all the stars — benjamin lee hicks

all the stars

was a non-profit initiative designed to invite community members with a range of skills, knowledge and experiences into the life of a public school classroom… To include folks who are artists, activists, organizers, caregivers, etc. - *who hold some of the many important roles in our society that they are rarely adequately supported in, recognized for, or paid to share* - in the planning and teaching of elementary school curriculum. We aimed to question the hierarchies that mainstream society has set up around the title of "teacher", while also asking ourselves "*what would it be like?* " to pay more direct attention to the **education of hearts** in the public school system.
**2014 - 2015**

intentions:

To co-create an open and community-connected public school classroom;

To raise sufficient funds to provide fair pay to all community contributors;

To become positive examples of what can happen when members of a school community consciously decide to act on the intention of taking better care of one another (and ourselves) – to the best of our abilities.

inspiration.1

This is a portrait of my students in June 2014, nearing the end of their grade 2/3 years.
2014 – 2015 was grade 3/4 for this little group of wonders, and the second consecutive school year that I had the pleasure of being their classroom teacher.

They were (and no doubt still ARE) all sorts of awesomeness, and they each learned very differently.

One of my main goals during my time with them was to help each one learn to recognize, understand and self-advocate for the things that they most need personally to thrive as students in an education system that does not always see, and/or support them in their uniqueness + with the care and compassion that they deserve.

inspiration.2

As a society, we have come to place a much higher value on some work, some forms of education, and some PEOPLE than others; leaving those whose citizenship status, english proficiency level, culture of origin, skin colour, socio-economic status, sexuality, gender identity /presentation + various other derivations from the majority "norm" to fend for themselves and to organize care for each other. This city is chock full of brilliant, caring, creative, resilient, passionate and talented individuals who spend a lot of their time and resources doing work for others that is either UNpaid or vastly under paid. Therefore, the second very important inspiration for the ALL THE STARS program was every one of us who has lived below the poverty line and struggled with all the emotional and physical repercussions of that life in order to also create work that we can love and believe in...

This small project was in no way a solution to these problems, but it was indeed a whole-hearted recognition of the amazing integrity and resilience of some wonder-full humans!

summary:

Over a 9-month period during the school year of 2014 - 2015, we worked together to achieve;

25+ hours of unique programming by;
10 different diverse, talented and very lovely humans, including;
Noah Kenneally, Caroline Niklas Gordon, Esie Mensah, syrus marcus Ware, Tristan R. Whiston, Sedina Fiati, nisha ahuja, Kumari Giles, Raz Rotem, and Hannah Dees, covering topics and experiences such as;
neighbourhood tree-tours + dendrology education, dance/creative movement, Afrofusion dance, arts-based/emotional self-awareness education, music and rhythm, yoga (including the history of yogic knowledge and practice + colonial practices of cultural appropriation), fabric arts/spinning/weaving and felting, personal magic-making and story-telling.

Following each ALL THE STARS experience, my students and I always took time to reflect individually upon questions such as;

what did we think about the way that this lesson was taught?
did this lesson work well with what we know about our own personal learning styles? why and/or why not?
can we describe what we think is “sticking with” us most after this experience and why?
what did we learn about ourselves and our own interests, passions and learning styles from this experience?
what questions are we left with?
what can/will we do with those questions?

We then discussed our thoughts and ideas about these questions together as a group.

A significant goal of this follow-up activities was help one another learn to recognize, understand verbally express more of the things that we most need personally to continue to thrive in an education system that is (still) not built to support a whole-child and whole community approach to learning. One of my significant wishes for this ALL THE STARS initiative was that it might help to begin re-making some of that potential energy and hope-full space around learning…

One intention of the **ALL THE STARS** program was to provide fair pay to all community educators who come into the classroom to teach, regardless of their "credentials"…
**how:**
In the early stages of project development, 100% of the funding required to get this program started and keep it running came from the sale of original art prints. The art work was my own, and the labour / materials required to produce the prints were my donation to this initiative. Each print was sold at a price of $50 CAD… When a community member came to teach the students about a topic of their choosing, they were paid at a rate of $50/hour. Therefore, each print sold directly funded one community educator to share one hour of their time and talents in our classroom.

about the heat-press print process and product:
Heat-press printing is a method that I developed to create reproductions of original art work with a high pigment density and textured finish that is similar to a silk screen print. It is an individual, physical transfer process of a digital print onto a high quality, 200 lb, rag paper.

SEE EXAMPLE TO LEFT: “every living thing” brown on fawn - 11"x14"

as the year progressed…

Early on in the 2014 - 2015 school year, I began a project of illustrating a long format poem titled a love story (see also above), which I had written for my students the previous year. As I completed each full-page illustration (25 of the 46 pages in total) I posted the original immediately on my website and on social media and sold each (9x12) piece of mixed-media art work for $100. Over the next several months, I sold 24 of those 25 pages and raised much of the money that was needed to fund our ALL THE STARS guest teachers, outings and supplies.

about our community educator program:

who is a community educator?

ALL THE STARS was about challenging everyone's ideas (mine, yours, society's in general, and even the kids') about who gets to be an "educator" and whose voices are important in what we learn about our world + the way that we learn it. Although it was strongly suggested that participants like hanging out with awesome 8-9 year old kids, they did not need to have any formal teaching experience or credentials in order to submit a program proposal. All unique and creative skills were encouraged, and there were also a few particular skills that I put out a call for based on the interests of my students + distinct gaps in my own skills/knowledge/experience as their classroom teacher. These ideas included; music making, dance and drama, yoga and/or meditation practices, histories of colonization from a feminist and non-western perspective, the sciences and mathematics, construction, carpentry and other trades + working with plants and/or animals.

I was also particularly committed to working with community educators who could help to affirm and mirror the experiences of people of colour, black and indigenous folks, people with immigration or refugee experiences in their family history, LGBT2SQ+ identifying folks, people of varying physical abilities and those of less affluent class backgrounds / who were or had been under-housed or homeless. In addition, we aimed to prioritize funding for people who make their living in part or in whole through the arts, social activism, organizing for social justice and sustainable community building.

The students in my class came from a wide range of identities and experiences that were not often reflected by the adults who teach and mentor them. These included aspects of South Asian, East Asian, Caribbean, South American and North African cultures and languages. Several also identified themselves on the spectrum of cognitive "dis"ability (including Autism, and/or processing issues affecting traditional school-type learning). It was therefor especially important to me that any adults who were invited in to participate in the community of our classroom could kindly, compassionately and skilfully understand + appreciate our diverse needs and interests.

Community educators were invited to teach just about ANYthing that was age appropriate / in the format of their choice. The content of the lesson was actually far less important to the goals of this project than the process of exposing the students to different teaching styles by supportive and interested adults who could both mirror and challenge their own experiences.

payment for community educators:

One important intention of the ALL THE STARS program was to provide fair pay to all community educators who came into the classroom to teach, regardless of their "credentials". When these individuals came in to spend time with us and to teach the students about a topic of their own passion and expertise, they were consistently paid at a rate of $50/hour. Occasionally, one of these educators let us know that they were in financial position that made it possible and personally preferable for them to donate their own fees back into the ALL THE STARS program. If someone chose to do this, they were also gifted one print from the fundraising gallery (of my heatpress prints) per hour of their teaching time. The monetary equivalent of their salary will then be passed on to another program participant who indicated a greater financial need.

In order to allow as many community educators as possible to participate within our very limited funding structure, we asked that proposals be submitted along the lines of a single, hour-long "lesson" or experience-making plan to begin with. In a few instances, we ended up having a 2-3-part session with one educator because of interest that they generated in my students + their own energy and excitement for our work together. In most instances, the educators came to our central Toronto classroom to deliver their programs (*a few pictures of the classroom space we offered are shown in the photo gallery below). On a few occasions however, we travelled to a professional dance studio, a local community centre, and/or the green space, parks and community gardens within walking distance of our school. Our arts-based fundraising plan allowed us to provide many basic art and crafting supplies + to purchase a few specialty items on certain occasions.