Creativity Gets the Space It Needs to Thrive
A TSA Story—Teaching during COVID-19
The Sharon Academy has a particularly strong culture of communityPerpetuating this sense of community while isolated from one another during the Coronavirus Pandemic has been the overriding focus of administrators and teachers this Spring. Teaching and learning have continued, often with silver linings to sustain us. This is one of a series of TSA Stories focused on these glimmers of light during COVID-19. Read the second in this series, Technology Transports Students to Other Cultures.
Creativity Gets the Space It Needs to Thrive
Photography teacher Laura DeCapua reveals, “…I’m not a trained educator. I’m a photographer. I sorta fell into the craft of teaching high school kids after a phone call from TSA founder Judy Moore 18 years ago. The phone call was brief, quite direct, fairly pleasant, and from what I remember there was no way to say no.”
Now, after 18 years of teaching at TSA, DeCapua was asked—like so many other educators—to “pivot” and to teach from home. She was nervous about how she could translate her teaching remotely. “How will I inspire? Motivate? Care for…? from the corner of my bedroom on a screen?” she fretted. And yet, she has been elated to find the best work she has seen in her almost two decades of teaching. The students show up—figuratively and literally—to online hangouts to share and critique. They are engaged during these gatherings and have demonstrated that they are careful observers of their world when they are on their own.
Two Very Different, But Visually Similar Items (A), Avery Swett ’23
What contributed to the quality of their work? In their isolation from school, friends, sports, and other preoccupations, they have found that time is vital to creativity. With permission to take quiet walks and to open their minds, they have learned to creatively problem-solve. They have learned the essence and the gift of Art.
The atomization of the school community has eliminated classic photo opportunities, but academics were always hard to portray through photography. Read DeCapua’s assignments Beyond Selfies3 and see the output on facebook of her students’ efforts to get a glimpse into the workings of these minds, and how their recently constrained worlds have expanded their views; or see the work in a PDF: MiniPhoto52020_I.
Two Very Different, But Visually Similar Items (A), Avery Swett ’23
DeCapua also marvels at and rejoices at the resilience of TSA’s students during this test of spirit. “I have shared my experience teaching ‘at a distance’ with other teachers far and wide. These teachers, who aren’t experiencing such student success stories, remind me that The Sharon Academy, is truly a special school community.” Like many aspects of our existence, during coronavirus we have come to rely on the things that we had once undervalued. Art is one of those things, which has become an essential component of Distance Learning. DeCapua confesses, “This provides my nourishment now, in this weirdest of times.”