Know a Monkey: Joseph Schupbach!
Posted by Alexis on August 14, 2011
For my latest entry in the Know A Monkey blog series, I interviewed the wonderful Joseph Schupbach to find out all about his new job as BOM’s Education Coordinator, why he loves Chinatown, and what he’d rather do than be an underwater welder.
Tell me about the Education Coordinator position - has it existed before?
Not in its current form - so it’s new to me and new to the company. What they did is they essentially split Elizabeth Levy’s job (Program Director) into two because there’s a lot of new and exciting programming that we’re working on for the strategic plan.
So what will you be doing?
Essentially my job is supervising and facilitating the in school residencies. I’ll be maintaining the relationship with those schools; I’ll be supervising the teacher corps and the lead teachers.
What’s the hardest part of your new job?
I’ve only been doing one part of it so far, because it’s the summer and we’re not really in schools right now. So I’ve been working really hard on our big assessment project and processing evaluations.
What is the big assessment project?
We are doing something we’ve never done before. We’re developing a rubric for assessing writing skills. To do that we have taken story samples from ten students from each school that we worked in this year and we essentially mixed them all up and have teams of assessors figure out how proficiently written those stories are. It’s to see over time how things are going. And to see how kids are doing on particular weeks, to see if we need to focus more on a specific principle that we teach on that specific week.
What does the rubric look at? Is it like a traditional assessment?
It looks at content, stance (point of view and voice) and also structure. In some ways it’s very similar to a traditional rubric, things that all writing teachers look for (whether or not an idea is focused, or related to something else, how things are structured logically and in sequence and whether or not the author’s voice is apparent, whether there is a strong point of view). I think anyone who is assessing writing is looking at those things. We’re not looking at mechanics and grammar and spelling. We’re looking more at ideas and the order of those ideas and who those ideas are coming from.
How long have you been in Barrel of Monkeys?
I started as an intern in 2005. I ended up becoming an intern because Kristie Keohler Voucalo, who was the executive director at the time, was my professor and taught me media writing at North Park University. I was a theater and communications major and I took all the writing and media electives. Kristie encouraged me to intern and then she encouraged me to volunteer teach, and I loved it, and I performed at the celebration of authors that year, and then the next year I volunteer taught again, and while I was volunteer teaching I auditioned and was cast. So fall of 2007 I was cast. Last year I served as After-School Program Coordinator, which is different than the six week residency that we do.
What are your goals as education coordinator?
My number one goal is to learn how to do everything! I’m in a luxurious position in a certain sense because the person who did a lot of the tasks that I’m going to do is there. Elizabeth has a lot of things to do but she’s very accessible, and she’s going to walk me through a lot of things. It’ll take me a whole year to fully understand the position so part of that goal is to absorb as much information as possible. I’m sure I’ll do a perfectly fine to good job this year, but I know that next year I can do a very good job.
So you’re learning yourself while you’re also filling out the seams of the new position for the first time.
Yes - we talk about this learning through doing with the kids a lot. Especially at Loyola Park, we say we learn we’re doing. This is very similar. . . I’m like, I’m going to be doing it and realizing what I’m doing in the middle of it. Like “Oh, I am facilitating a great relationship with a principal. I didn’t know that was going to happen until this moment!”
So learning what do to is my primary goal. And I think that everybody’s goal who’s worked on the staff and worked in conjunction with schools has been to facilitate really excellent relationships with school communities, and that’s something I’d love to focus on. One of the benefits to having two people in the education department now is that we don’t have to be in the same place. So I can be at a school in person while Elizabeth is doing something else in the office, or vice versa, and so I’m really excited about spending more time in schools. Talking to principles and literacy coordinators and teachers . . . and making our presence sort of unavoidable. So when a year goes by and we call them again and talk again, there’s no, “Who are you?” It’s like, “Oh yes, we know you! Fabulous!”
Okay, switching gears a little bit. What’s a perfect day in Chicago for you?
I love to go to Chinatown—I love looking at things to buy like ceramic dogs and pink umbrellas and holograms and things, and all that kitsch that I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be kitsch or not but I love it. And I love Chinese food, I absolutely love Chinese food, so if I can weasel a way to Chinatown for a while I’ll go. I also love Valois a lot, that diner in Hyde Park where Barack Obama used to go a lot. We go a lot for meetings before school, and I always try to go for my birthday. We met Rahm Emanuel there during a teaching team meeting. And he’s actually come to see That’s Weird Grandma before, and so he knew who we were right when we said it, so we had a lovely conversation he was cracking jokes and stuff it was great . . . . And I’d go to the beach every day if I could.
Do you have a pet?
No.
What would be your pet if you could have one?
I love cats. I love that joke about naming cats people names. You know, like a cat named Eric. And the more human the name the funnier the joke.
What would you be if you weren’t the Education Coordinator for Barrel of Monkeys?
One time I was asked a question like that, and it was like a game, and I blurted out that I would want to adapt shows for an audience of people with special needs. And after I said that I was like, ‘Whoa?!” I worked with kids with special needs at the Park School in Evanston, and loved it. In some ways it’s not like the most different from what I do, it’s just social services and theater put together. It’s not like I said “underwater welder,” and was like, “Never mind I take it back!”
Why are you a Monkey?
I either want to have high creative input or have a reason or a purpose that is just compelling to me. So that’s what makes me want to be part of this company, it’s that I love the mission and the vision, and I can’t think of one good reason not to do it. There are so many lovely reasons to be a part of this company. Also, I’m someone who’s always appreciated an assignment, and so artistically it’s really stimulating for me because it’s like “I have to do this thing.” I’m not starting from scratch at all . . . . There’s something about producing it for the kid who wrote it in their school. It’s like your commission to take something and bring it back. That makes it more interesting, because if you’re just making work for your peers or making work for the public, it wouldn’t be the same. The fact that we bring it back to the schools first, to the same kids who wrote it, changes everything.