Monday 5/20 - LAST WEEK!

I would first like to apologize for the lack of posts last week, but I found myself fully engaged everyday, and often coming home around 7pm. I spent most of my free time at the office preparing my lesson plan for SF Day School, and considering the different approaches I could take. Last week I also met with Ms. Piersol, my eighth grade English teacher from SF Day School, to discuss my schedule for tomorrow and Wednesday and answer any questions either of us had. I was very happy I met with her because we were able to share so many hilarious memories from four years ago, that would not have been appropriate during class time. I do plan on having lunch with her again during these next couple of days to record her thoughts on the notion of inspiring a student to express themselves. I am going in at 8:50 tomorrow morning for my first class, and have another one before lunch. I feel extremely prepared and confident, but I still that nervous tingle in my stomach. I have grown to love this nervous tingle, and I plan on expressing that to all of my students. It is healthy and normal to feel nervous, but it is your job to balance that with excitement, and accept that things may go wrong, or may go fantastic. It is worth acknowledging that nervousness potentially comes from every event, but as you experience more and gain more confidence, you learn how to ignore that voice in your head that is thinking of potential failure. This, however, is not what I am going to be focussing on with my students. I am going to be focussing on comedy in poetry, and how you are able to convey a deep meaning while using humor and 'punch lines'. I am going to give some examples of how comedians have used poetry, to make a point, and poets have used comedy to gain emotion and attachment from their audience. After discussing this topic a bit, we will go into some writing exercises, and then break off into a free write. Wednesday I hope to have a slam in the class, and record students about reading their work in front of their peers. I am very excited for the upcoming days, and feel so grateful for this opportunity.

Monday 5/13

My first day back felt very comfortable and productive. I spent the day speaking with Josh Merchant about his job teaching english classes at a middle school in East Oakland, as well as teaching workshops at youth speaks. I also learned more about the work that youth speaks has done with UCSF in the Bigger Picture project, in which many poets have created videos that address the issues of Diabetes and Obesity. I have been able to put in a lot of time into what I want to do during my lesson at SF Day School, and today I found many examples of poems that are appropriate for a 7th grade audience. I am have decided to focus on ways to incorporate comedy in poetry, while still conveying a meaningful message. I have been given many resources, and have discovered awesome examples of poets who use comedy to enhance or capture their audience's attention while conveying a deeper meaning. I have also found that many stand up comedians also have participated in poetry slams, and are not much different than their stand up routines besides rhymes. I feel like I worked effectively today on organizing my lesson plan and determining what are the specific techniques to add comedy to a meaningful piece of work. I am one step closer to teaching at SF Day, but I look forward to another great week working with Youth Speaks.

Day 3/Day 4

On Wednesday I spent my day at the youth speaks office in the mission, and sat in on a workshop taught by Josh Merchant, whom won the annual youth speaks teen poetry slam a couple years ago. This workshop was titled "Queeriosity" and is focused on discussions about equal rights, and community's values. We spoke a lot about identities within a community, and if you necessarily need to believe everything a community represents in order to identify with it. I shared how I was raised Catholic, but I do not believe in the religion, but when people ask me I still say I'm Irish Catholic, because its my background. There were often times during the workshop when discussion would fall apart, and people would start writing random stuff in their journals, but Josh was really good at bringing  back everyone's attention, and then giving a writing prompt for people to explore. There were several freshmen and sophomores in the workshop, which definitely required Josh to give them more support while they are developing ideas, and encourage them to write about what they shared with the group. I left at about 6:10, and got home just in time for the Warriors game, so that is why I did not post this yesterday.

I am very happy to see the sun out of the window at 1 on a thursday. Today there are no workshops scheduled, but I am at the office doing some small organization jobs and working on my lesson plan proposal for Ms. Piersol. I have been to so many workshops, and so many of them have been successful, but there have also been many that didn't benefit many people in the room, so I have been analyzing closely what techniques and approaches are the most successful. I have put a lot of thought into how I will construct my workshops at San Francisco Day school using all of my prior experience with youth speaks, werd, and especially these great past three days. I am going to meet with Ms. Piersol at five tonight at a cafe in Bernal Heights, and I am going to present her my general lesson plan for the classes, and I will receive my schedule for teaching at San Francisco Day School. I am nervous, but very excited for these upcoming events, and I so grateful I get to put in this much time into what I love to do.

5/7/2013 - Day Two

Today I slept in until about 11, and immediately started writing a new piece that I have been developing. I spent about 30 minutes writing, another 20 printing out some of my other pieces, and then  got ready to go to my second day at Youth Speaks.  After showing up to the mission office, I was informed that I didn't have anything to do except attend Dennis' workshop in Fruitvale at the Oakland Library Cesar Chavez branch. I had never been to this workshop location before and was a little nervous about its location. I had some time to add more to my lesson plan for SF Day, and then got on bart to head over to the workshop. When I got to the workshop I was surprised to see that it was just me and two other seniors who were attending the workshop, due to the fact that many students stop attending the workshops after they performed in the Annual Teen Poetry Slam. We started by reading from a Korean-American play, and discussed our personal connections with immigration and experiencing  cultural differences. Dennis connected with us each individually as we told stories, and laughed about the differences between all of our families. Dennis' calm presence and supporting feedback created a really relaxed learning environment  and it made it easy for me to share material that is more personal. I plan on interviewing Dennis and identifying more of these techniques that he uses in order to inspire his students to write about what means the most to them. I had a beautiful second day and am really excited for tomorrow!

Presentation Reflection/ First Day!

In the presentations I've seen at Drew, the ones that have stood out the most are when the students are truly passionate about their project. I have found that the projects that directly relate to the students' career goals and aspirations are the best presentations. I think I will have a very easy time speaking and presenting my project because I am very passionate about writing and performing poetry, as well as working with kids from my all over the bay area.
Today I realized how lucky I was that we have an opportunity to dedicate time and energy to what we love to do, and what we potentially would want to do in the future. Today I arrived at the Youth Speaks office in the Mission, and was greeted with friendly faces, and a few jobs for me to do. I had a conversation with Dennis Kim, who's workshop I will be attending tomorrow at the Oakland public Library. I was able to spend some time working on my lesson plan for when I teach at SFDS, and also e-mail the head of the English department there, in order to make plans for another meeting. I had an awesome day doing simple jobs around the office, and working on my lesson plan, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to manage my time, and pursue my passion.

-Slug