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!

Journal #7

March 8, 2007

Today’s activity gave the visual artists a time to shine. We did a lesson on set design in which we discussed the different settings in Something Wicked This Way Comes, then students were asked to draw a set design sketch for one of the settings. They had to support their drawing with a quote from the book and/or their own description of the setting. We evaluated the work by asking: 1) How well does the student’s drawing convey the setting described in the book. 2) How could characters move through the set? 3) How feasible is this set design to create for a stage performance? We evaluated work as a group discussion. I think the evaluation in both classes today was much more structured and thus more productive than in our previous sessions. There were several students whose work really stood out to me—students who generally dislike getting up in front of people and acting. Lourdes, Jershel, Antonio, and Anahi all had great concepts of what their stages would look like, and through standing up to present their work they gained confidence sharing something that they and others knew they were good at. I see a lot of creative potential in so many of the students and I wish there was a way for all of them to shadow here and already after such a short time working with them, I feel really invested in their success. I want them to graduate and pursue higher goals in the arts and education, but I can’t help but feel like after this year I will lose track of their progress and will not be able to be a resource for them if I pursue my own goals outside of Los Angeles.

I was reading through the journal entries that the students had written from previous classes and the most interesting responses came to the question about age. I asked students to describe what they think they will be like when they are 20, 50, and 80 years old and also to choose an age to go back to or jump ahead to. So many of the students said they would go back to being 8 or 10 or 13 because that was before they knew all the problems in this world. One student wished he could go back to a time when he could stop a particular event from happening—and event that clearly changed his life. The realities of the students that we work with become clearer and clearer everyday, and I find myself thinking about the students throughout the week. My teaching days are the highlight of my week as each time I teach I am reminded that there is no other profession I could see myself doing, and each day the work that the students produce amazes and inspires me. I know this is where I belong, and at a time when I am not certain about much else in my life, that is a comforting thought.

Journal #6

March 1, 2007

As our relationship with the students gets better, the lessons seem to run smoother as well. Today we did a scriptwriting workshop with the 10^th grade students that went extremely well. First, we brainstormed about the components of a script—what would be included in a script. The students seemed to know all of the parts that made up a script, so I passed out worksheets for a partner activity. The worksheets had dialogues from the book Something Wicked This Way Comes, which the students are reading in class. On the worksheets, the students were asked to identify the objectives of each of the characters and of the whole dialogue, add a setting and stage direction, and finish the dialogue. At first I was unsure if all of the students understood the task, but once they got to working they started to understand it better. They are finally feeling comfortable raising their hands and asking for me and Ms. McRae by our names, which is an exciting landmark. After all of the students finished their dialogues, we went over the worksheets as a whole class. There were some students, like Nubia and Zindy, who really understood the concept of objectives and helped other students to understand it.

After we discussed the handouts, the students acted out their scenes. In both classes, the characterization was much better today than it had been in the past. In the 10^th grade class, they did a really good job focusing on stage directions and doing specific movements that they had planned out in advance. My favorite part about being able to walk around and help out groups while they work is talking to students about other things too…although we kind of get off topic, it is important to me to get to know each of the students and answer questions that they have about other things as well. Ofelia was very interested in talking about college. She said that she wants to be a theater major, but what she really wants to do is architecture. I told her that at UCLA you can do your undergraduate in design or theater and get a master’s in Architecture, so it is something to think about for the future. Jesus was listening in on the conversation and asked me about community college. I am really glad that this topic has come up several times and that students understand the value of taking the community college to university route. I want these amazingly bright and talented students to understand that there is a place for them in higher education if they wish to pursue it and that there are different options of ways to get there. I hope that in addition to teaching them the basic skills of theater and arts that we work on through ArtsBridge, we are also acting as liaisons to a world that society has told these students is out of reach.

Journal #5

February 22, 2007

For our second day teaching, Jena and I decided to do Character Development workshops with our students. For Advanced Acting, we had students describe two of their favorite literary or film characters. They wrote down physical characteristics, personality traits, likes, dislikes, and any other information they could think of about these fictional characters. Then, they chose somebody that they knew well and developed a character for that person, also listing different aspects of character. Finally, the students had to act out their characters in short improvised dialogues. Several students decided to characterize each other, which made entertaining scenes when they acted them out. Students felt more comfortable portraying their friends and knew little quirks or traits about them that were easy to act out. Marquesha decided to develop a character of her mother—she defined her mother as always cracking jokes and acting a little crazy. In her scene, she carried herself like a mother would, while at the same time being funny, and Claudia, the other girl in the scene with her, played off this character very well. Claudia was playing her shy younger sister, and without saying very much she conveyed a young, quiet personality. It was still rather difficult to draw students out of their shells, but today was slightly easier than our last session because they had time to prepare their characters.

In the 10^th grade English class, I wanted to really focus on the book the students are reading—Something Wicked This Way Comes—to analyze the characters in the novel. I assigned students to different characters and they worked in groups or pairs to describe the characters. Then, we set up scenes from different chapters of the book so that each student was playing the character they had just worked on developing. This went exceptionally well and I think it helped the students to grasp the ideas of the book a little better. Ms. Hamilton had expressed that students were not really following what was happening in the novel, so I hope that this clarified parts of it for them. One group in particular stood out as successfully representing their characters. The scene was between Jim, Will, and Mr. Dark, one of the carnival owners. The student who played Mr. Dark used effective actions, like flexing her arm and using a flyer as a prop that was supposed to be a ticket to ride the carousel. I was really impressed with all of the students’ willingness to participate in the activity. The only one who gave me some trouble was a young man who is clearly very intelligent and also very creative who told me he just didn’t want to do it. I tried to convince him to do it but after a while I gave up and told myself he would eventually comply. He did, and he laughed at me and said he was just tricking me to see if I would believe him. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to this. He told me he was a good liar, and I said, “Well, lying and acting are pretty much the same thing, so you should be good at this too.” He was one of the few students in the class who had memorized his lines by the time the skits were performed at the end of the class.

Journal #4

February 15, 2007
Students from Jordan High School came to UCLA for the Flesh and Blood performance and discussion with the Fowler Museum. It was wonderful to see the familiar faces of the students in our classes come to the UCLA campus to get a glimpse of the campus that I call home and to see the opportunities that they have to pursue their education here as well. As I stood waiting in front of the Fowler Museum this morning, I found myself eagerly anticipating the arrival of the students. Who would be coming this morning? Who would I recognize? I first caught sight of Shaqueal and Nashale, then Orly, Mani, Yuri, Nubia and about 20 other students in Ms. Hamilton's class. I had a smile plastered to my face for some reason--I was just so excited to see the students. I was in charge of videography for the day, documenting the group's activities and taping interviews. The coolest part was seeing a group of four students--3 of which are in our classes--working on their own videography of the event. Jordan High School just opened up a media center where the students will be working on their own documentaries and shaping their skills in the Media Arts. This will be an amazing opportunity to work with students after our residency to make collaborative projects.
After the day's planned events were over, the students had some free time to get food on campus. I had gone to return the video camera, then I went to get something to eat for myself and I ran into a group of kids in teh Cooperage. It was Shaqueal, Nashale, Coco, and two other girls (whose names I didn't get). In this more relaxed setting, the girls asked me questions about UCLA and what it was like to choose classes, who inspired me to go to college, who helped me to get here, and what I thought about community college. Nashale told me she already knows that she wants to be an Orthodontist, and the other girls expressed their own goals for attending college as well. This was inspiring, and Nashale told me that she would be contacting me when the time came for her to apply to college. I left them, once again, with a smile on my face.

Journal #3

February 8, 2007

Palms sweaty, heart working a little harder than normal, taking a deep breath, I took my position at the front of the classroom. This was my first day teaching; my first day ever really taking a classroom and making it my own…the first out of a lifetime of doing this work. As Jena and I taught the first period Advanced Acting class, the time flew. Although I was uncomfortable with the silences, I reminded myself that it was the sound of minds at work. I tried not to feel awkward, especially when Jena was speaking and I was standing right next to her, and I was feeling like everyone was watching me. Any fears I had, however, flew away like the time. Students were willing (if not quite eager) to participate in the discussions we had about key terms for acting. Some students seemed to really enjoy the activities we had planned while the ones we had to cajole into playing were at least open to trying it. We started today with improvisation skills, while simultaneously playing Freeze and interjecting with comments and lessons about presence, placement, scene ideas, dialogue, and other key terms we had previously discussed. There are students in the class who picked up on the game immediately and made hilarious scenes because they already have very strong personalities. Both Jena and I noted that the topics of their scenes kept coming back to the same subject areas—boyfriends cheating, getting in fights, picking up on girls, gambling, going to parties. We tried to steer scenes in other directions, challenging students to play different ages and characters, but many times they kept falling back on these issues that are facets of their realities. It was difficult to find a balance between what they felt comfortable with and how else we felt we should challenge them.

While, as I said, some students were reluctant, once it was clear that they would have to participate eventually, they were active participants and even surprised everyone with funny commentary and scene ideas. I felt bad making these students participate, especially in the second period class which is a 10^th grade English class. There are students in this class who have no desire to act and have a fear of getting up in front of their peers, so we tried to make the environment as welcoming as possible. One student in particular was turning bright red and so incredibly embarrassed. A different student suggested the scene and it was really difficult for the nervous student to come up with anything to say, but once she started, she was into the scene and it turned out wonderfully. I hope I didn’t make her too embarrassed because I don’t want to turn anyone off to our purpose and goals. I ensured everyone that we would be doing different kinds of work related to theater in the next sessions—things like set design that would involve more of the visual arts. We had students journal at the beginning of each class so we can start to get to know them better and see what they know and what they need to work on. Overall I feel the day was very successful—one student even asked when we would be back next. It was a strong start that gives me hope for the success of the whole residency.

Journal #2

February 2, 2007

This week was writing, thinking, planning, reading. This week was the calm before the storm; or perhaps the hush of the audience before the curtains open, before the show comes alive. All the while, backstage I was running like a chicken with my head cut off…meeting with Jena, planning a meeting with Kori, finishing up a 500 page book, writing lesson plans, and in general getting nervous about the big first day. We finally made an appointment to meet with Kori this upcoming Sunday, and just today I found out we have different classes that we expected. So that 500 page book I read is generally not going to be useful at all (although it was a fascinating read and I’m extremely happy to have read it.) Once again I am understanding that in order to stand the winds of change I must have my roots firmly settled and my ideas backed by solid, creative, challenging lesson plans, theories, and standards.

I also met with Jaynie this week to start discussing work on the documentation of ArtsBridge. I went to the lab with her to see the project she was working on and where I could be of help this quarter. In the course of an hour I saw the scope of the project and had a brush up session on Final Cut Pro Editing. Jaynie explained her concept and process as well as showing me some of the footage she is working with. I’m not exactly sure what the plan is for my involvement yet…whether or not I will be working on what she is doing and helping her, or starting something different for this year’s documentation. These are things I am going to need to work out soon so I have a plan for what footage I need to take on my own and where I can gather resources from. I know it is going to be increasingly difficult the further I get into the quarter.

Journal #1

January 25, 2007

Pulling into the Jordan High faculty parking lot this morning didn’t feel natural. It didn’t feel like home—like a place I knew and felt welcomed at; however, it did feel good. It felt like a place that had the potential to feel natural and a place that I would soon be completely comfortable with. This was our third morning at Jordan and each time I feel a little less nervous, a little more excited, a little more certain that the ArtsBridge experience is going to be unforgettable and invaluable in my career as an educator. For the past three sessions, Jena and I have gone in to observe Kori’s teaching style, meet the students, and get familiar with the school. Luckily in Kori’s class it’s impossible to just observe, so we have been working with students on their dialogues, wandering the classroom and sitting in on partners practicing together. Through this I have started to have conversations with the students and get to know them and their strengths and opportunities for improvement. This knowledge is going to be extremely valuable once we start to teach. If I had just gone to the first observation day and then dove right into teaching, I would probably drown. Now I feel like I’m learning the strokes, the size of the pool, the temperature of the water. I know what I’m getting into and I love it.

On the practical side of things, it is also becoming apparent how important scheduling and planning is going to be. We have already decided what periods we are going to teach, but we need to figure out the exact dates and make sure there are no scheduling conflicts. In addition, we still need to have a curriculum planning meeting to be sure that what Jena and I wish to accomplish is in line with what Kori expects of us, although I do not foresee a problem with that as she has been incredibly supportive of our plans and goals. Hopefully we will have a meeting time by the beginning of next week because our first day of teaching will be the following Thursday. In addition, Jena and I need to finalize our goals for our students—the skills and knowledge we want them to have by the end of our residency and what our culminating activity will be. This way we can assess what they know at the beginning of the residency and where our launching pad is to start from.