role in designing research activities. The study focused on jazz artists Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, Lisa Alvarado, Joshua Abrams, and Zahra Baker. In addition, research activities have been conducted with the support of Brenda Lopez, research associate and media coordinator at the UCLA Center for Critical Race Studies in Education, Lindsay Lindberg, a doctoral student researcher in the Urban Schooling Division, and Shivani Davé, a doctoral student researcher in the Social Research Methodology Division. 

Last April at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Lopez and Marin presented the team’s findings in a Vice-Presidential Session on “Consequential Futures: The Contested Pursuit of Truth in Freedom Dreaming.” Their presentation, “Freedom Dreams Nested Within the Small Stories of Improvisational Jazz Artists,” explored the ways that artists develop their expertise, how the arts are a nexus for social, political, and ethical discourses in regard to education, and how freedom dreams often germinate in collaborative and improvisational contexts.

Family dynamics play a significant part in this strand of Professor Marin’s research. Her father is Hamid Drake, a jazz drummer and percussionist who has worked in various ensembles with luminaries such as Fred Anderson, Don Cherry, Jim Pepper, Herbie Hancock, and Pharoah Sanders. Drake is widely regarded as a top percussionist in jazz and improvised music, incorporating his interest in Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influences. Marin leverages her unique connection to this community with a study that illustrates the intrinsic value of the arts, not only as a subject to be studied in schools but as a discipline with routine practices that can inform how the field of education understands humans’ diverse capabilities as well as relationships between humans and the more-than-human world.

Marin is an associate professor of Social Research Methodology in the UCLA Department of Education and a faculty member in UCLA American Indian Studies. Her research explores the cultural nature of development with an emphasis on how processes for knowing (e.g., attention, embodiment, collaboration, etc.) vary across multiple communities, generations, and knowledge systems, and how educators can draw upon that variation in the design of teaching/learning environments.

Professor Marin achieved her Ph.D. in learning sciences at Northwestern University; her M.P.P at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; and her B.A. in sociology at Yale University. Her accolades include the University of California Humanities Research Institute Residential Research Group Fellowship, the International Society of the Learning Sciences Early Career Award, the Lena Astin Faculty Mentoring Award from UCLA, and the Mellon Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands from Arizona State University. Recent publications include the article “Ambulatory sequences: Ecologies of learning by attending and observing on the move” for the journal Cognition and Instruction, and the co-written chapter, “Enacting relationships of kinship and care in research and educational settings” (with UCLA’s Nikki Barry (McDaid) for the 2020 book, “Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies of Praxis and Care,” co-edited by UCLA professor of education Teresa McCarty and published by Routledge.

Ed&IS Magazine: What inspired your study of improvisational jazz artists?

Ananda Marin: I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to seek out a research site solely for the sake of doing research. As a qualitative methodologist, I believe that relationships are extremely important to doing research, and I usually begin a research project with people that I have relationships with or by asking myself who I want to develop relationships with. With that comes some accountability to how we share and engage in the work, how we talk about it, and write about it.

I’m studying the arts in order to better understand collaboration and improvisation, two processes that are central to teaching and learning. I grew up in a family of artists and educators. My dad is a jazz percussionist and for many years, my mom was a dancer. My sister was a dancer. My niece dances. My grandmother was a piano teacher. My other sister was an English, ELL, and Bilingual teacher. My husband was an early childhood educator, a rap artist, and now makes Native American horror movies.

I would go and watch my sister perform and my dad perform. I noticed that the communities they were in were very different from the way we organize teaching and learning in schools. My participation in those communities shaped this current project and how I approached previous work on the role of the body in teaching and learning.

Ed&IS: What qualities do some of these communities have that aren’t typically present in education?

Marin: This project is guided by a couple of questions. One, I was interested in how people’s histories of relations influence their development over time, and then at a micro level, because part of what I do is study core cognitive processes like attention and embodiment, I was interested in the moment-to-moment of performance, when people are improvising [and] how they attune to one another. 

I had spent a lot of time on the periphery of artistic communities. This led me to have a general sense that many of the folks I knew would probably say that even though they are viewed as experts and have contributed to and influenced their field, school was not a place where they developed that expertise. In addition, I would broadly argue that as a society we do not organize classroom environments to facilitate generative long-term relationships. In contrast, the artists who are involved in this project have long-term relationships with one another that span 10, 20, or 30 years, where they work together in different configurations [that] they’ve gone in and out of. How artists develop and sustain relationships and how relationships feed their own creative processes is of interest to me.

Ananda Marin, UCLA associate professor of education, leveraged the stature and relationships of her father, free jazz musician Hamid Drake, in order to conduct her research. Photo by Brenda Lopez

Ed&IS: How did your familial connection to this community impact your study?

Marin: My dad has been in the music performance world, what music critics call the jazz world, since he was 13 years old. I think the collaborating artists said yes to the project because they had a relationship with my dad. It’s not that they wouldn’t have said yes if I had asked them, but I think that relational connection was important. I think they saw the project as an opportunity to learn new things about each other, to get together, to perform together and have conversations that would move their own understanding of their craft in new ways.

Indigenous education scholars often ground their work in the 4 Rs and now the 5 Rs. These practices include respect, reciprocity, responsibility, relevance, and relationality. I knew [that] going in, if people were going to participate, relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility were going to be key factors. My father would also include reverence, which is related to respect, as a practice. He has pointed out to me that you have to have a certain reverence for what you do, and for what others before you did.

Ed&IS: How does this study address your interest in embodiment and physical space?

Marin: I would say that the majority of schools have been designed in ways that are about restraining our bodies versus tapping into the potential of freely using our whole bodies. This is particularly true when it comes to how the bodies of indigenous, Black, and Brown youth and youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are constructed in relation to schooling. However, when I have observed improvisational jazz performances, it was very clear to me that artists were using their whole bodies to support their own processes for learning and creativity. I want to understand how artists and musical performers are able to cultivate freedom spaces where they are able to engage in whole body movement and what this means for their own development as people and as artists.

I’m working with Ben Rydal Shapiro, a researcher at Georgia State University, who has developed data visualization tools to support teaching and learning. One of the things Ben researches is the movement of bodies in space. He’s taken clips of the performances I recorded with collaborating artists and looked at the movement of their bodies in relation to time and space. It is not surprising that as percussionists and bass players, they are going to be using their hands and their feet. But they’re often using them together in a coordinated way while their eyes are closed. This coordination is tied to their processes for attending to one another and collaborating to co-create music. This stands in contrast to how people are taught to organize attention in school. In schools, visual attention often holds primacy. However, in this particular performance space, artists are drawing on multiple senses in order to fully participate and collaborate. So, we might ask what are the possible consequences for learning when we create spaces for sensory freedom.

And so, this is a a leap, but I don’t think it’s too far of a leap. If we think about the progression of schooling from early childhood spaces to high school, we are increasingly asking people to sit in ways that constrain their bodies, to not move their hands or their feet or other parts of their body unless they’re engaging in “productive activity”— like reading or writing—and to look at the front of the classroom. For example, when we go into some of the Math Science buildings [at UCLA], some of the chairs are bolted to the floor, [constraining] the design of the learning environment. I’m not saying every classroom should be an empty space, but we could pay more attention to how our bodies move and feel in spaces. There’s so much more we can do and experience as humans when we don’t put these kinds of constraints on ourselves. 

Vocalist Zahra Baker worked with photographs of the artists’ ancestors to create quilt pieces for the group’s unique staging. Photo by Brenda Lopez

The improvisational artists who are participating in this project have a practice for setting up the performance, or teaching and learning, space. It is consequential for how the work that they’re about to do unfolds. Improvisation is not just about doing anything in the moment. They would say that they prepare for improvising, and they would probably say that it’s linked to their own spiritual development as people. When they get to a performance space, there’s a bunch of things they do, some of them very small, some of them larger. Some of it is about how they greet one another, but they are making decisions in that moment about how they’re going to set up the space and they are thinking about how these decisions might influence how the performance (or teaching and learning) unfolds.

I’m sharing this story because I’m involved in this other group with Indigenous scholars through Arizona State University. It’s a Mellon-funded project, and Natalie Diaz and Brian Brayboy are PIs on the project, looking at Indigenous forms of mentorship. I was sharing the experience of being with the musicians and observing them perform, and how they set up space.

Natalie suggested to me that the next time I teach, I invite students to first center themselves and then to move around the classroom and to sit wherever they felt comfortable–whether it was on a chair, on a floor, on top of the desks–and then to have a conversation about how that felt and what we wanted to do from there. I did this in a TEP class, and that was a really interesting day for me in the classroom. I think students appreciated it, and I also think they were kind of skeptical: “Okay, so we did this thing, and we get to collectively decide what we’re going to do. But is this for real? And will we continue to operate in this way?

I will say that this small practice that came from observing musicians, shifted the dynamics of my classroom space. What I’m looking for is not necessarily the big findings, but the small findings that can help us think about what we’re doing moment-to-moment, which is often a challenge when teaching because classrooms move so quickly. If we’re going to design something different, we have to be okay with what might come up with the unscripted, and that can be scary for teachers, for lots of reasons. It takes a lot of practice to slow down our own thinking and be reflective–not just to automatically respond to what’s going on, but to reflect in the moment and open up possibilities. I believe that one of the things we can learn from jazz artists who improvise is how to sit in/with dissonance while listening and watching for “light trails” that can take the group toward consonance.

Ed&IS: What about the dynamic of the artists’ interactions on and offstage?

Marin: These jazz musicians are creating something together as a group. We often ask people to teach on their own, with 20, 50, 100-plus students, depending on what grade level you’re at. It’s a very Western, individualistic kind of idea that a single educator will have all that knowledge to impart and that when unexpected things arise, we have the expertise to meet them.

Part of the preparation for [these] improvisers is getting out of their own way. It is about having the substantive knowledge and knowing enough. But there’s another level of preparation that is necessary, they would say, [to] be in the flow and open to possibilities as they arise. You’re open to being together and apart—you’re an individual, but you’re also a part of the group. You might lead, but then other times, you follow. 

Hamid Drake, a prominent drummer in the creative music movement, performing in the “Moment to Moment Concert” in September 2022. Photo by Brenda Lopez

In the performance space, a feedback system is created. They come in and do the work together, but every show will vary based upon who is with them that day, who is starting, and who is in the audience. They would talk about this as a circulation of energy. We can ask ourselves as educators, “I have my lesson plan. What is the material that I want to cover today?” We can also ask ourselves, “What is the energy that I want to build in this space with others today?” We can ask ourselves about how we learn to be better attuned to one another and to ourselves, how we can be present, and how that feeds the creative process.

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