September 7th, 2010: Stickie notes from 1st SSB class in response to: What is one thing you are taking away from this class and what is one question you have?
September 8th, 2010: 2nd SSB Class. Students chose a single line from their "I am From" poem and we did a "read around" where each student read their line. Then students wrote their line on a piece of colored foam. The students decided they wanted to hang their foam pieces right then and there. Pictures of individual students and their lines are below, as well as a picture of the wall where we hung the squares.
Dashanda and Myiesha
The majority of the SSB students
Turquoise
Ramire
Michelle I. and Dominque
Dominique
Dashanda "I am from Hopes & Dreams"
Dorian
Brittany S.
Marc
Sharaya
Aaron
I am from each & every person I've come into contact with...
Michelle H.
Nadine
Le'von
Shekeyah (now in the technology internship)
Zenia (now in the technology internship)
Crystal
Ramire and Turquoise decorating their journals
Sharaya, Marc, and Aaron.
Wendell Berry quote at the center of the "I am From" lines: "If you don't know where you're from, you'll probably have a hard time saying where you're going."
Myiesha
Wednesday, September 15th. Dr. Fluellen, the music teacher at Parkway, visited the classroom to tell students he was excited to collaborate on the mural project and could help students create music pieces to accompany video. Parkway students included Praxis students in a hand game "down by the river."
Parkway and Praxis students participate in a carousel activity to brainstorm everything they know about college and what they have heard about college from different groups of people in their lives (friends, family, teachers, pop culture, etc). Students also used the carousel to brainstorm all the different components of the college application process. Later in class, students anonymously wrote fears they had about applying/going to college on index cards. Then the cards were redistributed to different people and read aloud in a "read around." Parkway students then asked some of their questions, which included fears, to the college students in the room.
Darcy (left), Lenyce (right).
Tuesday September 14th, the whole school watched Obama's "back to school" speech which he gave at Masterman High School in Philadelphia.
September 14th, Parkway seniors discuss the uniform policy with the principal of Parkway West.
Latasha, a 2010 Parkway West graduate an member of Mural Corps for 4 years (a n art program run by Mural Arts for Philly teens)
Thursday September 9th Parkway was off from school, so no SSB. These are photos taken by Mural Arts student, Rachel W.
Thursday, September 16th-- students worked on developing arguments and counter arguments by looking at pictures of Philadelphia murals. Some of the murals distributed to students related directly, or indirectly to students' Senior Project topics. Each student was given a copy of a mural, on the back of the paper the students wrote what they thought the message of the mural was. Then we gave each mural to a different student and asked them to write a COUNTER argument to the argument written about the mural they received. Students asked question like, "what do I do if I agree with the argument stated?" We talked about how in order to build a strong argument you have to anticipate counter arguments and be able to defend what YOU see against them. When students shared with the whole class their interpreations of the different murals we got lively cross-talk going between students with various interpretations of each mural. We discussed subjectivity, as well as the importance of HOW you make an argument.
Luis, analyzing a mural image.
Enuma used a chair in different positions to demonstrate how depending on how you look at something you make a different type of case for what it is or what it could be.
Sharaya described her interpretation of the mural.
Shelby
Michelle H. explains her interpretation of the mural
Tanisha
Nadine & Luis
Friday, September 17th Aaron and Sharaya playing "down by the river." This was the first week that the Friday Praxis students came to the SSB.
Sharaya, Turquoise, and Jacinda are the final 3 in "down by the river"
In the field outside Parkway
Enuma, HC '11, Praxis 3 student.
Monday, September 20th: "Reading an Image" In class we talked about how you would read a photo like you might read a text. Each student was given a copy of Dorothea Lange's famous portrait of a migrant worker mother and her children.
Tuesday, September 21st. SSB students went to 44th and Haverford to see the site of the 'Pioneering Women' mural. A security officer at Health Center 4 talked to our class about the services offered at the health center, which is just a few block away from Parkway. Rachel W, a Mural Arts student helped to take portraits of the Parkway students. Students also took photos illustrating some of the things they had written the day before on stickies they would want to convey in a self-portrait, such as 'my heart,' 'support,' and 'happiness.' We talked about what we learned about portraits the day before (camera angle, background, expression, posture, etc) when taking the photos at the mural site.
'happiness'
'love'
'my heart'
L.O.V.E.
'support'
Health Center 4, 44th and Haverford Ave, Mural Site
Ramire and Sharaya
Dashanda
Aaron & Michelle H.
Wednesday, September 22. Class was outside. We played 'the song game" as a warm-up activity. If you want to know how to play, ask Dorian, he loves that game. The rest of class we spent in small groups getting to know each other better by asking our small groups questions off the long list of questions.
Group 1: (left to right) Shelby, Tanisha, Nadine, Dominique, Marc, Darcy, and Katie.
Group 2: (left to right) Turquoise, Jomaira, La'nae, Sophie, Dorian, Sharaya, Jen.
Thursday, September 23rd. After a presentation from Lincoln Technical Institute, we wrote on a series of different prompts based on Common App questions. We then worked in three small groups based on the questions we answered. Adrian, Margo, and Enuma (all Haverford seniors) helped to led the conversations in these small groups which started about what everyone wrote but also got into deep conversations about our pasts and futures.
blurrrrry
Adrian's group
Brittany
Enuma
Friday, September 24th.
Emily
September 29th, Monday. We started class in 3 groups and played a game of charades. Each group played against each other and the two categories for the game were college majors and extra-curricular activities you could do in college. After the warm-up activity (which was fun and funny!) we transitioned to talking about oral histories.
Tanisha and Le'von practicing their interview of Briana.
Sharya interviewing Lenyce with the flip cam
Shelby...
La'nae as Elmo
Jen as Oscar the Grouch
Dominique as Penny Proud...
PENNY
Le'von had spongebob
Monday, October 4. Shelby taught us the 'ninja game' and we worked on creating college lists
Friday, Oct. 15th: Adrienne did a presentation of the benefits of going to PA state colleges.
Monday, October 18th-- SSB & college students made stencils about themselves to use on t-shirts they are designing for the October 30th mural paint day
