Three weeks ago, I was placed in the upstairs classroom of the Rose Kindergarten instead of my usual class downstairs. The only difference between the classes is that the students who are taught upstairs are, I was told, “in need of a little extra help with their reading.” We spent the two hours almost solely focused on reading and writing. The main difference between the two classrooms is that the class downstairs has a counting jar that they fill every week and make estimations for the big reveal every Friday. In this event’s place was a more phonics/word based activity where a student is chosen to go and pick an object from a list of cards, puts it in the, “word box” and gives the other students three clues from which they must guess the word.

Friday, 4/22, was my last day at the Center. The art instructor, upon hearing this, apologized for not having more for me to do. I told him not to apologize, because I felt that I had done a lot, even if a lot of the help involved more talking to people and cleaning up rather than hands-on help with the physical act of making art. And the day provided me more opportunities to do so. “Dorothy” was crocheting a scarf, and when I expressed interest in what she was doing, she tried teaching me- I wasn’t very successful, but I tried, and she seemed happy with what I was able to do. Then “Rebecca” came over to us and asked us if we could help her write an e-mail to her bus driver.

Friday, 9am

Postcard #1 (1/26/2016)

“Learning communities are known to  foster student engagement through collaborative learning as well as community- and problem-based learning. Students are taught to see connections among the courses they take, and community is a key condition for learning” (Rendón 39).

“We cling to notions of ‘independence’…as if it were an essential condition to all well-being” (Gorman).

Week 6 (4/18)

What

Today, the students were playing with legos, blocks, and some kids were playing bowling. A couple of them were playing house and a couple were building pinatas out of paper and tape. At first I sat with the kids who were building cars out of legos. They built police cars and made a jail out of the blocks. They kept asking the other students to be in the jail for them but didn't get many responses back. The few girls in the art room were coloring and putting together pinatas and they were coping each other again. The teacher told them they should have their own ideas but as I was listening to their conversations, they were following the same pattern. One of the girls was saying how the rainbow didn't include the color pink, and all the other girls disagreed with her and said it did.

Week Fourteen: SYMBIOSIS Exhibition 

We will spend our time and energy this week installing the exhibition and preparing for the opening reception on Thursday, April 28, from 4-7 PM. Exciting! 

In class, course evaluations and Works-in-Progress conversations. 

Yesterday, we gathered at Haverford with the artists with the intention of collecting twigs and leaves to fill our boxes. The artists arrived late, and we were all moving slowly, so it took about half an hour to gather by the duck pond. When we got there, we wandered around, checked out the skate house, watched the fish and geese, and collected interesting things we found on the ground, including sticks, seed pods, and leaves. Because not all of the artists had fit in the car, Stacie* went back to the center to pick up Valerie*. I thought it was interesting that we decided collectively not to budge until Valerie was there, not even to wander around the pond--we really wanted to wait until she got there to experience everything, because each step was an important one.