John Lyman School HOT Report Nancy Fishell, HOT Site Coordinator

This is our seventeenth year as a HOT School. This program, sponsored by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, has helped us create the unique school climate that exists here at John Lyman. Our HOT School involvement has provided us with a great deal of professional knowledge and expertise. We continue to work on immersion as our integration goal where the lines between subject areas are hard to see. The final goal is to create a learning environment where all students succeed and enjoy doing so while obtaining the skills they will need to be life long learners.

As part of our HOT involvement we continue serving as a mentor school for our newest HOT School, John Daniels School in New Haven. This year Mrs. Hadlock’s, Mrs. Leach’s, Mrs. Sibiskie’s and Ms Anderson’s classes will continue to work with teachers from Daniels. Having worked at Daniels in the spring, actor Christopher Eves is working on a short residency at Lyman that uses his “Tapestry” format. Teachers will continue to make partner visits between schools. This artist residency will provide students and teachers with a theater based experience and provide teachers with tools in acting assessment to use in the future. The JLPA will fund another residency with Christopher in January for the remaining 3/4 classes.

Visual artist Susan Rosano will enhance the science curriculum of first and second grade students in several curricular areas. The students will be creating art that reflects their learning about plant life, parts of a plant and the natural world. This will include a focus on environmental awareness. Students will develop plans with Susan that they will transfer and paint on recycled oil drums.

Anne Cubberly will join us as our HOT School artist this year. She is a visual artist who will work with our 3/4s on colonial traditions. Students will create items such as shoes, toys, and lanterns by working as apprentices. They will discuss the trades common to the period and learn first hand how to barter their goods. We are seeking in this residency to experience how colonial people, especially children, lived and worked.

Motion 360 will perform here in support of our 1/2 science curriculum on balance and motion. They will help our students make connections between classroom experiments and the dance performance. Students will be exposed to creative problem solving strategies as the performers interact with a variety of materials on stage. We hope this performance will bring science alive.

Ann Shapiro, professional storyteller and folk singer, will highlight our core ethical values of responsibility, respect, courage, honesty and kindness in a performance at our Kindergarten Friendship day. All Region 13 Kindergartners will participate in this event hosted by JLPA.

All teaching artists work in conjunction with teachers to develop and sustain residences that enhance the students’ experiences. Our goal is to build residencies that sustain the leaning garnered within the residency and provide tools to improve student leaning across time. All residencies and major trips are planned through our interdisciplinary planning team whose members include both parents and teachers. The dates for these activities have for the most part been added to our calendars so watch your Wednesday Envelopes for information on when your child will be working with a resident artist.

We will also be hosting three HOT Leadershops this year. These workshops are opportunities for other HOT School teachers and interested educators to observe HOT practices in motion. We are offering Leadershops on HOT strategies, Arts Integration and Assemblies.

As a HOT school we believe that strong arts will increase our students expressive vocabulary. Our program will give them the tools to communicate and learn through their strongest intelligences, and to do so with confidence. Arts integration is the key to our goals of problem solving and flexible thinking. Learning to see and use interconnections helps make learning easier. Democratic practice in the form of class constitutions, school senate, Students jobs (bus patrol, midday trash pick up, collecting lunch trays, returning lunch tickets, playground equipment, etc.) or simply voting on the name of a story character creates a school environment in which we are all invested.