Vanguard High School
2020 - 2021 Residencies
Fall 2020 - 9th Grade Remote Residency
Radical Self Care | Movement Meditations
In Charan Morris’ Health Class, the freshmen students were learning about nutrition while engaging in physical education and conditioning practices. Our residency together provided synchronous time for additional embodied practices, inspirations from radical artists and moments to pause and practice self-care.
The class allowed individuals to build and reflect on their own self-care tool kit while exploring many creative philosophies and activities. We looked at laughter as a pillar of health by starting each session out with a joke and progressed into a series of movement practices and mediations that focused on the following: breath in our body, grounding ourselves, our hands & feet, our spine, deep listening, sound vibrations and mobility in our joints. We closed the unit with learning a series of developmental movement exercises that we all experienced from birth. Dance clips were introduced that included works by Robert Battle, Shen Wei, and the dance styles of Bharatanatyam, Swing Dance, and the Twist! Each session closed with an inspiring quote from unconventional artists ranging from Audre Lorde to Chita Rivera to Katherine Dunham.
This unit was inspired by feedback from Vanguard students during the initial pivot to remote learning in the spring of 2020, as well as the ongoing Radical Self Care Youth Corps program created with the Armory by Asma Feyijinmi, Donna Costello, and Amo Ortiz during the summer of 2020.
This residency was facilitated by Armory Teaching Team members Donna Costello and Nancy Gomez in collaboration with Vanguard classroom teacher Charan Morris.
Spring 2021 - 10th Grade Remote Residency
This spring residency explored how selected artists from the 100 Years | 100 Women Project Archive honor and celebrate women and non-binary people fighting for freedom. Students reflected on their own experiences connected to freedom, equity, and social justice and compared their ideas to those of the 100 Years | 100 Women artists. Finally, students created their own “freedom fighter” characters and wrote original monologues in those characters’ voices, considering the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations they were studying in their 10th grade ELA class. Students also acted as sound designers for the virtual stage of their “freedom fighter” characters by creating character-inspired soundscapes and playlists. The residency culminated in a celebratory reading of students’ “freedom fighter” monologues by guest actors, including their sound designs.
This residency was facilitated by Armory Teaching Team members Kate Bell and Alexander Davis in collaboration with Vanguard classroom teacher Linas Gintautas.
Spring 2021 - 12th Grade Remote Residency
Pulling inspiration from the works of Carrie Mae Weems, Bill T. Jones’ Afterwardsness, and the Meditative Film We Hold These Truths; we focused on being documentarians of our own stories for this year’s spring residency at Vanguard.
Each week of our residency, the students took themes from their past, present, and future to create a multidisciplinary artistic response. This collaged group reflection and statement took the shape of a Video Yearbook.
Vanguard’s Class of 2021 Video Yearbook is a rich time capsule that the students can look to in years to come to remember where they were and how they felt when their world went digital.
This residency was in collaboration with Vanguard educators: Tokumbo Bodunde, Margaret Lum, and Jo-Ann Grande
Armory Teaching Team: Neil Tyrone Pritchard and Emily Bruner