Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Insightful Questions, the podcast where we dive deep into the big ideas shaping Eastside Prep's community and beyond. I'm your host, Sam Uswak. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with different members of our EPS community. Join us as we ask the insightful questions that help us lead with compassion and listen with intention. Let's get started.
Welcome.
Today we're joined by Lisa Freistack, who's worn just about Every hat at EPS since 2015. Currently, she's our middle school drama teacher and production coordinator, directing the middle school play and lending her talents to the upper school play and the all school spring musical. And here's a fun fact. Lisa's also the mastermind behind the faculty staff Halloween costume themes each year.
We're also excited to have Ginger Ellingson with us, who started at EPS in 2014. She is now our Director of Fine and Performing arts. Under her leadership, the music program has flourished, supporting student passion in both choir and instrumental music. Ginger has a real knack for weaving together our visual arts, music and drama through yearly themes that connect with the school's focus. Something that never fails to impress me.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I've been thinking a lot about empathy. Yeah.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Is it because you just closed your show?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's because I closed the show, but I also think it's because I've been thinking about if empathy is learned or if it is inherent, and then how do we teach?
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Like a nature nurture conundrum.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: You got it. Yeah. Like, are people just born empathetic or are there ways that we can combat those who don't have that ability?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Is it okay to not have empathy?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Oh, I don't think so. I think it's part of what makes.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Us human, part of what connects us.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
To have those experiences and then see experiences from other people's viewpoint.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: So staying on the theme of empathy, the art forms you participate in, they're necessarily collaborative. Like, you know, like ensemble acting. You know, we just closed Ramona Quimby.
There's upcoming music concerts. Super exciting times.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: So, you know, really diving into the sort of teaching aspect of empathy. What specific strategies or activities help foster the understanding and the compassion you're looking for amongst the students?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: I always end up going. I mean, for me, I always end up going back to sel. So social, emotional learning. So what are those tenants? What are those beings? What gives me framework to be able to assess if students are hitting those certain amounts of empathy, of collaboration, of conflict resolution. I mean, that I think is one of the biggest ones that we. We can deal with in the arts is, you know, my vision could be completely different from Ginger's vision for something or Alec's vision for something. And how do we work together to have those uncomfortable conversations to then go, okay, this is the end goal. And that uncomfortable conversation was part of the process. Yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Oh, it was like perhaps an expected moment as opposed to something to be avoided.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's hard enough as adults to sit in that uncomfortable and then magnify that by a thousand when you're a middle school student.
So how do you teach it? How do I foster a community of students who can take risks and feel comfortable and feel safe to do that? I model that behavior. You know, I got up and did a monologue in front of my seventh and eighth graders, and I let them give me feedback.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: And so I show them, I'm the same as you here.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: So I don't know if that's what you do in your class.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: Yeah, no. I think you hit on something really important there, which is like, we're working with the students through the artistic process, so we are really integrated with them in the work. Making sure that you give time at the beginning of a class to make the environment comfortable and allow the students to take risks is really important and something that I feel like I continue to learn as a teacher, that that investment at the beginning of the term will always pay off. And at first it feels like it takes so much time, but if you rush through it, speaking from personal experience, if you rush through it and you start to do content, content, content, and you haven't kind of established the framework for how do we work the process? How do we work the artistic process? You will get to a place where the kids know the content, but they're not feeling it together. And they're not really, like, person to person next to each other. Approaching the material with empathy, really, for each other and for the work, for your work as the director in front of them, who's leading them on it, I think. And something else you said about risk taking is like making sure that all of our students are coming into class with different comfort levels and different experiences prior to that day. And that's going to inform how comfortable they feel in class. And so making sure that the student who has no experience or the student who's had tough experiences and the student who loves to be the center of attention are all put in positions where they have to take risks, and you're praising their Process. And you're praising the risk and not the product at the end or the outcome is how I think you can establish, like, that we're all in here to do work, and we've all got work to do. It's not like somebody's already figured it out and somebody else hasn't. And you're a partner in that as well.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: I feel like you've touched on two universal necessities for teaching. The first is taking the time to establish the culture. So, you know, in your case, it's that ensemble work. It's that empathy for one another. It's that collaboration that if you zip by and just jump into the content, it's not gonna be as rich an experience. And to me, that holds in any class.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Yeah, right. Absolutely.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: You know, and the second one, I can't remember.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: So risk taking. Risk taking.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Risk taking, yeah.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: That's just a part of learning, too. Right? I mean, the artistic process is all.
Is a learning process, and it is present in every single classroom. And teaching is an art, and it's a science. So there's. You know, what we do is similar to all other classes across campus. It's just that our content is a little bit different.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: And again, that was the second universal truth is process over product.
How you get there, enjoying the journey, focusing on the journey, and not simply being outcomes driven.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Listen, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Well, and how hard is that for you sometimes?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: You know, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Opening night.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm putting my product on display for the broader community.
There is a level of just so much anxiety, I think, that comes with that, but pride.
And there's also, you know, talking about classroom. We also deal with students outside of the classroom. So it's. How do you change that hat going from classroom, Freystack? You know, the kids always say that I'm so nice in class, but I'm so mean as a director.
I disagree. I give them gifts, like, the gift of acting in front of an audience.
But, yeah, there is a level of product, and we are product driven. We're in front of an audience. That date's not gonna change, especially with music concerts, too. We're not gonna push it back if we're not ready.
It's gonna go out there whether it works or not. And there have been days and times where it's been like, I don't know, like Ginger said, we put in that effort at the beginning to create that safe space for me to be like, okay, let me be a little extra critical here.
And Here are my standards. And at this point, this was my fifth show at APS that just closed, and there's a level of expectation with the work that I put out. And I don't want to, for lack of a better word, dumb things down for middle school students.
They can handle tough conversations, and they can handle having those moments of self reflection. And I think that it's very important at that specific age, as they're starting to learn who they are, to be able to experience other people's viewpoints.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: So take us into the performance spaces, the classrooms, the stage. You know, take our many, many dozen of viewers into those spaces. And could you concretely share a particular practice or a particular activity? You engage with the students to promote that empathy so we can kind of be there with you.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: That's a good one.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: It is a good one.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: I thought of it all.
It's not written on this piece of paper.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: I thought of that one. You threw a curveball there.
What is something that we do in class that is an actual activity?
Honestly? Talking.
Communication.
I do bell ringers all the time. For those of you who don't know what a bell ringer is, it's right at the beginning of the class, I ask a question or do some sort of journaling of some sort of whatever it might be. And for a long time, it was questions like, if you could be a color today, what kind of color would you be?
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Ooh.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: And then we'd share it out. And it's a simple moment to have them touch base with their own emotions in that moment. Are they red today? And what does that mean for me as an educator to meet them where they are emotionally, and then maybe it means a shift in that day's lesson. You know, it's a temperature check.
So being aware, I think, of their own emotions makes them aware of other people's, and therefore, it's laying the groundwork of that empathetic dialogue.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Well, and it sounds like, I think you shared something really important there, that as you're teaching a lesson about empathy, if you then shift the lesson based on what you're hearing, you're modeling it, you know, you're just doing it in the moment, and they see that response.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Ginger, do you have one?
[00:11:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
What Lisa referred to about having them recall their own feelings in situations, I think asking the students to recall an experience when they've been moved by art and putting them back in that situation of how did you feel? What was it that made you feel that way? What was impacting you? And then what did you do with that? How did you then impact the world around you or the people around you, or how did you impact your day because you had that artistic experience? I think it puts them in a place of realizing how powerful art is, and then you. I. So, like today in class, we started off with, like, tell me your artsy moment from the weekend. And that's how I did attendance. And it was super fast. It's super quick. And students have all kinds of answers, from books to movies to a Broadway show. One of them was in New York this weekend and saw Wicked, which is cool. Lisa had some of the students working on her show like upper schoolers working on the middle school show. So they're all engaged in art all the time. And so taking a moment to be specific about how has art impacted you? And then how did you impact art and the world around you afterwards?
You can bring that into your class and make them feel empowered to then make the concert an artistic moment. There's going to be people who come into the concert weary from the world, and you have an opportunity to empower them or comfort them or even give them a glimmer of wow. These students are engaged in making beauty at school every day. That's how they start their day. Isn't that beautiful? And to know that as the world turns, there's lots of pain and sorrow, but there's also joy and beauty that people are engaged in all the time. So empowering the students to create that moment for people, for themselves, also for the person next to them. The other more specific and scientific answer I have is that because singing specifically and also, well, all music is centered around kind of aligning time through beats. Together, we breathe together. Even string instruments who aren't using air to create tone will breathe together. And so before you ever create sound, you're looking at people around you, and you're just so present and in the moment with them. And then you can.
And you all come in together, whether it's playing an instrument or singing. And your heartbeats synchronize when you're engaged in the same musical passage and you've breathed together and your air efficiency is the same. So in those very real ways, you're experiencing the same feelings and physical phenomena of singing or making music together. And there's just some essential empathy that is happening at that time when you're engaged in that kind of music making.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Together, it's not just a psychological response, it's a physiological response.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Yes. Here's another example. When conductors are in front of Orchestras or choirs, specifically, if you do your prep gesture, so you're indicating with your hands that you're asking them to sing, to get ready to enter, if you do it with your mouth closed, their breath is going to be shallow and their entrance will often be late. But if you do it with your. If you do it at the same time and you do it with your mouth open, they have a bigger breath, a deeper breath, and they're more in time for their entrance. So that is a really specific and physical way that musicians practice empathy all the time.
And it also highlights that the conductor and the director of these art projects, like, we are in it with them, we're partners in this. And I think they can feel that. They can feel the trust and so the willingness to practice empathy is there.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, just you talking about them breathing together. I do. You know, this one warmup that I've always done before a show, no matter which show it's been, and I have them stand in a circle and they take each other's hands, which middle schoolers is a big thing for them to do. And I ask them to close their eyes, and we stand there with our hands together, eyes closed, and I tap one student on the shoulder, and I ask that student to squeeze the person's hand next to them. And I send that squeeze one and one and one and one. And it keeps going around and around. And so they have to be aware of one another to get the pulse. And I call that the cast pulse. And so we are all that one heartbeat going out together on the stage. We're telling that one story together. Those are the people who have your back when you mess up. Those are the people who cheer with you when you succeed. So that, I think, is also something that's very physical. And I actually step in the circle with them to do that. So they're not doing it for me. We're doing it together.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that notion of being there for one another, you know, that's a form of empathy, too. I got your back, you know. So let's talk about, you know, when you're looking ahead and thinking about, you know, how you're going to choose the music the students sing, or what plays, what musicals students are going to perform.
How does empathy influence that? And do you have some specific stories or scripts that resonate with that value from over the years?
[00:17:32] Speaker B: I mean, in my director's note, if you took a moment to read it for Ramona, four of the last five shows I've done have been based off of Books. They've been pieces of literature that either I find important to my upbringing, and that brings a connection for me and an entryway to the students. There are just some really, truly awful scripts out there for middle school students.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. What makes them awful?
[00:18:03] Speaker B: No feel. There's no feel. There's no heart in it.
It's like if AI met somebody who thought what middle school theater should be, and then they mashed it all up together.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: You had a powerful professional development experience this summer. I did, and it sounds like one of the sessions was on.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: It was pretty much, yeah.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Okay, tell us about.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: It was empathetic dialogue. Well, being in the actor's experience, that kind of thing. You know, how to make sure actors don't have all kinds of anxiety around them, which, you know, we're naturally anxious because we feel all of the feelings.
But during that piece, the question why now? Why us? Why this piece and why this community?
And those have been some guiding principles, I think, that have helped me, at least in the classroom, when I'm talking about certain pieces of art with students, where I go, okay, well, why this piece in particular?
What will it add to the student's experience? What will it add to the student's life?
[00:19:15] Speaker A: How about you, Ginger?
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I think Lisa did a nice job of talking about who the students are and what kind of storytelling is going to help their experiences, help them grow. And I think the next level of that is like, we look at the kid, we look at the class, then we think about it for the year, and then we think about it throughout the students. Maybe four years or seven years or eight years at eps, we think about what the whole community is engaged in and what storytelling would be valuable for the community.
I think all of those moments can create relevancy for what we do. And that when we are empathetic with our choices and we look outwards and inwards in order to inform what material we're choosing, it creates relevance for people when we get more engagement from the students and the audiences in both music and visual art and theater in all of it. So I think it's. It's kind of easy at a school to come to just expect art, because this is one of the places where art lives and the kids are doing it all the time. But if we can catch people and move them and make it feel relevant and create some empathy with them about storytelling and what values are we uplifting and whose stories are we telling, we can do a lot of good beyond our students and ourselves.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think I think the central piece, when we come to those discussions of what we're going to be doing or, hey, I have this idea, what do you think is, how is it going to be successful for the student? So when we're choosing musicals, for example, we have to know the student, student or the population to be able to go, will our students be successful if we put them on stage to sing and dance this? Or are we going to make them embarrassed? Right.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: And yeah, in the music. Music is such a beautiful way of exploring time and space. People have always made music. So thinking about it as a tool of exploration, who are the students, who am I, who's our audience, and what languages are we showcasing, is a great way of exploring all the different ways that music serves people.
And people are serving the art. I'm serving the art, and the kids are serving the art. For example, we are singing a piece by a Indian American composer. She is trained in Western classical composition as well as Hindustani composition. And she's written a piece that uses the scale of an Indian rag. And the lyrics of the piece are in English. And it's about the morning, it's about the end of daylight savings time. And. But the scale is a Hindustani scale. And so one of my students who has studied Hindustani music for a long time is preparing a presentation not only for the class, but also to share with the audience about this rag, the musical makeup of it, as well as the cultural place that it holds, because rags often are sung at certain times of the day.
So he's going to do some educating for all of us around that. And so finding those moments of, like, bringing in who the students are, who is the audience, where are we in the world?
Is a really fun way of creating connection and relevancy and empathy with everyone.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: It strikes me that when we do work with students to cultivate, build, emphasize empathy, we might find them at their most vulnerable. And certainly, as you're describing these examples and describing your classrooms, I'm thinking about how so there were very few times when I was teaching history when I was asking my students to, quote, put themselves out there in the manner you are insisting, requiring your students to do. So, how do you.
How do you navigate the simple fact that you're asking students to maybe move to a more emotionally charged place or a more emotionally vulnerable place that respects and supports their emotional boundaries.
Seems like a tall order. Yeah, but I bet you're really good at it.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: I think naming it, honestly is the first thing. So creating the time and space for it through the kind of empathy building that we've been talking about, but then also naming it and saying, like, we're not doing our work unless we're uncomfortable sometimes. And. And so we're gonna get there, and we're gonna be respectful about it, and then we're gonna move on. So naming it and honoring it and then not dwelling on it and accepting that it's part of the process. And, like, okay, we're moving on. So I think, like, for me, it's creating the space but not dwelling. So my classroom pacing is pretty fast for that reason of, like, oh, we're having a moment. We're gonna embrace this, and now we're moving on. Gotcha.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Mine's more like a reflection piece where it's. You know, sometimes we'll.
I try to balance the levity with the depth and do, like, okay, we're gonna do a warmup that's got us silly, and we're, you know, giggling, and you're playing around, that kind of thing. And then when I ask them to maybe work with a group of students that they would never hang out with outside of my classroom, then they can do that because we've got our sillies out. And then now we're moving on to something that we can work on together, to then embrace that weird and uncomfortable and making sure that kids still have time to be kids.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And the other thing I'll add is we're approaching our work as ensemble work, so it is necessary that the kids are engaged with each other and with us in it. And so when they feel those moments of synergy and they start to understand the power of people practicing empathy and doing it together, they know that they're not alone. And so it's scary, but there's also a lot of safety in that and knowing that the person next to you is invested in your success because it's also their success.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Wow.
Our kids are lucky to have you. I mean, in.
In a single breath, you sort of delved into all that makes learning, all that makes teaching challenging, and it's all there for them. So thank you.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Appreciate you spending some time today.
[00:26:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: I mean, I'm lucky. I get to do my art, right?
[00:26:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: I get to do art on a daily basis.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: You know, and I'm. I'm one of the very few people who actually gets to do what my degree said that I was going to do, so I take that as a win.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: I like to think of what I do on a day to day basis as a particular form of art. But I don't know if everyone sees it that way.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, it absolutely is.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Well, but I've told you, what my first year teacher in undergrad told us was that teaching was 80% theater and 20% content.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Oh, that resonates. Well, thank you, Ginger, Lisa. Really appreciate it. Can't wait to see future performances. And thank you for everything you do for our kids and community.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Thanks, Sam.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: For more insights.
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[00:27:57] Speaker B: Sa.
