As a teacher with 31 years of experience, Mary Ruth McGinn has always sought innovative ways to meet the needs of each of her students. She has spent her entire career in schools where a majority of students speak English as a second language and where poverty significantly impacts the...
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After the opera, the company loses its sense of purpose for a short period and needs to find its way, its new path. The students try to revert to previous behaviors and “old ways” until they realize that they are changed forever. They can’t go back. Then, they determine the route for a new journey forward.
Back in September when the members of Harness the Stars Kids Opera Company attempted to accomplish the magic carpet challenge, it wasn’t to be. Now, after eight months of living the process of creating an original opera, working collaboratively, being conscious of one another, thinking about we, not me and independently putting on their very own production of Strike and Spare, they did it! They defeated the magic carpet. While standing on a plastic tarp, the company strategically managed to flip this “magic carpet” to the other side without stepping off onto the floor. This was no easy feat.
Since the company had to work through feelings of disappointment and sadness after the opera was over, I insisted that each student convince me that it was indeed the right time to attempt the challenge anew. As you will see below, they were very persuasive and I agreed.
When writing about this frustrating experience at the beginning of the year, Rayn stated, “We didn’t fail, we just didn’t finish.” Now we can report, “We didn’t fail, we finished!”
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About Mary Ruth McGinn
As a teacher with 32 years of experience, Mary Ruth McGinn has always sought innovative ways to meet the needs of each of her students. She has spent her entire career in schools where a majority of students speak English as a second language and where poverty significantly impacts the learning experiences and opportunities of students and their families.
Nineteen years ago she had an experience that changed her life and altered her professional path in a profound way. She attended training sessions at The Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York City, spent nine intense days living the process of creating an original opera and learned how to replicate the experience with her students. She then began creating opera with her students and using the process of creating the opera as a vehicle to teach curriculum and life skills. The authentic purpose for learning coupled with the arts provided the perfect stage on which to construct a love for life-long learning.
The profundity of the work, the transformation of the students and a desire to “bring to light” new ideas in education, inspired Mary Ruth to share this way of thinking and learning. In 2006 she was granted a Fulbright Scholarship, sponsored and funded by Teatro Real and Fundación SaludArte in Madrid, and a sabbatical from Montgomery County, to travel to Spain to develop and implement a similar program there. She lived there two years training teachers and working side by side with teachers and students in their classrooms. The reception of the project was overwhelming. Mary Ruth returns to Madrid every summer to train a new team of educators and artists in the process. In the summer of 2018, she joined forces with The Kennedy Center to offer the opera training for teachers in the Washington Metro area. She currently teaches third grade at Stedwick Elementary School in Montgomery Village, Maryland where she is implementing a classroom curriculum based on the principles of authentic learning.
Read more of Mary Ruth's blog Learning for Real.
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