Halloween...Wed 10/31

Today was a little crazy – it IS Halloween, after all, and all things considered the students were pretty productive. The kinders read the Day of the Dead book with me, we talked about cultures and holidays, then they did the Papel Picado project. Again, it’s a little tough for their coordination levels, though some of them were really able to do some impressive work, but they had fun, and they too got some time in with calvera masks. I like working with this group a lot this year – I love my ‘group discussion’ time with them, so strange to me how receptive they are to that when they are young, and how that goes away as they go through the schooling process, esp when considering what an essential job/social skill that is to have later in life.

Had a few more six graders sign up for the novel writing project – am feeling really glad that I decided to give this a go and get them involved. I went and bought them all special notebooks – skulls and crossbones, to keep with the Day of the Dead theme – and pens for the project today, I chose well, judging by their responses. Can’t wait to start to read what they come up with, they seem to have no shortage of ideas…

Here are some of my 6th grader writers, looking punk rock with their new notebooks:

More day of the Dead...Oct 30/Tuesday

Today was great – been a good week overall. We continued the Day of the Dead projects, this time we discussed Papel Picado, and how it represents a form of art that is symbolic of life – paper art that gets hung outside, with the idea being that it will age and change and eventually fall apart. The younger students got behind it, but the technical aspect of drawing and cutting is still a bit much for them. They did good all in all though, and got to use their free time coloring in these cool calvera, or skeleton masks that I had kept from last year. The masks have a ton of detail, and I’m always amazed at how much students love coloring them in, regardless of the age group!



I had about 10 sixth graders and three fifth graders sign up to do the novel writing project – I’m really, really excited to get that level of response, and am really proud of them for wanting to take this on. Plus, it gives me some motivation to focus on my own writing this month as well!

Day of the Dead, Vietnam style...

Today worked out great – I ended up winging it, was going to have the students work on continuing a collage/culture project they had started last week, but decided to go with a Day of the Dead theme. I was planning on doing the Papel Picado stuff with them again this year, and had brought in some books to read. At the last minute, I decided to give them a shot at drawing their own Day of the Dead art – we read from the book, talked about how different cultures incorporate holidays and art into their work, and then I had them work to try to replicate the style of what they saw in the Day of the Dead art, only I asked them to work their own culture into this. They did GREAT, and they really seemed to enjoy it, especially when I was able work with them one on one with drawing techniques, getting them to think about what they were drawing in terms of shapes and not trying to draw the whole picture as they saw it, rather, breaking it down into pieces. It comes in part from some of the right brain theory in art – something I want to look into more, as they really responded to it and were eager to try it out, even my ‘difficult’ 1st/2nd grade group got focused and was into it. It was funny leading them through it – I really don’t think of myself as someone that can draw all that well, but I am strong enough to teach it, I guess. I am a filmmaker/photographer by training, I write and I do paint a lot but in a collage context – fun for me to realize, like my students, that I actually can do a lot of stuff I assume I can’t!

My favorite piece of the day by far came from Chelsea, a student of Vietnamese heritage. She TOTALLY got the idea of incorporating her culture into her work, and did this piece:



I love that she used the image of the rice farmer skeleton – we were able to compare that to the sombrero hat that students of Mexican descent used in their pieces.

I also introduced the idea to my older students of joining up to do the National Novel Writing Month project. I am going to do it with them, focused on the ‘adult’ goal of 50,000 words in a month, and I am hoping some of them will want to sign up to write their own mini ‘novels’ or short story collections, writing one to two pages a day. Love the idea of getting them to embrace and see writing as an outlet, and I really emphasized that this is a project you do for yourself, as a means to push yourself. We’ll see if they sign up – I told them all I wanted them to think about it then come back and let me know their plans this week.

Happy, sad, mad and crazy...10/25/07

Had the Kinder’s today – they have been really good about the group discussion time. It’s funny to me that the kids loose their ability to do this as they get older, at least until college or late high school, but the little kids come into the school structure ready for their ‘group meeting’ time. Today we went through a review for a bit, what community is and how they are a part of it, about the art we did last week, what abstract art is and how colors tell feelings. Once that was done, we jumped into our activity – I had them making abstract paintings like the older kids had, doing one side as ‘sad’ and the other as ‘happy’, having them focus on colors and shapes and marks that they associated with each feeling. Ones that finished got to do a second one, this time showing ‘crazy’ and ‘mad’ – this second assignment was definitely more popular than the first, with them taking to the idea of painting ‘crazy’ eagerly. All in all they did great – it’s been fun to have a group of kids this young that are so on it.

Tuesday 10/23/07

Today was a little rough – with the weather and fires the kids have been inside all day and were pretty much nuts by the time they got to us. The goal today was to have the groups – today was the 1st/2nd grade group and the 5th graders – explore the idea of culture, and how culture affects art. To account for their giddiness, we had them stand in a circle, and quickly tell about a food that was important to their family, where their family was from and how it affected them, etc. They more or less got it, but the attention span of the group as a whole was a little limited today.



We’ll pick it back up next week to better success, I’m sure. After we discussed the ideas, they started a collage – ultimately, we are going to make a ‘quilt’ that reflects each of us, and will highlight our commonalities and uniqueness. They did pretty good for a start, going to need to give them better examples of what collages are and can be though, I think, in order to get them totally seeing the possibilities.

Monday 10/22/07

Today we moved into making some abstract art. We reviewed what we did last week in terms of mixing colors and how we talked about color being used to express feelings. Then, the students wrote about a time they were really happy and a time they were really sad, with the focus being on providing details and to also explain what colors they associate with each event. The writing was really good, and ran the spectrum in terms of subjects – really sad was everything from getting in trouble to loosing a sibling to cancer to having a cousin murdered. I like giving them these writing opportunities as a means to express themselves – I hope that it clues them into the power of words and art, gets them out of the mindset that writing has to be this tedious task that they dread.



Once they finished that, they then made an abstract painting for each story, relying on colors and shapes to express what happened and how they felt. It turned out really good – I was impressed with that they came up with, and am figuring out a way to expand this sort of idea into a more comprehensive lesson/curriculum.

Painting with five year olds...Thur 10/18/07

We turned the Kinder’s loose with the paint today – they did really good, only a few minor tragedies in all. They loved mixing the paints – it was pretty rad to feel like a super genius for showing them how red and blue make purple, you don’t get an entire class of students going ‘ooh, you’re magic!’ very often, it’s nice to still feel like a rock star to them every now and then! They seemed to grasp the idea of using color to explain feelings and what not, and the names the little ones came up with for their colors were pretty amazing…

10/17/07

We got banished outside again today, on account of the room we use being treated for bugs, again. Not the most idea condition, especially in that we have the kinders today and its hard enough to keep their attention, but we made do. We had the kinders do the color project, only using crayons – we first talked about how colors are used, how they can stand for different things, and what that means. Then, they drew a bunch of boxes, all different colors, and next to each box we helped them write what they color made them feel, or represented to them. They did it really well.

The 6th graders started out by writing about a Jackson Pollock painting I showed them. They wrote about how it made them feel, and what they though the painter was thinking/feeling when he painted it. They did really well with this – cool to see them thinking bigger and bigger each day. They then jumped into the paint mixing project they had started on Monday – I’m still amazed at how excited the kids are about this. I guess it’s pretty fun, and there is a zen/zone out aspect to it that’s cool too. They nailed it today – making color, coming up with awesome names for their colors, then writing about what that color stood for/made them feel. Like approaching/easing into some of our bigger projects this way – really breaking down both art and communication itself, getting them to think about how we communicate and connect with one another.

Mixing colors...Tues 10/16

Today we pretty much picked up from where we left off the day before. The 1st/2nd grade team did a warm up writing activity, copying a definition, then they got back to mixing the paints, and coming up with names and descriptions, which they totally got into. 5th graders did the same, but they started out by responding to a Jackson Pollock painting I showed them, answering some questions I had written for them, about how they felt and how they thought the painter felt when he painted it. All in all, they did really well – glad to see this activity is going over as well as it is, and to see them really grasping the larger concept. Very cool!

Monday October 15th

I was gone all of last week, with Sumner and Sarah subbing for me. It was a little rough – they did great, but with the year being so new I hadn’t had much time to work with them, so they more or less were on their own. I had the older kids start out the week by writing a statement of purpose – something they crafted to define themselves now and what they wanted for themselves in the future. It seemed to go over pretty well – going to have them continue to fine tune and edit these as part of their larger self portrait project.

Otherwise, we used last week as catch up time – they finished their self portraits, started on their journal covers and got some free time. The Kinders, in an effort to keep up the idea of community, were asked to draw something they wished for themselves, then something they wished for someone else, ie, what would a fireman, the bus driver, an elderly person, a homeless person, wish for? Sumner had a great idea and had the 1st/2nd graders make up fortune cookie fortunes for themselves, which was pretty cool and seemed to work out well.

Today, we moved into talking about abstract art. I had the students all write about their best friend, and their best friends characteristics. I then had them assign that friend a color – if their friend was a color, what color would he/she be, and why? They then did the same thing but with an animal (as a bonus, I got to give a funny example by pointing out that certain students whom were talking and being squirmy would be a little, loud poodle if I was writing about them at that moment – oddly, that example seemed to resonate stronger than any!). After that, we made the segway into what abstract art way, and how it was representational, etc. Then, we started the color mixing project – I had them sit down with paints and just play with mixing colors, only they had to record how they got each color, give it a name, and a few description words. They didn’t much time on it overall, but I think they’ll do a really good job with it later this week.

Week of October 1st

This week was a blur – I had a million things going on, couldn’t take daily notes like I wanted. We finished our self portrait project this week, and moved into creating journal covers. Mostly a catch up week, and Wednesday wasn’t a normal class day which goofed things up a little bit as well.

The self portraits turned out great though:

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…