Timmy Simonds and Frank Traynor meet with an interdisciplinary group of teachers to reflect on the subjectivity of teaching and how it is represented in the shape and architecture of a puppet theatre. The faculty meeting was held at P.P.O.W. Gallery during “Airhead” (June 28 - August 9, 2024) and as a part of Miss Othmar’s School for Teachers.

Collaborating Teachers: Kat Geng, Jen Schwarting, Paige Walton

The listener is not addressed, they listen into a workshop.

-Four steps: 3 individual / 1 collective

-Writing, swapping and annotating each other’s writing, making & critiquing, building together.

-Teaching is prompting, listening, and rephrasing

-Teaching is full of laughter, led without knowing, and only slightly self-effacing.

MISS OTHMAR is the name of that teacher of Charlie Brown’s that’s heard and never seen. Her voice carries no words and transmits no facts. Her professing is an undulating song. Nevertheless C.B. and his classmates seem to follow along.

MISS OTHMAR is teaching over radio. MISS OTHMAR’s Meetings with Teachers is a series that collects the voices of different teachers and facilitators from a variety of fields and their approaches to leading the listener through exercises over radio.

https://missothmarschoolforteachers.info/

Frank Traynor was born in Miami and has worked as an art teacher, sailor, pumpkin carver, costume maker, and Christmas tree salesman. He is the founder of No School, an artist-run arts education program that employs creative problem solving, mindful experimentation, collaboration, and ecological sustainability to promote social-emotional skills as well as a broad sense of wonder, joy and possibility. Frank is also the former Education Director of 2727 California Street, an art and education initiative and artist-in-residence program in Berkeley, CA. He was the first artist in residence at the Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York from 2021-22 and is currently collaborating with other artists and organizers at the progressive art studio, Studio Route 29 in Frenchtown, NJ. https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2020/12/07/artist-frank-traynor-is-the-social-architect-we-need