Whole Teacher, Whole Community
The initiative utilizes both in-person and digital, arts-based engagements that focus on the cultural drivers of trust, hope, belonging with active and retired teachers in Jefferson County and Breathitt County, KY.
Together, we will examine the actions and questions that active and retired teachers experience in their everyday lives, and facilitates connection and group discussion. It will include looking at the belonging of participants, and conclude with recommendations about how we best move forward as a community in support of and in partnership with our teachers.
As part of the initiative, a Creative Workshop will take place with Public School Teachers & Retired Teachers of Breathitt and Jefferson Counties, designed by Kentucky Artist Innovator in Health Todd Smith, with IDEAS xLab and University of Louisville. This project is a pilot to assess the impact of the arts on the health and wellbeing of a particular group.
A cornerstone of Whole Teacher, Whole Community is the Universal Community Planning Tool (UCPT) developed by the Public Health Department of Garrett County in Maryland. The UCPT uses open-source technology to equip communities with sustainable, culturally responsive strategies - and participants will support the creation of WholeCommunityKy.com as part of the initiative.
Whole Teacher, Whole Community and the Kentucky Artist Innovator in Health Residency are made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and a County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Community Collaborative Learning Fund award.
Many organizations have come together to make the initiative possible. IDEAS xLab is working with the University of Louisville’s Center for Creative Placehealing and Center for Health Organization Transformation, both based in the UofL School of Public Health & Information Sciences (UofL SPHIS). UofL SPHIS faculty and students will also be involved, providing research support and a four-day public health training boot camp.
Artist Todd Smith
Local artist Todd C. Smith has been named the inaugural Kentucky Artist Innovator in Health (KAIH). Smith is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, and teaches 2D, 3D and digital art at universities in the region. He also is the artist behind Bike Sense Louisville, a public art project that is tracking volunteer cyclists around Louisville, sensing environmental data as they ride and interpreting it into sound on the Big Four Bridge.
More about Whole Teacher, Whole Community:
As part of the process, participants will agree to take a daily survey administered by text on their phones. Each day it will ask one question and be randomized to pop up at different times each day. The questions will assess aspects of belonging. This questionnaire will last for 30 days.
Within the 30 days, the creative workshop led by Todd Smith will be held on a Saturday (or Sunday) for the active and retired teachers to participate in. This may be held virtually depending on coronavirus to ensure we are keeping people safe.
At the conclusion of the project, a closing meeting will review feedback on the project and participants will provide feedback on ideas on how to further enhance the project hub: WholeCommunityKY.com, which will be a place for teachers and retired teachers to potentially create their own groups to plan events, share stories, data, and media, as well as discuss topics and connect with the teachers and retired teachers across Kentucky.
We are working with teachers and retired teachers from Breathitt and Jefferson Counties because we identified a population with immense impact on their communities’ wellness as a whole, and who also may benefit from a moment to connect with others, self-reflect, and assess their own wellness needs.
“Todd will work alongside community members and researchers to adapt the UCPT platform for Kentucky, and I’m looking forward to seeing how his expertise as an artist working with technology informs the process and supports more equitable data-driven decision making,” said Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of IDEAS xLab.
“We’re developing an entrepreneurial population health workforce who thinks differently about how to solve deeply entrenched challenges that requires new approaches,” said Theo Edmonds, Director of UofL’s Center for Creative Placehealing. “The KAIH residency brings together transdisciplinary teams of community members, researchers, practitioners, and creatives, which is the foundation of our pioneering approach to cultural wellbeing.”