Hi Family and Friends!
Classrooms for me have many meanings. They mean acting as John Adams and Lady Murasaki in my own 5th and 6th grade living wax museum. They mean teaching in a windy college room full of twenty year olds in northern Thailand, and most recently they mean third floor rooms, wood-floored, and full of Boston sixth graders.
For the past semester I have been working as a Teaching Associate with Citizen Schools in a public school in Charleston MA. Citizen Schools is a national non-profit devoted to expanding the school learning day for inner-city public school students and inspiring them to reach for college by tapping the wealth of experience of city professionals and transforming those lawyers, scientists, and artists into teachers.
Here is a little sense of what just one of my classes – documentary filmmaking – was like:
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What happens when you pass out hot fuchsia flip-cameras to eleven sixth graders with the plan to make a movie?
If you are in Room 213 you might see shots of bright yellow Jordans, impromptu rapping, or angled dance moves filmed covertly while a teacher is talking. There will be close ups on a nose, or a blinking eye, and classroom whiteboards spun into vortices.
Having grown up assembling Marx Brother-esque shorts and PlayMobil stop-action epics, I jumped at the opportunity to co-teach an apprenticeship on documentary filmmaking. Little did I know what I was getting into.
Our class of eleven was a middle-school microcosm. There were the best friends and the loners. There were the troublemakers and studious types. There were students so quiet it took minutes of cajoling to get them to share a thought and others who required constant reminders not to call out. We had Spanish SEI (Sheltered English Immersion) students, Chinese SEI students who spoke limited or halting English, and one autistic boy who dreamed of becoming a filmmaker.
By week five I was dubious that any movie would result. Class seemed to be more about juggling emotions and attitudes than an intense study of cinematography. We finally settled on a fitting topic: what it was like to be a sixth grader.
And, slowly, a movie emerged.
Students climbed onto chairs or lay, backs flat to the creaky wood floor, to capture the most interesting angled shots. They fanned out silently to record daily life: homework help in the cafeteria, the step-dance team in the hallway and a range of apprenticeship lessons in the classrooms.
At the culmination of ten weeks, we presented our movie to students, parents and teachers. All the elements were there: a storyline, interviews, b-roll, voiceovers, odd angles, even bloopers so as to include the yellow Jordans and the covert dance moves. But more than that, the movie held together as a passionate and playful portrait of 6th grade life.
What the audience did not see, however, was the ten-week transformation of the film crew who sat, bashfully, near the front of the stage during the premiere.
No, they weren’t suddenly all best friends. But over ten weeks I had witnessed subtle shifts in their attitudes and their assumptions of each other. I saw mainstream students reach out to Chinese SEI students and take the time to listen and respond to their halting English. I saw the shyer students improvise eloquent voice-overs when the talkers of the class grew hesitant. And I watched as the autistic boy in our class, who struggled constantly to stay on task, walked purposefully and silently through the halls and classrooms of the school, camera in hand.
It is this still-unmade documentary I wish the audience could see.
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Like many educational non-profits doing great work around the country, Citizen Schools would not be able to provide so many students across the nation with the opportunity to participate in mock trials at the supreme courthouse, design a solar car, or, yes, make a documentary, without the help of many. We need the support of thousands of volunteers and donors to make it happen.
That’s why I’m asking, and hoping, that you will help support my students and Citizen Schools by making a donation. Would you give $10 to help support our inner city kids to learn about a world of possibilities? (If you want to give more that’s great too!)
Thank you so much for supporting us and supporting the next generation!
All the best,
Jessica
Note: If you want to hear more about my life as a 6th grade teacher in the Boston Public schools, check out my blog: http://thailandertales.blogspot.com/