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Meet Elizabeth Travelslight, MAP Associate
Sarah Anderson
January 24th 2012
What was your first impression of World Savvy?
My first impression of World Savvy was “Wow! These folks sure are popular!” I had initially learned about World Savvy through my partner Eric who works for the international humanitarian medical aid non-profit EMERGENCY USA. He met World Savvy’s Development Director Edward Wang tabling at a United Nations Day event here in San Francisco and that’s how I initially learned about the Media & Arts Program Associate position. Once the application process was underway and I started mentioning to friends and colleagues that I had applied, I heard time and again “World Savvy? Those guys are so awesome!” or “World Savvy! I’ve always wanted to work there!” Needless to say, the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response got me even more excited about the job and I felt quite confident that World Savvy would be a good place to be. And it is! It’s been a wonderfully welcoming and supportive work environment and it’s clear that the mission really guides our work and our work with one another.
What do you find most challenging about the Media & Arts Program?
The Media & Arts Program is challenging, but also so much fun. Every teacher is different, every school is different, every student is different. So developing a really cool, creative project that introduces this year’s theme of Sustainable Communities, integrates well with teachers’ current lesson plans, and really engages student learning across a very diverse spectrum of students can be a tough puzzle. But it’s the kind of puzzle I enjoy and it encourages me to continuously hone my skills as an artist, educator, and organizer. I love it.
Also, teaching is incredibly hard work. Often teachers can feel stretched thin by being over-worked and under-resourced and the MAP is something they undertake in addition to a very full plate of responsibilities. So the MAP can be challenging for teachers. Therefore, I feel it is very important that our time together as collaborators be useful and productive, but also liberating and exciting in a way that supports our work as educators and energizes our personal and professional growth. That’s what the best challenges are for!
What do you think will change about global education and art education over the next five years?
I hope that the spirit of internationalism and global citizenship continues to grow. The planet really needs that heightened level awareness if we are ever going to find that next level of balance with one another and with our environment. Art education for me is primarily about encouraging world-making skills, cultivating our imaginations and critical capacities alongside the tools and techniques required to realize new ways of being and relating to each other and to the world around us. Let’s be stewards and producers of the world we need and really want rather than consumers of a world that we’re being sold and told to want. Art can teach us that.
In the US in particular, a concrete re-investment in public education could do so much in five years. We could start to reverse generations of chronic under-funding and set the tone for the next fifty years. Too many public school students, particularly students of color, have been robbed over the last few decades. Computers, music, art, recess, reduced class size , and nutritious meals are not luxuries. They’re pretty basic but it seems that increasingly schools feel that they cannot afford them and so most students, parents, and teachers make do without them. I imagine teachers being paid a fair living-wage that reflects the depth of the responsibility they bear in educating our children and youth. I imagine smaller class sizes and more personalized attention for every student and more reasonable workloads for teachers. I imagine clean and well maintained facilities in every school district; more high quality computer labs that allow all students to develop 21st Century communication skills; and more student run urban gardens and farms that teach 21st Century ecology skills. The funds are there and always have been, but government spending priorities are sadly skewed. In the meantime, non-profits communities like World Savvy and the teachers we work with do an amazing job to fill the gap and lead the way so that we don’t lose sight of our future and responsibilities entirely.
What do you do when you aren't wearing your teaching artist hat?
I’m not sure that the teaching artist hat is a hat I ever really take off. It goes well with everything! Even when I am not working, I am engaged with the world as an artist and at present the MAP is my primary art project. So I am always mulling things over in the back of my mind and discovering new ways to make projects more enticing and enriching. And that doesn’t feel like work, it’s fun! I’m getting married in September, so I suppose I’ve been wearing a “commitment ceremony planner hat” recently, and that’s just another kind of art project. I grew up here in the San Francisco Bay Area as a first-generation Filipina-American and so my mom and extended family are close by and I enjoy my time with them a lot.
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