9/25 - Sad Reindeers and pink squirrels

Today was really good. Sumner joined me – I know him from Warped Tour, and he helps me out with shows and events locally throughout the year. He was sitting in today, wanting to check out what we do, as he might start teaching part time with us. It was great to have him – I noticed a difference just with another person being there with my 1st and 2nd grade group. They had a lot of fun today - they got to dig into their self portraits, taking the photos I took of them and cutting them up and manipulating them. We even busted out the glitter glue and stamps, though we haven’t quite got enough of system to delve into paint just yet. Their work turned out great though – I had each of them introduce themselves to Sumner at the beginning of class, we reviewed the ideas about community we had talked about before, then we talked about how their self portraits are suppose to be how THEY want to look and see themselves, not how other people do. The project turned out really great. Letting them get elbows deep in the art – and doing things that involve more than coloring – balances out the writing too.



My fifth graders came into the room with their team leader reprimanding them – they’d been having a rough day. I totally understand where their team leader is coming from, but it sets a tough tone for me to follow up with. They were a bit squirmy, and not all that productive on Monday, and since I was worried about their reluctance to write, I decided to drop my initial plan to have them work on their self portraits. I had them introduce themselves to Sumner as well, and then, without warning, went into my fun writing mode – I went from student to student, declaring them ‘something’: a dog with no hair, and angry clown, a purple pigeon, a pilot that was afraid to fly, etc. Then, as that character, they had to write an excuse note – it’s something I come up with last year, in part inspired by something I read of Frank McCourt’s, where he describes having a break through with his students, having them write fake excuse notes as a means to get them to write at all. Coming up with the characters was the result of some insomnia driven night of mine – and thus far, it has worked every time. The students initially laugh and are totally confused as to why I am calling Omar a Giant Ant, and why Brian is a little girl with arms that are wings, then they jump right into the writing assignment. I usually make it a bit of a competition as well – who can have the most out of control story without being gross or using guns. They totally got into it, they CAN write, they just need the right prompt - they need it to be presented to them in a way that is fun and shows potential. Considering how early it is in the year, I was impressed by how far they took it – we ended up spending the entire class writing then reading all the works together.

We also made up another analogy for the ongoing community theme in our class – our group thinks of ourselves as a group of astronauts on a space ship, and if we are messing around with glue sticks or talking, we’re probably gonna crash or burst into flames. A bit dramatic, I think, but who am I to judge…

9/24 - Still finding our balance...

Today was good – the 6th graders that had finished their poems the week before jumped into starting their self portrait pieces, manipulating a photo I took of them the week before. The other half of the class did their poems, to much success as well – I’m really impressed with how well they turned out, and the way that the students seem to take to them. I owe William Ayers a big thank you for that idea! Nice to feel like I am able to build on the literacy and writing stuff I did with them last year.



My 1st/2nd group is still giving me a little trouble – we’ll find our rhythm soon enough, I’m sure, still just a tough group. The kids that finished their poem got to re-write them today on a big piece of construction paper and illustrate them – turned out really nice. The other kids that didn’t finish or were struggling a bit I had work on their poems – gave me a bit more one on one time with them that way. Still was a little chaotic, not as smooth of a class as I’d like, but we are slowly getting there. Have to be the ‘toughest’ on them out of all my teams, tough in the sense of keeping it really consistent and giving them a bit more involved work early on than I normally would, but in this case I think it’ll help them get focused and settled enough so we can be more flexible and loose as the year moves on.

My fifth graders did okay – they too started their self portraits, with a few of them finishing up their poems. They were just a bit scattered, still having problems with the writing part with them, need to bust them out of their mold.

9/20 - Intellectual debate with Kindergartener's

Today I had two hours of Kinders, back to back. I was also winging it a bit – I was going to have them start their self portrait projects, but I wasn’t able to print up the photos of them that I had taken. Instead, we spent the day talking about community – I had them tell me their names (working to get them all memorized still!) and a favorite color, then we had a talk about how we need all of those colors to make a rainbow, and how if one person got mad and left, or if someone had their feelings hurt and left, or if someone got in trouble and left, we wouldn’t have a rainbow anymore. We then talked about how that was like a team, and then they told me about teams, and how in sports you need everyone on the team, then we connected that to community: how we were a community, what kind of things made up the community we lived in, etc. I was pretty excited to have a full blown discussion going with Kinder’s this early in the year, and it seemed to connect with them – it actually held their attention for a while!



After that, I had them copy ‘community’ and a short definition for the word. Then, we went through another follow up discussion of community and who all was in our community. After that, they got to make a ‘mural’, working together on a giant piece of paper, showing me all the things that made up their community. My favorite element was Tiana’s inclusion of the woodchips at the playground at the park. All in all, it went really well – looking forward to seeing what they do with their self portrait project next week!

9/19 - Bug spray, more poetry and five year olds

Today I couldn’t teach in my room – we convert half of the cafeteria into our ‘art studio’ every year – because they were spraying for bugs. My 6th graders and I discussed if it was more gross that their cafeteria was overrun by bugs, or that the district was blasting the place they eat with pesticide. They were pretty much split in the middle, with a few declaring they were eating outside from here on out, even if it was raining. I don’t mind not being able to teach in there – sometimes we go outside anyway – but this early in the year I prefer to keep things consistent, but so it goes. I’m lucky to have a consistent room that I can teach, can store stuff, and hang up work in – it’s the first school - in eight years of teaching after school programming – I’ve ever had that set up, and I love it.

I had my two groups of Kindergartner’s today – little tiny guys only in their second week of school…ever! They did really good – had them copy and try to write a sentence about themselves so I could gauge what levels they were all at, then they drew me self portraits, showing me who they were and what was important to them, who they lived with, etc.



It’s always funny to see them at this stage – they are all over the place in terms of personality and what not. I worked really hard to try to learn and remember all their names down today – I do that with all of my students, but I really make a concerted effort to try to get all the Kinder names down after my first hour with them. Usually takes me a few classes to commit them all to memory, but considering the fact I have about 80 students, the fact that I get them all down in about the first week isn’t too bad!

My 6th graders kicked ass on the poem project – they jumped right in, they got it, they even seemed excited about doing it. Don’t get how or why their response was so different from my 5th graders yesterday, but I guess in part I’m hoping it was because they did so much creative writing with me the year before. The response they had to the poem project in comparison to the 5th grade class was totally different – it really tripped me out. I hope this level of enthusiasm stays the way it is all year.



My 6th grade group last year was a struggle to work with – I’m hoping this is a case of different personalities, and the result of my having a consistent relationship with them going on for two years now. Time will tell, I guess. Anyhow, their work turned out really good and it was a nice class – I enjoy getting to hang and do the projects with them.

Check out their poems:

Kadie
Smart, funny, friendly
I love my friends and family
I hate family problems
I am afraid of any kind of spiders
I wish I had Starbucks
Torres

Evelyn
Mean, dumb, funny
I love hot cheetos
I hate coloring
I am afraid of my mom
I wish for me to go to Florida
Leiva

Azwaun
Good looking, funny, athletic
I love basketball
I hate nothing
I am afraid of the belt
I wish to see God
Holgate

Jequille
Cool, sexy, hot
I love low riders
I hate loosing in video games
I am afraid of my God mom
I wish to get out of school
Smith

Wendy
Funny, stupid, silly, energetic
I love to play soccer
I hate to write essays
I am afraid of loosing somebody
I wish for my sister to come back
Magdaleno

Mariana
Happy, tall excited
I love my family
I hate spiders, bees and worms
I am afraid of big roller coasters
I wish for a house with a pool
Porras

Leticia
Friendly, nice, cool
I love pets
I hate when my sister pulls my hair
I am afraid of snakes
I wish I could go around the world
Naranjo

Chelsea
Happy, fun, energetic
I love my mom and dad
I hate spiders. Big spiders. All sizes.
I am afraid of any bugs that crawl on me except ladybugs
I wish for a laptop
Ho

Kheyli Tristen
Beautiful, outgoing, loving
I love my family and friends
I hate backstabbers, haters and drama
I am afraid of spiders and bugs
I wish for good things to happen
Torres

Tiffany
I love animals
I hate when I’m alone
I’m afraid of insects
I wish I was a celebrity
Balbuena

Loren
Nice and friendly
I love animals and my family and hearts
I hate nothing
I am afraid of snakes
I wish to see god
Samaniego

Some of them finished early, and since we couldn’t work on the stuff I normally have them do with down time – work in their journal, or the other ‘free time’ projects’ – I had them instead imagine they were famous fashion designers and they had a $50,000 budget to design a Halloween costume for any celebrity of their choice (I’m giving myself bonus points for thinking up that one on the spot!). Jequille brought Easy E back from the dead and made some sort of out of control suit that involved a lot of diamonds, Azwaun came up with an ornate cow costume for Chris Brown, Katie had a cute Jessica Alba outfit, and Chelsea, a new student to me, very quiet and what not – came up with an amazing cat woman costume for…Emma Watson. The other kids were very confused as to exactly who Emma Watson was, but Chelsea was happy with her work.

9/18 - Poetry

Had my 1st/2nd grade group today. There is something about this age I always find kinda tough – they’re sort of in an in between stage, not quite mature and as focused as they will be as third graders, but beyond the kinder stage as well. It can be hard to hold their attention and focus, at least for me – I really like and do great with the Kinder’s, and I love teaching 3rd through 6th, but something about 1st and 2nd is always a struggle. I’m working to get them in synch with what we’ll be doing though, and today we got started on composing poems about ourselves. It was an idea I took from William Ayers – I’ve been reading a lot of his work lately, and I got the idea from To Teach. I’m staring off this year by introducing them to the idea of community, and how we will be a community as a classroom, and we’ll connect with the community that we live in and then the world at large, but we are going to first start by understanding ourselves. We started that a bit with the ‘what I know/what I want to know’ project yesterday, and my next project is going to have them write about themselves, then draw a self portrait, then also make the ‘Picasso’ portraits, where they cut up a photo of themselves that I took, then glue it back together. I’m hoping/thinking these will turn out pretty cool.



Anyway, the nice part of the poem I idea I got from Ayers is that it’s formatted, which is how I usually start off creative writing with young (and sometimes older) students. I laid out the framework of the poem, which starts with their name, then three descriptive words, then they complete sentences that start with I love, I hate, I am afraid of, I wish for, then they close it with their last name. The 1st/2nd grade group got it in theory, but it took them a while to complete it – they actually seemed to be pretty excited about what they had accomplished with it when finished though . My 5th graders were able to grasp the idea fully – we did an example poem pretending we were their team leader, Mr. Justin – but they were also a little slow and apprehensive to get writing. They definitely associate writing with something negative, which bums me out, so I am going to specifically have to work with them to do some fun stuff to get them excited about it for future projects. I think next week when they get to do some real hands on stuff – cutting and pasting and painting and collage, etc – it will be easier to get them into the literacy aspect of the class.

Back to School - 9/27/07

Back to school!

Today was a bit of a whirlwind – got back in to town after being gone on tour for the better part of two months around 11am. Went home, dealt with mail, banking, and other random stuff, then headed straight up to school for our first day. Not the most ideal situation, but it worked! I was really happy to see my former 5th graders/now 6th graders – they’re a really cool group, I like working with them a lot and am excited about this year. I also had a group of 5th graders – all of whom I had pretty much never had, and a 1st/2nd grade mix, some of whom I taught last year when they were in Kindergarten. I like the continuation of being an after school teacher – in some cases, you get to work with the same students for years and years. I try to develop my curriculum with that in mind, setting it up knowing that some kids may have had you before and can build on what you already did, while others will be coming in new, and try to make it so that it will be equally engaging for both.

Today we got started with introductions, and I told them it was going to be an opposite first day – rather than me tell them all they had to learn, they were going to tell me all that they knew and all that they wanted to know. It went over really well – they got to work in big groups writing and drawing on the big scrolls of paper – something that is universally exciting, apparently – and came up with some really cool stuff. It took them awhile to grasp what I meant by ‘list what you know’, but once I got them started with my own stuff – brush my teeth, water makes plants grow, make my sister mad – they realized what I meant and took off.



They surprised me with the ‘what do I want to know’ project – I expected them to stay somewhat reserved in their goals and expectations, but they took to it full force, listing everything from ‘spell better’ to ‘astrology’ to ‘be a lawyer’, ‘skydive’, ‘make money’ and of course ‘drive fast’.



Have a lot of work ahead of me – working to hire interns and a co-teacher, plus still have two tours going – but am excited about this year.

Fall teaching internships available!

Summer has been a long blur of time on the road doing work for the ONE Campaign, Oxfam and (RED) - check out our tour blog for updates from what we've been up to.

The school year is about to start back up again for us, and we are very excited to be offering a very cool fall teaching internship on site at our Pasadena school location. If you are interested in joining us a few afternoons a week in the classroom for some hands on experience with an innovative program and curriculum, working with elementary aged students, click here.



Thanks - we look forward to hearing from you - watch for classroom updates to start back up next Monday!

Going on hiatus...

I just finished clearing out our classroom for summer - the past three weeks have been a blur of traveling for me, coming back to class, end of year projects, showcases and the general excitement of the impending summer. We ended up with some very cool work - I'll post more of it as soon as I can - but the chaos of the past few weeks meant that I did not stay on track with my note-taking/blogging aspirations. So it goes.

I'll be on the road for most of the summer, new updates as soon as the new school year gets underway in September!

May 30th

I had the realization today that there are only about three weeks left of this school year, and of those three I’ll be more or less gone for one. It never ceases to amaze me how fast that creeps up. The school year always seems so long when you start, and you have your days when, admittedly, you wish it was ending sooner, but inevitably the end comes before you are ready for it – there is more you wanted to do, you’ll miss the kids, etc. It dawned on me that the first group of kids I ever taught, 4th and 5th graders, are now nearing the end of the their high school years.



Today, after I taught at my elementary site, I went to the high school for a focus group. We had the students, all boys in this case, get together, bribing them with pizza and soda, to hear their thoughts on the program. As I was watching them, it dawned on me how fast time goes by. I guess it seems like forever when you are in school yourself, but these kids, most of them taller than me, easily at one point could have been in my 3rd or 4th grader after school classes. Made me realize how long I had been doing this…

May 29th

We started off today reading from the book ‘Making it Home: Real Life Stories from Children Forced to Flee”. I’ve been using it off and on all this session as we continue to learn about refugee children. Today, I read aloud a few passages, and we discussed the issue at hand, and also how the children constructed their stories. I then had my students prepare their own narratives – big or small, I asked them to tell a story from their own life, and to add details and their inner thoughts to the structure as a means of expanding their writing styles. It seemed to go over pretty well all in all, we had a wide diversity of stories, from the loss of Playstations due to bad behavior, the death of a favorite aunt, birth of a cousin, and a tree that apparently forced one of my 5th graders from her home. I am waiting for her to write the conclusion of her story, but evidently it had to do with a tree root she named “Greenie’ rupturing the foundation of her home…

We took our writing outside today, so that students could take time and have one of our two digital cameras to themselves while working. This seemed to work out well – a nice change of scenery for the students to work in, and it allowed them their coveted camera time.

I’m looking forward to compiling all of their work into our ‘book’ – I am slowly scanning and taking digital photos of what they have done and am going to combine it all into a book format. We’ll produce the books on lulu.com, give a few to the school library and after school office and also sell them online as a fundraiser. Keep checking in if you are interested in purchasing one!

May 24th

Today was low key – my K group worked on the eye poem and painting – I’ve been letting them paint a lot lately, as it’s a big highlight of the day – and I had my 5th graders work on creating a ‘book page’. I am having them pick one piece of writing they like best, then doing a nice illustration/collage/painting to go with it, so we can include it in the book we are creating. As always, some of them took to it, and a few others messed around, but all in all they did some good work. I am excited about how our book will turn out.

There photography has been turning out pretty cool as well:

May 23rd

My 6th graders are getting tougher and tougher to work with. It’s the end of the year, their attention spans are on the wane and ultimately they are more focused on their own interpersonal issues than anything I want to present to them. So it goes. They also just saw ‘the video’, and the obsession of the moment seems to be the amazing world of menstrual cycles. Welcome to my world…

I had the Kinder’s write poems today. It went pretty well – poems about their eyes, and their eye colors, and what their eyes reminded them of. It’s funny the things they’ll think to make comparisons to – and how they perceive the color of their eyes to be. I had to explain several times over that I meant the color of ‘the circle part of your eye, not the white on the outside of it!’ but eventually we figured it all out!

May 22nd

The 5th graders and 3rd graders worked on their ‘Eye’ poems today. During the first hour, I was surprised by how well most of the students took to the project.

There were some minor flare ups today with that first group, my 3rd graders, that I think highlight part of the challenge of teaching in an after school program. It seems simple enough – in theory, you come in for a few hours, provide very particular and specific guidance and activities and go your merry way. The reality, of course is quite different. Today, for example, in just my third grade group of about 18 or so kids, I had a carry over fight from the playground between two girls, one trying to apologize to the other one who ‘refused to accept’, and there was Kassidy, who has had on going problems, but who last week I gave an award for leadership and improvement. Today though he was having an ‘off day’, you could tell he felt disappointed in himself when I finally had to ask him to not partake in our activity. I felt bad, but I think he got the message about showing respect to himself, his fellow students and to me. And there was Dylan – he has some problems at home and I think a slight learning disability, it manifests itself in weird ways. I’ve had him all year, but still don’t totally get what goes on with him. He plays up like he doesn’t want to be involved or cares, but he’s the first to volunteer to help me out with stuff before class. A few weeks ago he got in trouble with me for making a mean comment to the student who won the April writing contest in his class. The last few months, he puts in zero effort towards his work. I think part of its frustration, and in part I think he’s bored – he struggles with school but he’s really bright. Anyway, today we made good – he got some work done when finally I told him how I had been talking to other teachers and his older sister, a 5th grader I also teach, about how I was worried about his performance. He played up that he was mad, but I could tell he liked that I bothered to care enough to do that, and he ended up writing a pretty good poem with my help.

May 17th

The Kinder team was a little more challenging today, but they still did a great job. By the time I get these guys, they’ve already put in an 8 or 9 hour day, which is a long day for a 6 year old, so I try to be as flexible as possible. We did the same activity as the group yesterday did, with likewise great results – check out some of the photos below!

The 5th graders today took on the ‘Where I am From’ poem – I’ve figured out a more effective way to teach it for younger kids, putting together a list of questions to help them figure out what to write about: name a pet you had when you were little, write down something your family always says to you, what is a dish important to your family, etc. From there, we work to construct the poem by adding in details and our own personal touch. I am really impressed with how well they are doing with this project!

May 16th

The Kinder team was a blast today – they were just on it, well behaved, really responded to the photo collage activity. Just like the older kids, I brought in their images for use, though they mainly used their own photographs. They really go into manipulating the images, making them their own. I can tell they really like being able to use photography as well – def give them a sense of completion, puts them on the same page as the older kids!

May 15th

Kassidy won an award today. Kassidy is one of those kids that makes his mark by continually being on just the edge – nothing really bad, but he likes to create problems for the attention he feels it gets him. He’s been mad ever since he joined us – he was moved from the ‘team’ he was on to the Red ‘team’, he views it as a step down, the team he is now on is for 3rd/4th graders, he’s a 4th grader, but it’s perceived by him to be a step down. He slowly has been improving though, I talked to him about how he needs to make the most of his situation, how it would be a waste for him to spend the rest of the year doing what he was. I gave him a little certificate for leadership and improvement and a ‘fancy’ pencil, he ran and immediately showed it to his big sister when he got picked up today – I was worried he would think it was ‘dorky’ or not care, but he seemed pretty proud of it.

Today we worked on our photo collages – some of the images are below. We looked again the Journals of Dan Eldon for inspiration, a book I have been using off and on all year. Both the 3rd and 5th graders seem to like this activity. I printed up some of the photos they took with the digital cameras over the past few weeks, and brought in both color prints and black and white copies. We then are taking them and making collages – drawing, cutting, painting, stamping, and pasting. We had to have a talk about how to use images of our friends and each other – it’s never okay to do anything violent and disrespectful, and if you want to do something fun or funny, you need to ask permission of the person in the photo first! Everyone seemed to do okay with this though, and the students seemed to respond to manipulating the images that they took in interesting ways.

May 14th

I’m liking my four hour schedule on Mondays (though of course finishing at one site then driving to another can be a bit chaotic!) as it allows me to really figure out the best way to present a lesson. At Brite, I have a mix of kids in each group – literally K – 8th graders. I actually like it though – the social dynamic changes, it’s easy to get the older kids focused as leaders, they seem to try even harder with their own work to set the example for younger students, and they like to be able to teach and help the little ones as well. After I leave Bite, I have 6th and 3rd graders at Longfellow, so I’ve been working to have all four groups do more or less the same lesson plan so that I can then figure out the most effective way to implement it. Today, we used something I picked up from a book I’ve been reading, ‘Raising Up”.

May 8th

I am going to be out of town tomorrow and Thursday, so I spent part of my time before and after class getting everything ready for Heidi, the teacher subbing for me. I am having my Kinder’s work on making a collage out of the portraits that they took last week, based on the work of Dan Eldon. We look at his book pretty often this year, having it serve as an example of both our art and someone that tried to help others using his art. I printed up color versions of their photographs and then also made a bunch of black and white copies. I am excited to see the results… My 5th and 6th graders are going to be working on a writing project. I am having them envision that they discovered a new planet, they get to be in charge and have to write their own ‘Bill of Rights’ or set their own rules. Silliness always ensues with this assignment – my 3rd graders worked on this today, and among one set of rules for a student was ‘only people wearing Converse can live here’ which allowed him, another student and me to inhabit his world – but it’s a good way to get students to think about needs of a community and the needs of others, it builds into our community project that we did earlier this year when they designed a city.

May 3rd

Today was pretty hectic – stopped at Longfellow to get my Kindergarten class going before another teacher took over so I could cover a class at Muir High School. I like working at Muir, I usually only have a couple of kids, it’s a nice change to work with older students instead of the little guys I have most of the year. Today in our graphic design class I helped the students get working on making newsletters that went over all that they have learned thus far in the class. It was a good opportunity for them to reflect on what they have learned, and to do something tangible that could be completed in one class setting.



I am really big on this in an after school environment – no matter what the age, the students need to see some sort of tangible result at the end of each class, or at least at the end of the week if the class meets more than once. It keeps them better engaged, makes them look forward to coming to class, and I feel it helps them retain the information they are learning even better.

I hope my 5th graders went easy on the sub today…

May 2nd

Today was pretty fun. The Kindergarteners got their hand on the digital cameras for the first time. We had a few near drops, and a few smudgy fingers on the lenses, but otherwise all went well. I posted a few of the portraits they took of each other below.

The 6th graders were really focused today as well. They went through and pulled out a favorite image from what they have shot during the last two weeks, pasted it in their journal and did a write up as to why they picked it. It’s very cool to hear their use of new words – perspective, angle, composition, etc. – when analyzing the images, hopefully they are picking up some useful critical thinking skills! They were very attentive when we looked at the digital images on my computer that they took on Monday (haven’t had time to print them up!), and were especially interested in what my students at BRITE are doing!

We spent the second half of class checking out the ninemillion.org videos about child refugees. I’m still amazed at how quickly even the wildest groups of kids will settle down and focus on these videos. I expected mixed reactions – some sympathy, but also giggles at the language, dress and other cultural differences – and have been surprised at the overwhelming sense of compassion and understanding that my students have been showing when learning about these other kids. The ninemillion.org site does a great job at conveying how much in common refugee children have with kids here in the US. I’m excited to keep working on this project for the rest of the year…