the beginning of the end

here we are, almost ten months later, and definitely not enough blog entries to account for it. or journal entries in my own personal journal for that matter.

today was the last day of in-school. i hate to say it, but it was a little anti-climatic.
1) we're still going back to run our afterschool program for the next two weeks
2) we're running a field day at the school on june 13
3) the kids know they're still going to see us.

i made star shaped brownies (yeah reynolds fun foils) for them because they are all stars. corny. also one of my students increased his score on the grade test from fall to spring by 17 points.

it was a good day. calm and we spent a lot of time outside. i went to gym and learned about golf clubs and went to art and drew awful still lifes of various fruits for all my students. it was the least i could do for them.

my eyes are throbbing

if there was a way to guarantee a restful night, i would be all over it.
last night i didn't even sleep through an hour of the night - between my hamster and thinking that it was time to wake up way too many times/hours before i needed to get up. finally i just gave up and came down to eat breakfast.

today is our signature service day.

round two of camp

so, right after i withdrew from my senior corps position for next year -- we had camp. camp was amazing.

i led the VTS (visual thinking strategies) sessions for the kids and it was incredible. we had two days of training at the MFA (museum of fine arts) and then it was off to camp to try it out on real, live children.

the basic concept of VTS is that a child can explore and expose the inner workings of their mind (cognitive development through asthetic awareness?) while they talk about art. sometimes famous art, sometimes not, but always carefully chosen for the age group. in a regular classroom, the art slides go in sequential order and the curriculum takes a year, with three pictures being shown a month.

my roommate's class does it (she is in the 1st grade) at another school and she had told me that all of her kids really enjoyed, but i was unsure of what to expect at camp. the first day the kids were like, this is wack. but once they realized they could say anything and i would repeat and affirm it back to them, they started opening up more to throwing out crazy ideas and making up entire stories for one picture.

in a VTS lesson, you are only allowed to follow this format.

first, you say, let's take a moment to look at this picture. (here you time one minute)
then, what's going on here?
then, what do you see that makes you say that?
then, what more can we find?

the focus is to not guide/lead/influence the comments the students are giving, so you paraphrase every idea. and point. you have to point at the artwork to show that you are paying attention and understand what the student is saying. it may not make sense to you, but you have to validate them no matter what.
asking, what do you see that makes you say that forces them to look for hard, concrete evidence in the artwork for an interpretation that they may have made.

saying we in the last question implies that EVERYONE is working together to find more in the picture. because there is always more.

it was nice to see the quick progression my kids made from the first day to the third day and i was pleased with my personal growth as the facilitator of the activity.

the questions that you ask are supposed to be able to translate to other disciplines as well as the skills that the students learn

late nights

so i've been doing a lot of thinking recently about the senior corps position that i accepted back in march in the service department and today that thinking culminated in me declining the position.

there's not much to say except that it didn't feel right. and of all the things i've been working on this year, its to trust myself more. i can trust others no problem until they break that trust, but trusting myself is much harder. maybe because i am very hard on myself. also i want to sleep at night next year and even though i know i can't base next year's experiences off of this year, its hard not do that.

so here i go to bed, in an attempt to make a dent in my accumulated since september sleep debt.

hours, completed

today on my time sheet report i reached a total of 1717 hours and 15 minutes.

americorps hours - check.
months left - 3.
months completed -7.

i think i will wait till next weekend to celebrate, because i feel like it would be more fun with a non-City Year friend. also known as, one of my best friends is coming to visit me from tucson and i have to think of something exciting to do.

added two new posts

but you'll have to back track a little to find them.

words on routine

city year for kids

time is flying

it's been over a month since i've written in the blog and every night when i come home i think, ok, today is the day, i'm going to get a few lines out. but where am i right now? the office, waiting for carla to cut her own hair so we can get out of here and go to the gym after a long day of young heroes.

young heroes - part of the city year continuum, providing a city year experience on 3 saturdays a month for dedicated middle schoolers january - may exploring social justice issues.

today's topic was racism/prejudices. i've come before because even though i'm not a team leader for the program or even on the young heroes team (the city year corps members that run the program), i've been to support my fellow corps members in what i consider an awesome thing.

they get up on saturdays and educate middle school kids about perspectives on life and provide a place for safe discussion on seemingly taboo topics like race. they force the kids and themselves out of boxes and into an open area where as long as things/ideas are said and received respectfully (you don't have to agree, but you do have to listen) then all is well.

in the morning we did a few exercises that brought up stereotypes in the media through an exercise called four corners. each corner of the room is labeled strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. the facilitator reads a statement and then the participants silently move to the column/corner that they believe is accurate. so if the facilitator said, m&m's are better than skittles, i'd move to the strongly agree corner because that is what i believe. then there's a few minutes allowed for discussion within each group and then a larger group discussion where each group picks one representative to speak. then usually there is a time where the facilitator will ask if anyone wants to change places based on what they have heard and had time to absorb. usually people move. a few, not many.

then we did some snap debates. the facilitator reads a scenario or statement and tells each side to defend their point. and then the two sides switch. so sometimes you are put into a position where you have to defend that nazi germany was a good thing even though in your heart you believe it was the worst thing that could've ever happened in the history of the world. it pushes everyone to open up and discuss and think creatively, which is absolutely wonderful to see middle school kids doing that.

i've been coming on and off now for a while to these saturdays and its been incredible to see these kids grow and mature. even though sometimes they are still going balls out, its cool because they are growing up -- but with a mind that can change the world.

(i'm going to backtrack to some important things that happened in february and early march so keep an eye out for those!)