Free Minds Collective

(from the Free Minds Collective Yahoo Grps "Description"):

"The Free Minds Collective is a summer enrichment program at the Center for Educational Partnership and William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale Heights, MD. Educators are teams made up of lead instructor(s), a University of Maryland student, and a Parkdale high school student working with middle school students. Programs include breakdancing, photography, bike repair, organic gardening and cooking, drumming, drama, capoeira, spoken word, and mural painting. We value multicultural, peace-centered, democratic education."

I am really inspired right now by how this model is happening for us. I've been talking to a lot of people about what inspires me and what frustrates me about this experience - so forgive me if you've already heard a lot about this.

I just want to post periodically throughout the rest of july about some experiences here, in the hopes that these experiences might be useful to others than myself.

Comments

Kara said…

you are amazing! great blog. i have enjoyed reading it immensely!

July 16, 2007 at 8:34 AM

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t

Japanese Class Downtown (Week of 10/23)

This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica

postcard poetry: here are some of my favorite postcards that i've sent to people so far 1

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.

speach tree

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