Mar'ce Merrell

Wicked Sweet, will be available on Tuesday, May 22  in Canada and the United States.

HOW YOU CAN GET IT:
You can order it from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Yes, it is available for your Kindle!!

You can order it from Chapters Indigo on-line

You can walk into a Barnes and Nobles bookstore in the US and it will be in the “Recommended for Teens” section!

Ask at your local bookstore!

THE BUZZ:

“A lot of wheels are turning at once in Merrell’s aptly titled debut, a story of summer romance, betrayals, and revenge that’s best served sweet…”–Publishers Weekly

I’ve created a video tribute, below, for Nigella Lawson– a famous British Food TV personality who wrote the book “How to Be a Domestic Goddess.”
If you find a way to get it to her, I will bake you a cake or two dozen cupcakes of your favourite flavour!!

Nigella Lawson, Thank You! Video

THE BOOK LAUNCHES
CALGARY BOOK LAUNCH:
Monkeyshines Bookstore,
Saturday, May 26 at 2 p.m.
2215 33 Avenue Southwest
Cake Pops available for all!

EDMONTON BOOK LAUNCH:
TBA

FORT McMURRAY BOOK LAUNCH:
TBA

It sounds so serious, what we’re tasked to do: act as agents of change within the public education system. And yet, as change agents go, we must be among the most fun to be around. There is laughter, self-deprecation, joy in art exploration, surprise in student connections and utter euphoria when the magic in a classroom happens. Those are the “tickled” moments.

The LTTA objective is success on all fronts: local artists loving their classroom work, teachers embracing and adapting to the challenge of differentiated instruction, and students who show their intelligences through creative projects and teaching. The First Nations, Metis and Inuit youth are one focus of our work in Fort McMurray- a group of young people who are, in many ways, carrying the weight of the residential school experience that their parents and grandparents survived.

For me, it’s been a long couple of the years of education. All the things I didn’t know fill my head, now. I consider protocol in FMNI communities. I remember the importance of time. I think about how to be a better listener (with more than a New Year resolution commitment.) I wake up dreaming of a new way of explaining what I know so that others will follow along because they now know it to be true. I try to remember that balance is the key. Time for family, for writing, for meditating, for moving, for being still is just as important as time for reaching LTTA objectives.

I imagine it’s a familiar refrain from many of us at this time of year when evaluation and assessment of our lives creep into our thoughts via a human tradition of starting afresh.

I’ve had a terrific few days in Fort McMurray meeting, meeting, meeting people! I arrived on Aboriginal Day and spent the afternoon with my co-workers and friends, Anastasia and Shelley, at Heritage Park where we ate bannock and fried fish and watched the children, adults and elders gather in community to celebrate. That evening there was more celebration when we were welcomed to the Mentorship program’s year-end celebration. A cooperative program, it’s spearheaded by Julia McDougall, a public school teacher and amazing woman. Thirty-nine aboriginal children gathered for 35 weeks this year in mixed age groupings to explore the art, stories, and music of the aboriginals from the Fort McMurray area.

On Tuesday, we had THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. In an amazing move of brilliance, the provincial government has funded an arts-education organization 1.3 million dollars over three years to bring the arts into Aboriginal student’s lives during the school days, after school programs and potentially weekend community programs. It’s the first time in the history of Learning Through the Arts that a justice department has undertaken such a vision-forward approach to the reduction of crime in the community and the increasing of safety. It’s a thrill to be involved in a program that will support Fort McMurray artists and Fort McMurray students.

Tuesday evening was a celebration in Fort McKay of an amazing principal who is moving on to work with the Northlands School Division.

We met on Wednesday with Alice Marten our coordinator on the ground and a lovely woman. We’ve been in meetings, too, with artists who are interested in working in the schools. An amazing turn of events for the end of the school year!

If you’d like to know more about this program or Learning Through the Arts generally, you can contact me.

It was terrific seeing so many familiar faces at the Teacher’s Convention on Thursday and Friday. The organization I was assisting with, Learning Through the Arts, had great response although it is virtually unknown in Northern Alberta. I think over the next five years that will change as schools experience the value in integrating artists within the core curriculum.

I also met a number of artists working with other programs, (primarily theatre groups), who are part of the Artists in Education roster compiled by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

In talking with teachers one theme seemed consistent, sometimes an artist in residence is a good investment, sometimes it doesn’t work out so well.

It seems these are your options as a school booking an artist in residence:

1. A performing group: It may be less risky to bring in a group of performers than to have an individual artist work in classrooms, because a well-formed system is in place. Your students, then, work within the system. Very little one-on-one instruction happens, but the group dynamic is explored.

2. An individual artist in residence. This, to me, can be a great option for instruction of a particular art form. If the artist-educator is experienced in classroom management and has deconstructed their art form to a level that is appropriate for the age and stage of each learner, this can be a wonderful learning experience. My best experiences as an artist in residence have been in classrooms where the teachers are engaged and supportive of the artistic process. The success of an artist in residence hinges on many factors- the attitude of the teacher, the experience of the artist, the artist’s confidence with the material and the students, and the students interest in the activities that are being explored.

3. The third option, now, is Learning Through the Arts which takes some of the risk out of individual artists in a school. With LTTA, the school chooses several art forms (and artist educators) to work in their classrooms. The artist educators are trained in creating lesson plans that combine the art form with core curriculum concepts and the artists are mentored by more senior artists throughout their terms in schools. (They also provide training in classroom management techniques!) If a school is unhappy with a match, an artist can be substituted. As an artist, the LTTA model provides a unique creative challenge and a revenue stream that doesn’t require a commitment of a week or two weeks of full-time work.

What I know for sure is that every option has advantages and disadvantages and the success of an artist in the school often has a whole lot to do with factors that can arise from the school or the artist.

My suggestion is that a school carefully look at the make-up of its staff members and their attitudes towards sharing their classroom with a guest artist. Decision making should involve a group of staff members. Residency objectives should align with the values of the school. And decision-makers should carefully consider an artist’s commitment to their art form (is the artist currently actively engaged with the art form?) and the artist’s experience (has the artist had training or enough experience in the classroom that poor classroom management will not detract from the art experience?). How will student learning regarding this art form be assessed? Will students have had enough time with the artist to incorporate the lessons they’ve learned? Schools should also ask- How will we be able to extend this experience? Will the school create an anthology of student writing? Will it create a video of small group drama that has been created after the residence is completed? I think it’s essential to consider the impact a residency will have the student and parent community after its conclusion.

We have a month prior to the Artist in Residence, Alberta for the Arts, grant deadline. If you’d like assistance in pulling together a Learning Through the Arts grant proposal or would like to talk to me about an Artist in Residence program, I’d be happy to talk to you.

I’m off to the Greater Edmonton Teacher’s Convention tomorrow and Friday, Feb. 25 and 26. I’ll be representing Learning Through The Arts in the trade show. If you’d like to sign-up for a free in-class demonstration of integrating the arts and core curriculum with one of our fine artists, see me or my compadre Greg Mann at the LTTA booth. New this year is the potential funding of LTTA programs through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Artists in Education program. We’ll be helping schools to identify the art forms they’d like to use in the classroom and providing support in writing grant applications. Teachers, it would be great to see you there! Mar’ce

Tomorrow is my last day at Jackson Heights Elementary, a school I will remember for its enthusiastic students and my struggle to pronounce their names correctly. It has been great fun for the students to hear my Indiana-born phonetics and cadence butchering the Indian names of Napinder and Saan.

We’ve worked to encourage voice in the student’s writing while I’ve been here. Drama has been our window into the world of creative stories with voice. In Division I our retellings of the Three Goats Gruff had teenager penguins that wore cool black sunglasses and liked to hip-hop dance! In Division II we used drama to play with ideas that became the basis for short stories about characters encountering animals that have escaped from the zoo.

I had this great epiphany today as I was explaining that including character thoughts in writing adds VOICE to the writing.

“Here, what if you think about that voice in your head that warns you or gives you witty things to say that you know it’s not appropriate to say? That’s your VOICE. It is a symptom and indication of your personality. Include the voices in your character’s heads in your writing and you’ll certainly increase the voice!”

I thought it was brilliant. I’ve been thrilled to hear the student’s writing. Oh…we also created videos of some of their drama. Kids mostly love to see themselves on the big screen!

Thanks, Jackson Heights for such a wonderful visit!

It’s terrific working with the grades 4, 5 and 6 classes and Mr. Chichak and Mr. Turlione. We’re working with the Learning Through the Arts model of teaching and that means we’re combining an art form and a core subject area.

What does it look like? Groups of students will be making commercials to “sell” their glider (paper airplane) or Mixture Separation Device (various techniques to separate the specific elements in birdseed).

Clearly we’re coupling Science concepts with drama/language arts. The students will be creating scripts, asking scientific questions as well as the questions writers ask before developing a commercial that they will work as a team to build and film.

I’ll show a clip of a commercial on February 5, the day after our final day of shooting!

If you’re interested in knowing more about the LTTA model or about an artist in residence program, send me an e-mail and I’ll fill you in.

Mar’ce

I bought this coconut. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what I’d do with it. I’d never in fact bought a coconut before- at least not in North America. I think I bought it because I wanted a shift in my every day. I looked for recipes of how to use fresh coconut. And I discovered through experimentation that fresh grated coconut tastes better after it’s cooked than before and that you can replace just about any dried unsweetened coconut with fresh. My blog here or here has the results of my cupcake recipe.

I also thought of the people in Haiti, not that I’ve been there, but I spent two months in Southeast Asia and the poverty I witnessed in Cambodia came back to me in pictures and smells and coconuts. I am saddened by the devastation, but I don’t think those words are enough. Just like I haven’t been able to adequately express the experience of traveling in Asia for two months, I cannot express my heartache over Haitian’s heart break.

I’m working on revisions of The Cake Princess, feeling vulnerable the way my characters do- that’s my news. I guess the coconut was a diversion down a familiar path of thought.

I take my camera everywhere with me. It’s a habit I started when I got my first job as a journalist for a daily newspaper in Ohio. Back then, we used film cameras and we had to adjust the fstop manually. Oh, and focus. My first months on the job, my photos were awful! Washed out. Dark. Out of focus. Badly framed. Eventually I learned. Now, my point and shoot makes picture taking easier. My son is trying to convince me to go back to the film camera’s version of figuring it out on your own. I consider it, but then an opportunity for a beautiful sunset from the car, (as I’m driving! Yikes!), comes along and I wouldn’t give up my automatic. It was a beautiful night!

I spent last Friday in Vermilion, hosted by the Buffalo Trails Public School Board. My session on The Reading and Writing Connection focused on helping teachers connect the text in their classroom resources with writing exercises that would improve their student’s literacy. I became very fond of my teacher participants; they were engaging and their ideas were interesting and funny. I think that’s because teachers are FUNNY! I don’t know if they know it, but I think they are very funny. Perhaps, like writers, their amount of face-time with adults is limited to recess, lunch time and meetings outside the parameters of their primary work environment. They are a surprisingly sane group of people when you consider the requirements of their profession. This, too, is similar to the day to day of a writer. Now, back to my cup of tea and my brainstorming.