Who is Tanya Fields?

About a month ago I received an email from the faculty at SPS inviting me to join a few of my fellow students to attend a dinner in the city. The dinner was organized to give this year’s commencement speaker, Ms. Tanya Fields an opportunity to meet with the students she will be talking to in a few weeks at graduation. Prior to receiving the email I’d never heard of Ms. Fields and at the time, overwhelmed with class work, I did not have time to Google her. Nevertheless, I eagerly accepted the invitation and a week later found myself seated with a few students and staff from SPS at a table in the middle of a candle lit restaurant in mid-town.

When Ms. Fields arrived we took turns going around the table to introduce ourselves. Hearing the diverse exchange of personal and professional stories reminded me just how unique the SPS community is. From students who attend class via the web to those, like myself, that attend in person, SPS brings together students from all backgrounds and ages to a single learning environment. Finally it was Ms. Fields’ turn to share with us her story. She began by telling the table about her current role as director of The BLK ProjeK, a Bronx community food justice campaign.

Tanya Fields has been extremely successful in using social media to bring attention to her social work and community building projects. Over the course of our evening the conversation covered food justice, new media, higher education and politics that included a spirited debate on the social cost of corn commodities between Ms. Fields and myself.

I soon discovered Tanya Fields is a vibrant and energetic young social entrepreneur. Her personal commitment to creating a positive change in her community is a noble act worthy of recognition. In a city as big as New York, it is easy for us to get caught up in our own lives and overlook social problems like poverty, reductions in high school graduation rates, and youth unemployment. It is easier to simply regard these issues as the problem of someone else and turn a blind eye. However, simply ignoring these issues will not make them disappear.

As New Yorkers we enjoy the benefit of living in a great city that encourages us to be ambitious go-getters. Yet in doing so we often forget that we still live in a communal society where a negative impact to any one segment of the population will eventually affect all of us in some manner. Because of this we all have a social responsibility to each other and Tanya Fields’ work reflects this. Her food justice project, which educates young children on good dieting habits, is raising a new generation of New Yorkers that won’t have to shoulder the burden of increased taxes to address obesity related health effects and the increased social cost they place on the public. Ms. Fields’ mentoring and outreach program is empowering young girls by teaching them the importance of education. I believe Ms. Fields’ work is true a benefit to not just her community but also our entire city.

The night concluded with the students sharing their thoughts on what a good graduation speech should touch on with Ms. Fields. I left the dinner feeling truly inspired by the work Tanya Fields does. So much so I thought it only right I use the power of social media to share with the SPS community our commencement speaker and her story.

Following our dinner, I asked Ms. Fields if she would be interested in doing an interview for the SPS Community Blog, which she eagerly accepted. I spent a morning at Ms. Fields’ office in the Bronx chatting about every thing from the future of social media in education to the Jedi mind trick Celie plays on Albert in the end of The Color Purple (her favorite movie). My interview with Tanya was both informative and lighthearted and provides some insight into the life of Ms. Tanya Fields.

Brandon M. Chiwaya is a current SPS student studying Public Administration and Public Policy at the Murphy Institute. He is a member of the school’s 2013-2014 Technology Budget Fee Committee, and was recently awarded the CUNY Vice Chancellor’s Excellence in Leadership Award. Below is an excerpt from Brandon’s interview with Tanya Fields.

Davos in the Desert

“Davos in the Desert” by Wendy Williams was originally published on Getting Smart.

The Education Innovation Summit (#EISummit) conference this week in Arizona is a large and seamlessly orchestrated event, but one of my favorite presentations so far was not actually on the agenda.  The keynote speaker for Tuesday’s lunch was to have been Larry Summers, president emeritus of Harvard, but after the tragic bombing at Monday’s marathon he needed to stay close to home in Boston. Jim Shelton, U.S. Dept. of Education Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, was tapped to fill in, and he was an inspiring speaker.  Although Shelton said that he worries that the EdTech sector could miss opportunities to reach its goals and transform education, he shared enough insights to make it clear that he is not really a pessimist at all, just engaged and grounded.  He also talked about his personal experience with great teachers and schools and the big difference they have made in his own life.

Shelton observed that some country is going to take the lead on education innovation and reminded us that U.S. education mavericks need to “build for the global opportunity.”   He also spoke about how online learning innovations in higher education could have a democratizing effect, creating social capital and a better college experience for all.  Colleges need to emphasize completion and acceleration, however, and the grade he would give higher education for the job it is doing at present is just a C minus.  Gaps/opportunities he suggested for entrepreneurs included early childhood resources for use by informal caregivers, and K-12 tools for summer and outside of school, whether for enrichment or remediation.

The conference has also been lucky to have computer industry pioneers like Steve Case, a founder of AOL and now Chairman and CEO of Revolution, who drew on his years of experience to offer insights on the current state of the educational technology field.  Many keynote speakers and panelists at the conference have been asked to make projections about the future, and Case emphasized that the start-up companies that are forming today need to be ready for them to take a long time to build.

Another great presenter was Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, a school that is taking the lead on education innovation and is a host of the conference.   When asked about what tack ASU takes on inter-disciplinary work in arts and sciences, Crow described how they are involving science-fiction writers like Neal Stephenson to project future states, for students to build on in visionary ways.  The Center for Science and the Imagination is where this all happens, and it looks like a really exciting collaboration. [Neal Stephenson, by the way, is the author of a sci-fi novel that could be a distance-learning manifesto: The Diamond Age.  In it, an interactive learning tool educates and empowers a neglected child, who goes on to change society with what she has learned.]   Despite Crow’s embrace of education innovation, he said he does not think of it as schools reducing the cost of a degree “by replacing faculty with robots,” but rather doing things to support instructors.

The conference has also covered an interesting range of topics in panel discussions that made me wish I could attend two sessions concurrently.  The panel on MOOCs was not always in agreement about the projected future of these massive open online courses, nor on their impact on ‘traditional’ online education, nor even on the definition/scale of what constitutes a MOOC.  Nevertheless, they did make a few observations.  Asked if MOOCs represented the beginning of a do-it-yourself degree, ASU’s Phil Regier predicted that higher ed basics like having to take courses outside one’s major would continue.  As for MOOCs’ usefulness for remedial coursework, he observed that the students who need remediation are not autodidacts.  There did seem to be some agreement that MOOCs could have a big impact on continuing education, since the competency focus would make certification irrelevant, so long as the student learned the desired subject matter, as in a photography course.

Steven Johnson was the last to speak on day one of the conference, and so some people may have missed his presentation. Johnson began by talking about the ‘liquid network,’ social spaces in which ideas bounce around and lead to innovation.  He took us from 18th century coffee houses as the space where the Enlightenment happened, to a redesigned incubator that improved infant mortality rates in Africa, to Apple’s ‘genius bars,’ modeled on the concierge service in high-end hotels (like the one where the EIS conference is held).   As he talked about the career diversity to be found in the social networks of the most innovative people, I thought about the interesting range of people at the Education Innovation Summit – Ed Tech entrepreneurs, investors, business people, writers, policy wonks, and educators — all enthusiastically talking about how to improve education in the short and long term.

---

Wendy Williams is a media professional, educator, and cultural anthropologist.  She is an online instructor for CUNY School of Professional Studies and lives in Brooklyn.

*Note: Although this article was published on April 17, 2013 prior to the Education Innovation Summit, the content remains relevant for the SPS community.

Last Chance: Submit Your ePortfolio!

We invite you to submit your ePortfolio to the CUNY School of Professional Studies ePortfolio Student Showcase for an opportunity to be selected as one of the “Featured Student ePortfolios” on the ePortfolio Showcase website and receive a $100 Amazon gift card.

Self nominations are due May 24, 2013. Please help us recognize your great work by participating in the Showcase!

Sarah Morgano, Academic Operations Assistant, created a webinar (below) to explain the nature and uses of ePortfolios that will give you the tools you need to start building your own ePortfolio in time to participate in the Showcase.

Complete the submission form and get more details on our previous ePortfolio Showcase blog post.

Project Thesis Presentations

The M.A. in Applied Theatre culminates with the Project Thesis. Our graduating students envision and implement original projects in Applied Theatre. These projects are the sites for their research, which they in turn document and evaluate in their final written theses. We invite you to attend the dynamic presentations in which they share their processes and discoveries.

Wednesdays, May 22, 29, and 30
At CUNY’s Creative Arts Team
101 West 31st Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10001

May 22nd
6:45pm, Celebrating Community: An Applied Theatre Workshop for Child and Family Specialists
Brisa Muñoz, Kristy Kadish, and Michelle O’Connor
A two-day theatre-based workshop for a community of social workers in Johnson City, Tennessee. The purpose of the workshop was to promote connection, celebrate strengths, and examine the challenges within the professional community.

7:35pm, The WHY Factor: A Decision-Making Workshop with African Diasporan Male Undergraduates
Antonio Lyons and Julia Reimer
This 5-week workshop series at a college in Queens used theater, storytelling, and creative play to explore choices through the lens of identity, relationships, conflict, systems, and personal goals and expectations.

8:25pm, Facing the Blank Page Together: Finding Collaborative Approaches to New Play Development
Dominic D’Andrea
This presentation documents the experience of an applied theatre-inspired writers’ group that was designed as a lab for a cohort of 9 working playwrights in New York City. Through a focus on group collaboration, individual process, and working with a senior population, the playwrights engaged with applied theatre practice to inform and/or impact their individual approaches to “facing the blank page.”

9:15pm, Acting Out in Math Class: Role play and Mathematical Discourse
Anna Zivian and Nicolette Dixon
The presenters implemented workshops and residencies to support math teachers in developing and facilitating role play scenarios for students based on mathematical word problems. The project objective was to use role play to stimulate engagement in mathematical discourse for enhanced conceptual understanding.

May 29th
6:45pm, Performing Legacies: A Family Storytelling Workshop
Ramy Eletreby, Rachel Evans, and Amy Sawyers
This workshop series was implemented over four Sundays at a church community room on the Upper East Side with a diverse group of 24 individuals. Through a variety of activities geared towards performing family stories, this workshop explored the significance in our lives of sharing family stories.

7:35pm, Looking at the Past: The Women’s Theatre Project
Lydia Gaston and Junko Ishikawa
The presenters implemented a 6-week series of theatre-based workshops with Filipino senior women immigrants in Jamaica, Queens. Looking at the Past used process drama, Freirean dialog, and an exchange of personal stories to address group dynamics and build community.

8:25pm-10pm, Integrating Theatrical Conventions into a High School Peer Education Program
Ellen Brown, Sara Orr, and Leah Page
The presenters spent ten weeks at a community center that offers peer education programs for and with teenagers. The group taught the young people how to create, rehearse and facilitate activating scenes, a convention influenced by Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. At the end of the ten weeks, the young people performed and facilitated three original scenes for their peers at the center.

May 30th
6:45pm, Arts Together: Celebrating Moms and Kid Through Theatre, Crafts and Fun!
Lillian Ribeiro and Ben Weber
Arts Together was a series of 5 workshops that took place in New Jersey for mothers and their children who live in a domestic violence shelter or supportive housing facility. These workshops explored how applied theatre may foster meaningful experiences between mothers and children during a period of transition.

7:35pm, Interracial Relationships Explored
Carli Gaughf and Reyna Bonaparte
A 5-week project that mobilized theatrical conventions to address the struggles and joys of romantic interracial relationships. Individuals and couples met on weekly basis for Boal-based workshops at the Queens Presbyterian Church in Long Island City, NYC.

8:25pm, ACTION! The Creative Student Leadership Workshop
Claro de los Reyes and Shamilia McBean
ACTION! was a 4-week interactive theatre project that explored the concept of leadership with undergraduate commuter students in Jamaica, Queens. The workshop series addressed civic mindedness and psychological ownership through an arts-based investigation of how students saw themselves in relationship to their school community.

Admission is free.
Guests are welcome to attend any or all of the presentations.

The Master’s Degree in Applied Theatre, the first program of its kind in the United States, is a sequential, ensemble-based program for students interested in the use of theatre to address social and educational issues in a wide range of settings. The program stresses the unity of theory and practice, and is linked to the professional applied theatre work of the renowned CUNY Creative Arts Team.

Preparing for the Future

“Preparing for the Future” by Wendy Williams was originally published on Getting Smart.

The future of education will be on display next week in Arizona, at the Education Innovation Summit.  There will be a wide range of speakers and panel discussions, which I am really looking forward to hearing.  Because the focus is on innovation, and many educational technology companies and entrepreneurs will be there, it is a chance for me as an educator to hear about what tools will be available to my university and K-12 schools in the near future.  I am especially interested to hear what new models are being proposed that can make sense of the MOOC phenomenon for me, since the online instruction that I do at the City University of New York (CUNY) takes place in small classes and does not discard the traditional framework of credit hours and degree programs within a university structure.

Thomas Friedman’s recent op-ed for the New York Times made many CUNY instructors bristle by extolling the “MOOCs revolution” as if massively open online courses alone could fix difficult issues of social inequality and access to education, in the U.S. and globally.  Friedman does note in another article, however, that so far it is mostly middle and upper class students who are able to benefit from this kind of massive online course.   There may be a multitude of autodidacts out there, ready to thrive on their own in MOOCs, but my experience has been with college students who would need some foundation laid before they could get to that point.

The communications course I teach online is soon to be renamed Digital Literacy and offered to a wider group of CUNY students than the Online B.A. students who have been taking it. I feel lucky to be teaching the course, because I see the impact on my students as extending beyond the end of one semester. While the returning adults enrolled in the program are highly ‘wired’ in some ways (especially social networking with friends and family), they still find the course useful, to understand the theory and practice of finding and using digital information.  There is a whole range of behavior they need modeled for them, from online research skills, to evaluating the credibility of resources, to knowing what to foreground in a short essay and how to avoid plagiarism while writing it.  My students are smart and motivated, so even if some of them were under-served by the New York City public education system and are catching up, I am not convinced that these fundamental digital literacy skills are something that other young people ‘just know.’

My students are also learning how to be producers of knowledge and to be part of an academic community. They create blogs during the course, learn to edit a wiki, and experience a high level of interaction with classmates in discussing the readings and ideas of the course.  When I ask them to use Twitter for a group assignment, many students have no previous experience with it, or have only used it to sign up for discounts and coupons from retailers.   It is rewarding to see them coming away with a new understanding of how professionals use social networking tools to share news and ideas — to see them begin to follow some thought leaders and become part of a wider conversation on their own.

While I have been teaching online for almost six years now, I feel as though I need to pay attention to a lot more than what is already happening, only at my university. Along with presentations by many innovative companies at next week’s summit, the conference also brings together a wide range of leaders, from those with backgrounds in politics and education, like Senators George Mitchell and Bob Kerrey, to computer industry pioneers, to technology writers like Steven Johnson.  I just assigned a chapter he wrote on the benefits of gaming to my communications students, many of them young parents, to get them to think about how technology is revolutionizing what constitutes a learning opportunity for young people.  There is also a panel that I am interested to hear on how massively multi-player online games (MMOG) might improve learning outcomes. Middlebury College, where I studied Chinese ten years ago to prepare for my anthropological fieldwork, will be there with the interactive version of the intensive language program that they have since developed.

Things are evolving very quickly, and I want to stay in the vanguard.  Lest we forget why words like ‘revolution’ are being used to talk about online learning innovations, one of the summit panels is called “The Nuclear Option: Should We Just Blow Up the Current System & Start from Scratch?”  I am pretty sure the answer to that is not going to be ‘yes,’ but I am looking forward to coming away with fresh ideas about what the future might hold.

---

Wendy Williams is a media professional, educator, and cultural anthropologist.  She is an online instructor for CUNY School of Professional Studies and lives in Brooklyn.

*Note: Although this article was published on April 12, 2013 prior to the Education Innovation Summit, the content remains relevant for the SPS community.

Why Jason Collins Matters

Basketball is a sport I’ve only paid modest attention to. My knowledge of the sport is very limited. I know Spike Lee sits courtside at the Knicks games and Jack Nicholson is usually seen courtside at Lakers games. I know that Lamar Odom was a Laker and then went somewhere in Texas and then back to California again but that was only because the Kardashian headlines are inescapable at the supermarket and well, Lamar is married to Khloe.

But back to basketball, and really all professional sports. Jason Collins recently announced that he is gay in an essay for Sports Illustrated. I wish that I could say who cares or that it doesn’t matter, but it does matter, and I do care. You should too. Here’s why.

You know someone who is gay. You love someone who is gay. You may not know it, but you do. I promise you that you do.

When I was a kid back in what my kids describe as the Stone Ages, gay was thrown around a lot as an insult. I remember knowing a few girls who were athletic and my fear was that people would think that I was a lesbian like them. I know. Terrible. My fear didn’t come from not liking people who were gay. My fear came from the perceptions that others had. I suppose I had my own perceptions as well including the perception that girls who played sports were lesbians. Actually I knew that wasn’t true and I was secretly a little envious of their athletic ability but not so envious that many labeled them lesbians and some of the names I heard them called privately.

Things have changed somewhat but has it really gotten better? Is Jason Collins the only gay NBA player? NFL? NHL? MLB? I doubt it. So why is nobody coming out? Not that they owe it to the public to disclose. But are they telling the members of their team? I doubt that too.

So why is Jason Collins so important? Why do I love that our President called him to support him in coming out as a gay man and a gay athlete? I love it because I love people who are gay. I love it because I see their struggle and in 2013 still hear gay slurs being whispered privately. I love it because too many kids still think that gay is a funny thing to call someone and that it implies weakness. Too many kids think that it’s ok to call someone a faggot.

A kid that I love was recently taunted with gay slurs. He was repeatedly called “faggot” by some other kids. It wasn’t done in a joking fun kind of way, not that there’s anything funny about that word. The word is ugly and it was used to belittle and diminish. It was a word used to hurt and it did hurt. It didn’t just hurt the kid they called that ugly name though. Those kids hurt his family and his friends. They hurt all of the people who love him.

It hurt because we don’t look at him and see a kid who is gay. We see a kid who is creative and smart and has a beautiful heart. We look at him and see a person that we love, a person who would never hurt anyone with his words or his actions. He happens to be gay. Who is that hurting?

Jason Collins matters because in his eloquent essay he shares his fear of coming out and his worry that his world will fall apart. He talks about dating women and even getting engaged because it was what he considered a “normal” life. In his essay Jason Collins gives us a small glimpse of what it must feel like to hide who you are from so many people and how emotionally exhausting that can be. He matters because in coming out he is paving the way for other athletes and even some young kid who wonders if he will be accepted.

Jason Collins talks about Matthew Shepard and it is a poignant reminder of how much hate there is in the world and how far we’ve come and still have to go. It is a reminder of why it is so important that when we talk about the LGBT community we also remember that they are not just a community but people that we know and love. They are our brothers and sisters, our cousins, our friends, our loved ones. For every Jason Collins there is a kid somewhere who knows that there is hope and that they are not alone.

Programs like The Trevor Project, or on a more local level, Pride For Youth offer support for teens and young adults. Teens and young adults have more options for support, understanding and advocacy than when I was a teenager. We still have a way to go but we’re getting there. We all knew there were gay players in professional sports. Now we have an athlete brave enough to put his name on it. With Jason Collins will come more and hopefully we will look back and wonder what the big deal ever was.

That is why Jason Collins matters.

Kristen is a single mom of 3 kids and studying at The CUNY School of Professional Studies. She is blogging while she still figures out what she wants to be when she grows up.

Election Results Are In!

Congratulations to the newly elected SPS Governing Council for the 2013-2014 academic year. The winners are:

Student Representative: Mary Casey, Online Master’s in Business Management and Leadership. “CUNY provides an outstanding education at a reasonable price. I could have enrolled in an adult masters program at my university that would have been tuition-free, but none of its programs match the SPS MS in Business Leadership and Management Program.” Read Mary’s full statement.

Student Representative: Paul Tuohy, Online Master’s in Business Management and Leadership. “My classes at SPS have been a guide to me in several recent business situations. Furthermore, my classes relate directly both to what I am doing at work now, and to what I wish I could do in the future. The online curriculum, particularly the convenience, has made attending school a possibility.” Read Paul’s full statement.

Alternate Student Representative: Cheri Martinez, Online Master’s in Business Management and Leadership. “…I take pride in figuring out a way to balance my life for the benefit of others and myself.  I have always been passionate about education, and my relentless drive to complete goals that I have set for myself.  This year, my goals are to be more involved and supportive of those missions I feel strongly about.” Read Cheri’s full statement.

The Governing Council of the CUNY School of Professional Studies provides oversight and approves new courses, certificates and degree programs that the school offers as well as advising the Dean of SPS on the administration, coordination, and development and termination of all of its programs and curricula.

Fairytale or Horror Show

When I was a little girl I believed in fairy tales. I never saw past the happy ending to think there could ever be an ugly side to love. In fairy tales the only names called were terms of endearment. The boy never told the girl she was stupid or held his arm pressed against her throat as he hissed expletives. The girl wept openly after romantic gestures, not because the boy whipped a casserole dish past her head over some perceived transgression.

And I don’t know that the girl ever had a marriage counselor ask if she had an escape plan because the boy was usually a prince on a white horse and no escape was needed.

An escape plan…those are some scary words to hear and they were a sharp contrast to the romantic images I had grown up watching on the big screen. In real life my captor wasn’t some ugly villain who would meet an ugly end making way for a happy ending. My captor was my husband.

When ugly does invade the fantasy on screen, the victims look like Julia Roberts and she has the means to fake her death and run off to some charming place that only exists in the movies where a leading man has been cast who will patiently bring back her confidence or save her from the cycle of violence.

Domestic violence isn’t something that gets wrapped up in a neat little ending nor does there seem to be any great musical soundtrack playing in the background. It isn’t about fairytales or fantasies or even love. It is about control. The control one person feels they are entitled to have over another person.

My husband spent weeks in marriage counseling explaining to the counselor all that was wrong with me. I never said a word. Not one word. I listened as my husband practically begged the therapist to help him get me in control. His control.

With each session I was sure that the therapist was looking at my husband with sympathy. As my husband recalled the time I took 45 minutes to grocery shop the fear welled up inside of me. I remembered coming home and carrying in packages from the car. My husband was sitting on the couch when I walked in. It never dawned on me that he should get up and help as I went back and forth from car to kitchen carrying bags. I just remember his stone face and the panic I felt.

The store had been crowded. Only two registers were open. There was an accident on the way home. I hit every read light. It amounted to me being out a little longer than usual but all of those reasons just sounded like excuses. He knew the truth. At least he was sure he did. It wasn’t all innocent things that added an extra 20 minutes. He was sure that I had slept with someone. Maybe it was the produce guy. Maybe it was the guy who repackaged the chopped meat that had leaked. Maybe it was just some random guy who happened to be in the store at the same time. It didn’t matter who it was. It also didn’t matter that he told me I was fat and disgusting and that no man would ever want me. When I was out for too many unaccounted minutes, I was a goddess and no man could resist the temptation that was me.

Just when I thought that the therapist was nodding sympathetically at my husband, he suggested speaking to us privately. I was afraid to feel hope. I had begun to believe the worst things about myself. But there was something about the way he asked to speak to me privately that gave me hope.

My husband left the counseling session that day and never went back. He was sure that the therapist was in love with me. It was more proof that I was a slutty seductress. In my husband’s fantasy, the therapist would be pushing all of his things off of the desk and making it our own private love nest. Maybe I wasn’t the one who watched too many movies.

I finally got my 45 minutes alone with my marriage counselor and he worked fast. He spoke of the importance of an escape plan, a husband who was a police officer and even more scarily, his access to a firearm. Forget the fairy tales. I was the star of my own horror movie.

Peggy is a mom and student at The CUNY School of Professional Studies. Peggy hopes to change the perceptions about what a victim looks like as well as raise awareness about domestic violence. Peggy believes it is possible to break the cycle.

SPS in the Rocky Mountain West

The following post was written by Kristel Brown, M.A. in Applied Theatre class of 2012:

My family and I recently relocated from New York City to Boulder, Colorado.  After eight years in the city, three of which were spent immersed in CUNY’s SPS community as part of both the Disability Studies program and the M.A. in Applied Theatre, it has been a significant, and at times challenging, transition. CUNY’s M.A. in Applied Theatre community is like a cozy home, full of individuals creating sustainable social change through art. These artists are changing their sphere of the world through collaboration and engagement in their diverse communities. Needless to say, it was an incredibly difficult community to say goodbye to.

The beautiful piece of this puzzle is that I’ve discovered that the CUNY community extends across the country. I have encountered fellow Applied Theatre artists throughout both the performing arts and academic worlds in the Denver-Metro area, connected to CUNY’s Applied Theatre program. Through those connections, new work is developing and growing; I am building a new community.

Currently, I am teaching theatre and interactive storytelling with babies and toddlers through Parlando School for the Arts, a community based-after-school arts academy that serves the Boulder area. These classes combine storytelling, music, puppetry, and mime to gently introduce babies and toddlers to the world of theatre and performing arts. Parlando has just received funding for the development of an Early Childhood Theatre and Arts program for children living with developmental disabilities; a program for which I have been asked to create curriculum. Additionally, this summer I will facilitate summer camps with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, through which high school students will devise original musicals and plays.

I am still finding my way, and despite somewhat shaky ground, I have felt the support of the CUNY community from afar. Through the CUNY network, I have found opportunities in this new place, that I would not have found otherwise. The skills I acquired while in the M.A. Applied Theatre program are unique and new to this area. Furthermore, my connection to this diverse web of New York-based artists and practitioners has served as an asset to the work I am building in my new home. Conferences, workshops, and a myriad of resources are a simple plane-ride away. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring pieces of New York City to the Rocky Mountain West, and ecstatic to see where this new path leads.

The Master’s Degree in Applied Theatre, the first program of its kind in the United States, is a sequential, ensemble-based program for students interested in the use of theatre to address social and educational issues in a wide range of settings. The program stresses the unity of theory and practice, and is linked to the professional applied theatre work of the renowned CUNY Creative Arts Team.

Talking About Life With La Toya…As In Jackson

What can I say about La Toya Jackson? She is a world famous icon, pop star, author, television personality, businesswoman and so much more. She has made us sing, laugh, cry, and even wear leather headbands. She posed for Playboy twice and had one of the top selling issues.

I see her often, when I’m checking out at the supermarket. Ok, so I’m actually the one in the supermarket and she’s on the cover of a magazine but yesterday our worlds collided when she called me up for a chat. Yes. You read that correctly. La Toya Jackson called me yesterday to talk about life, or more specifically, Life With La Toya.

La Toya was a contestant on this season’s All-Star Celebrity Apprentice following her appearance on a previous season in which she was fired and then convinced The Donald that she deserved another chance. He gave it and she was back on battling it out and showing us that she is more than beautiful clothes and accessories.

La Toya has always been a smart business woman and philanthropist so it was more than just battling it out in the boardroom The opportunity to raise money for charity was a factor and she explained, “I didn’t win the first time and I said, you know what? I’m going to battle this one out and see what I do.”

Despite it not ending well for her she had positive things to say about the show as well as producer, Chuck LaBella. “I think it’s a great show,” and, “I really enjoy the show,” although she laughed and said it is “like torture.” Watching at home we don’t get to see how involved the tasks can be or how much time is put into it. We see the condensed version of the task and then the boardroom brawling. La Toya certainly handled herself well no matter what the outcome and she did raise, first time around, $65,000 for her charity, Aids Project, LA.

Next for La Toya is her new reality show Life With La Toya. Every face of her life has been lived under a microscope so it was surprising that she would want them following her around for a television show. La Toya acknowledged that the gossip and false stories will never stop but felt that, “the public thinks they know you. They think they know who you are but its perceptions or stories that are put out there that are not true.” Her new show gives people the opportunity to, “see who I am and what I do and what I’m like.”

She also considers it an extension of her memoir, Starting Over. La Toya escaped an abusive marriage describing it as, “when you were beaten, if you didn’t say or do the things he wanted you to do or you were locked in the house…” but also wants to provide hope. “I want women to know that you can always get away no matter what. You can always, I mean always start anew.” She spoke of the importance of living your life, your own life. “You must tell yourself I’m doing things my way and I’m going to do it in a positive manner, in a positive way.”

La Toya Jackson has had much of her life played out in the press. She has survived tragedy and also had some moments that could only be described as magical. Now she is letting us all have a glimpse of her world in her new show Life With La Toya. Saturdays at 10:30 pm on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Kristen is a single mom of 3 kids and studying at The CUNY School of Professional Studies. She is blogging while she still figures out what she wants to be when she grows up.