Journals

Journaling is a big part of all of our classes. We give each student a spiral notebook that they will work out all year long (or, until they fill it up!) and they get 10 - 15 minutes at the beginning of each class to work in their books. We encourage them to write, draw, design a city, write a poem, song or movie, draw about their days, etc. The point is to foster creativity and to give them some down time to do whatever they'd like to, something they don't get a whole lot of. For older students in particular, this becomes a valuable outlet, and a place to generate ideas for later projects. For the most part though, all students, regardless of age, love this time - and the younger ones especially like to share what they did after they journal, something else we incorporate into just about every class. There is something very tangible about them having a book all to themselves, it becomes this precious object to them, and the stuff they create inside of it is pretty amazing!