Journal #14

May 16, 2007

Monday morning we began to film the skits with the intent of finishing them. I brought the four videographers with me to get the cameras from the media aid center. Of these four students, three had said they have at least used video cameras in the past, but none of them were very comfortable with the cameras. The rest of their groups practiced lines and set up their scenes…still up until this point not everyone understood that we were going to be filming movies, but soon everyone got onto the same page. I gave the videopgraphers a short lesson on using the cameras and about camera editing. They were very excited to be working with this technology, but I felt especially responsible for making sure that they kept the cameras safe and in pristine condition. After this mini workshop, I sent them back to their groups to begin filming, using the storyboards they had made last session. The Pirate group was working hard to create their setting and almost ran out of time for their skit but they ended up finishing. The Principle group went through their filming very quickly. I asked them if they were fully satisfied with their work and after watching it, they decided that they wanted to do it again. Although the actors had memorized their lines, they did not employ different cuts in the filming as I had talked about as part of the original criteria. The Rapper group had trouble staying focused and getting organized, once they had finally set up their scene and started filming they only had time for filming a short clip. The Drug Dealer group, although they were working diligently the whole time, had technical difficulties and group work difficulties to overcome. About half way through the day I realized that I would need to come back for another day to finish the projects. The students were testing this week s they only time I could come back was Tuesday afternoon and luckily that worked with my schedule, so I went in again yesterday. I’m very glad that I added another day because the feeling on Monday was very rushed and therefore lacked closure and discussion.

Tuesday was much better (although the students were quite rambunctious because they had just sat through a day of testing). Now that the students knew exactly what they were doing, they just had to set up again and get to work on filming. The Pirate group and the Principal group had actually finished theirs on Monday, thankfully, because both groups were missing students. For the students in these two groups who were there, I asked them to conduct interviews and document what the other groups were doing. This gave them a sense of purpose and an embedded assessment, while at the same time helping me to gather data.

Even though the class was buzzing with energy, I think that for the most part this was focused energy and they were engaged in the project. This is evident from how group members pulled together to accomplish tasks, from the engagement of students like Reyna and Anahi who generally have lacked the desire to participate (or even come to class) in the past, and from talking to students about how this project helped the to understand Shakespearean text. I did have some time to interview students myself and I asked Joana, Konyko, and Jesus who they would like to show their video to. They said they think that every student reading Macbeth can benefit from seeing their work because it can help to connect the themes of the play to realities in their lives. This sense of agency that they gained from this project—the idea that they have the power to create and to teach others through their media, is the core of what my goal was from the beginning of my residency. The fact that they understood this and were able to articulate it has been one of the highlights of my ArtsBridge experience. Additionally, the joy that the students, Ms. Hamilton, and I got from creating and watching their work speaks volumes for the power and beauty of film. This goes above and beyond theater as it preserves the work of the students so it can be viewed and shared by others.

At the end of the class we talked as a class about the project—the difficulties and triumphs that students felt. One student noted how it was difficult using film because everything had to be planned out to the very last detail. The students are all eager to see their final projects and they kept asking me when I would be back. I will hopefully have all of the videos put onto a dvd by next week or the week after because I am eager to go back and spend more time with them as well and I would like to do a final wrap up and critique day. I feel like no matter what, I will never have enough time with these amazing students and I am incredibly sad that I will not be around next year. I hope to maintain strong ties with Kori at least and some of the students maybe so I can continue to be a link between them and UCLA, or just higher education in general.

Journal #13

May 11, 2007

This week we continued the Shakespeare video project. On Tuesday students decided on the settings for their adaptations of Macbeth. This stirred very good dialogue about positions of power within our communities. I sat with each group separately and brainstormed ideas with them. With each group, I asked them what position of power their Macbeth would be trying to attain. Would it be a police chief? a school principal? the president? We talked about why those positions are desirable and what it means to have power, as well as what Macbeth would do to get that power. One group decided to use a Pirates of the Caribbean theme as a way to connect the ideas of Macbeth to something that would be recieved by a popular audience. One group, whose scene involves the three witches making predictions about Macbeth, decided on making Macbeth an aspiring rapper who is told by some radio djs that he is going to become very famous. A third group, analyzing the system of power within their own neighborhood, is having Macbeth be a drug dealer trying to make his way to the top. The fourth group chose to use the high school as their setting and their Macbeth is a vice principal who wants to become the principal. Once they had settled their ideas, they began to write scripts based on knowledge from previous workshops about scriptwriting. The groups had to choose a director, a videographer, and a set designer as well as choose who will play which parts in their films. We discussed the different roles involved in the group and what everyone needed to do in order to make the films successful. They had all started their scripts by the end of the session, and Ms. Hamilton had them continue to work on them on Wednesday morning so they would be mostly done by Thursday when I went back in.

Unfortunately, they still had a lot to finish on Thursday morning, so I gave them a little bit of time to do that before we started our workshop on storyboarding. We talked about how a script goes from writing to video and how the creators make a storyboard to lay out the plan before beginning to film anything. I had them watch a scene from the Scotland, PA movie and point out close up versus wide angle shots and how each is used differently. Then the groups practiced their lines and made storyboards so that on monday morning they can begin filming right away. There were several students who really took to this activity of storyboarding--to no surprise it was the same students who were more comfortable working with visual art. Lourdes made a fantastic storyboard with reasoning behind her different wide angle and close up shots. Yessica, Kathy, and Valeria all worked together to create a clear outline for filming as well.

I am slightly worried about the time issue on Monday morning, because the students have testing on tuesday, and for most of this week, so if we don't finish on Monday then I might not be able to come back in until the following week. I think it is possible to finish if I have everything planned out ahead of time and make sure I really stick to the time limits that I give to the students.

From the enthusiasm of the students thus far, I am really excited to see the outcome, and i can already tell that this project is engaging them with a literature that may have seemed inaccessible to them before.

Journal #12

May 3, 2oo7

Today was the start of my second residency--this time I'm flying solo. I am doing an Interpreting Shakespeare workshop series as the 10th grade English students are reading Macbeth right now. The residency will be very short-just 5 sessions-because they are only working on this book for several weeks and because I want to make sure I have time to gather information and work on an analysis of both of the residencies. The session today went very smoothly. I gave a brief introduction to the residency and what we would be doing together, then we watched part of a modern version of Macbeth to get a sense for what they could do there skits about. Then they partnered up and looked at a short excerpt from act 1 (each partner group had different ones). They had to write down the Who? What? and Where? of the segment then perform it like they thought it would be performed in a Shakespearean play. Then I had them do the short dialogue over again in a new setting (drawn randomly from student-written suggestions). Some of these turned out to be very humorous--one group had to do their scene as if they were under a bed, and another had to pretend they were in a skating rink. I think today was successful based on the two goals that I had: 1) that the students fully understand the plot and main themes of Act 1 of Macbeth and 2) that the students start to think about using the plot and themes of Macbeth to make their own scenes and skits. Next session will be devoted to splitting up the groups and starting to write their versions of the scenes. I think it is going to be a very fun project to work on (for them as well as for me)! And when students are working with a difficult text like Shakespeare, fun is really important. We also had a good discussion about Macbeth's lust for power and how Lady Macbeth pursuades Macbeth to commit an evil act. This discussion was engaging, as students talked about why power is so important to have and what they would do for that kind of power. I think it was one of my most complete lesson plans thus far in terms of really hitting on all of the standards; I am really looking forward to seeing the creativity that will come from these talented students.

Journal #11

March 27, 2007

There is something truly special about this 10^th grade class. The Advanced Acting is a great class as well; however, the dynamics of the honors English class are so warm and fun and open to new experiences. I’m already so excited to go back. There was the perfect amount of emotional closure today. We finished up the culminating presentations of those who could not present yesterday, and we watched Floyd’s Carrot Cake rap on the video. It was a huge hit with the class. Additionally, everyone brought in homemade food to celebrate the end of our residency, because they are reading Like Water for Chocolate and we did the recipe monologues and scenes. There were tamales, chiles rellenos, lumpia, papusas, lemon spongecake, chilaquiles, and lots more. The students were really proud of what they brought in and we had a feast. It was nice to have a celebration to recognize their hard work. They had made us a card and signed it, and we made posterboards with their pictures on it and had them sign those as well. A few of the students danced and we played some more improv games. At the beginning of the class, we had a reflective writing time, and I asked them to answer questions to help us guide our teaching. What was their favorite activity? Their least favorite? Why? What did they want to do more of? Less of? They wrote for about 20 minutes, giving solid and interesting responses. As the students were leaving, several of them gave us hugs and thanked us for coming in to teach. It was a heartwarming day. I cannot wait to think of my next residency plan and to start going back again. I need to figure out when and in what capacity I can help in the media center and if I can find a way to introduce media into the 10^th grade class.

Journal #10

March 26, 2007

Today was our culminating presentation day. We had the students work on finishing their set design drawings and rehearsing their scenes for about 20 minutes. When we came back together as a group, I asked the students to take out a sheet of paper and write one comment and one suggestion about each presentation, keeping in mind the criteria for each activity. The students presented in the order that I had assigned, so I could mix up the set designs with the scenes. All of the set designs turned out to be fabulous. Jesus and Antonio, who drew a scene from the carnival, had made their set design to look like a real theater, from the perspective of the audience. Anahi presented her drawing of the downtown scene and blew everyone away with her artistic ability. Valerie and Kathy, two of the very quiet students, had drawn the library scene. They didn’t finish on time because of the great detail they were going into on the bookshelves, coloring each book individually. Chane and Yessica drew the boys’ houses and made it very vibrant and colorful. Floyd recorded his rap on the camera so we can watch it tomorrow. Then three groups presented skits. Two of them were well thought out and put together, but the other was not really rehearsed well. It might have been because we had a more relaxed atmosphere in the last class and the activity kind of changed from what we had originally planned. This group had a great idea, they just hadn’t scripted it enough and thus their skit dragged on for too long without focus. I asked them to go outside and work on it more so they could present again tomorrow. Since we finished all of these presentations early, we played some improv games. We played a new one called “what are you doing?” that emphasizes body language and actions, then we played Freeze, which we had played on the first day. It was amazing to see how the students had improved. They were now calling out freeze on their own, without us forcing them to. And they were being more creative with their scene choices. I’m not sure if it was because they are more comfortable with us now, or because they have improved on their own acting skills. Hopefully both are true. As a culminating activity day, I think today was successful. The comment pages of the students show that they were engaged in the works of their classmates and they were attempting to think critically about each others’ presentations.

Journal #9

Journal #8

March 22, 2007

Today had an air of mayhem that was very different from past weeks. Normally the 10^th graders are fairly calm and quiet, and fairly compliant with every activity we do. Today, however, they were restless and slightly uncooperative at first. I think this is because they have had standardized testing all week and thus they saw today as a free day. I explained to them that our last two days teaching in this residency would be Monday and Tuesday, and that on Monday would be the culminating task. I assigned six students to work on their set design projects and the rest were supposed to develop their recipe monologues. They really did not take to this well and reluctantly started to work on them. Brandon suggested that they turn the monologues into dialogues and involve more students in the scenes. I agreed that they could do this if they wanted to, because it was actually combining all of the things we had been working on up to this point. I regret not making more clear standards at the beginning of the activity then, because it became quite informal. I should have reviewed the scriptwriting lesson and some other terms before letting them create their scenes. The groups were already formulated and it was easy for the students to decide whose recipes to adapt. It was difficult to be facilitating both the students who were acting and the students who were drawing at the same time, but I am really impressed with the way the day finished off. Students got organized and put together interesting scenes, and those who created set designs did a fantastic job and were on task the entire time. Even Reyna, who usually does not want to participate in anything, drew a beautiful church for her set design that she was working on with Anahi. Floyd, who was working on his rap of how to make Carrot Cake, started to say that he didn’t want to perform. It took all three teachers there to convince him to keep working on it, and we made a deal that he could do it on video instead of live in front of everyone. His writing is so creative that I didn’t want to waste it by him not feeling comfortable performing. I am really looking forward to the culminating task day on Monday when we can watch both periods perform their scenes and describe their set designs. I’m sad that our residency is ending but I’ve already started to think about what I want to do next quarter and I am going to be discussing this with Kori soon.

Journal #8

March 15, 2007

I was nervous for today—more nervous than I have been in previous lessons. This was probably partially because I wasn’t really sure how students would take to the idea I was proposing and partially just my own stress manifesting itself in the form of this task. In the English class today, we did recipe monologues. Because the students are reading Like Water for Chocolate now, I had them bring in recipes from home. I suggested that they bring in a favorite family recipe or something they eat at special occasions or during cultural celebrations—or just their favorite thing to make. My first anxiety was that they would forget to bring in recipes, an anxiety that was heightened when Ms. Hamilton informed me first period that only one student had brought in a recipe thus far. But sure enough, all but a few brought them in this morning, scribbled on scratch paper as good recipes should be. My request for them to bring in recipes clicked for them as they started to read the book. One student exclaimed, “Oh! Noowww I get it!” as I had them journal about why they chose to bring in this recipe and how it reflected their own cultural identity. Then came the real test: would they be willing to take some risks and act out the monologues with creativity? We got into three groups—one led by me, one by Ms. McRae, and one by Ms. Hamilton—and had discussions about characterization for each person’s monologue.

Immediately my group took to it. Shaqueal led the way with her hilarious monologue acting as her father cooking his homemade French fries. She used dynamics, as we had discussed earlier in the class, to convey emotions and attitude. She used body language and her presence is undying. She was a great example for the others to follow. Juan, who had brought in a torta recipe, decided he wanted to pretend that he works at “Taco King” so he did his monologue like he was taking someone’s order then telling the chef what to make. Nashale had some trouble deciding on a character. She wanted to play herself, but I asked her to be more specific. Was she trying to remember a recipe her mother had taught her? Was she teaching someone else the recipe? Was this the first time making the recipe or was she an expert? She finally decided to be making her homemade macaroni and cheese for the first time, and throughout her monologue she would call out to her mother for help. Reyna, who has an intense shyness in front of others, did not really know how or where to start her character. Her recipe was Chile Rellenos, and she said her grandma makes great ones, so she should act as her grandma. “But my grandma doesn’t speak English,” she said. So I told her she could translate it and do it in Spanish. She worked really hard on translating it, and though she still had trouble performing it, I was really proud of the effort she put in today because she generally does not want to participate. Nubia borrowed a recipe for spaghetti from a bunch that Ms. Hamilton had printed out. She decided that she was going to do the monologue as herself, as someone who pays very close attention to every detail and doesn’t want to miss a thing. She needs to refine and work on her projection and dynamics, but I think it is going to turn out very well next week. Floyd brought in a recipe for his mom’s carrot cake. He was also unsure about how to use a character in this monologue and he didn’t really want to play his mom. One of the other students suggested that he make it a rap, and he got to work right away, rearranging the ingredients to form rhymes and figuring out how he can rap about carrot cake.

Once we had gone through everyone in our group we got back together with the larger group so people could perform their monologues. Arnaldo went first and had very good stage direction. He was playing himself, teaching his little sister how to cook. Yuri came up with one of the most powerful monologues of the day: it was a recipe for Mexican flan, and the character she played was Nashale. Everyone knew exactly who she was playing by the third sentence she said, and her sense of humor and timing were impeccable. Ms. McRae suggested that she be more conscious of her movements across the stage and to make more deliberate decisions about her stage directions. I am really thankful that I am teaching alongside Ms. McRae because she reminds me that making suggestions and constructive criticism is why we are there. I am still so impressed by the students that I sometimes forget to be critical. But I’m working on it, and making a clear-cut criteria for the past few lessons has really helped with that. I’m extremely excited to keep working on these monologues for the culminating presentations!