Southeastern Arizona Arts in Academics Residencies

Southeaster Arizona Arts in Academics (SAAA)
October 2009 – Present
I have been facilitating photography and visual storytelling workshops as a teaching artist through the Southeastern Arizona Arts in Academics (SAAA) program. SAAA focuses on providing arts opportunities to elementary, middle school and high school students in rural southeastern Arizona.

During the 2009-10 school year, I co-facilitated photography and visual storytelling workshops on the San Carlos Apache, Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O’odham Reservations with drama teacher Alida Wilson Gunn of Borderlands Theater. I also worked with writer Kimi Eisele and we facilitated a community arts workshop at Mt. Turnbull Academy with high school students on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Students interviewed and made portraits of each other and then did the same with community leaders and elders. Excerpts from the interviews and portraits were then turned into large posters that have been touring the San Carlos Apache Reservation. During the 2010-11 school year, I am working with some of these same schools as well as reaching new ones in southeastern Arizona.

Here are some of the portraits, writing and interviews by the youth at Mt. Turnbull Academy.