Flowers came in from Amy (Sonia, WW) and Jessica (Chase, EW) updated the front table with fresh greens and holiday cheer. Then more flowers came in from April Lee (Mehana, WW).
A HUGE thank you to everyone who donated new toys for the Union Rescue Mission, organized by Jess (Chase, EW). They came to pick up our many boxes!
Teacher lunch in our Holiday week was provided by Kenette & Erin Louis (Lola, EW) YUMMY!!
The Holiday Bazaar crew – we are deeply grateful for your creativity, support, persistence, and joyful company.
Snack was delivered from Kirby and Moss (WW), and Hayes and Luscia (EW)
Jacob’s dad, Mike (EW) came to our staff meeting and gave us an update on how L.A. is working to help the homeless population so we can better understand what we and the children are seeing.
And April, (Mehana, WW) joined the team meeting offering great input and this reflection: I was very grateful for the opportunity to sit in on the teacher meeting led by Cindy this afternoon. The engagement, focus, curiosity, creativity, and dedication of the teachers has tremendous weight. The importance of the work of the teachers, students, and even greater community is foundational and truly valuable.
I was struck by the complexity of the student’s work and therefore the myriad possibilities for supporting it through carefully considered provocations. I was so moved by seriousness and care in the reflection after with how best to synthesize, support, and provoke the groups’ thinking.
The example was a mixed group of West and East wing students who were exploring ideas in the projection area of the atelier. They were interested in hiding (themselves and objects for others), storing, invisibility, light and shadow, storytelling, and what appeared to be interpretation of emotions, movements, gestures, environments, and collective ideas. The teachers were supporting their lines of inquiry with ideas of layering, porousness, editing, collaboration, and time.
I was left pondering the following ideas:
– Highlighting subjectivity and how understanding unique perspectives can help individuals know themselves and ultimately others more deeply.
– Perspective taking and how the desire to understand another’s unique experience can foster empathy, which I believe to be central to healthy collaboration and communication.
– Time… the respect for time in a child’s learning and process comes up a lot: creating the structure of the day to allow for the necessary time it takes to truly explore. The respect for time is respect for an individual child’s needs. I also noticed with the collaborative projects, there was a consideration of the shape of time. There is never a push for linear learning objectives, rather, ideas can take a form, be reflected upon, go through an editing process, and continue as long as the children are interested in pursuing the inquiry. They can go backwards, sideways, or forward to explore their questions.
– Reflection. Teachers discussed the use of mirrors as tools to help children see their own emotions and expressions, they play back videos of children’s performative pieces so they can see from another’s perspective what they were creating, they have reflection periods to discuss work, and so on. From what I saw, reflection was being used as a tool for slowing the learning down, enhancing self-awareness, and allowing understanding to land for the students.
Thank you for your beautiful work!
Warmest regards,
April
