Ended Week One of Ubuntu Academy, Engineering Human Togetherness, and Was Super Impressed by the Collaborative, Community Art Piece that Resulted

I think the more particular individuals try to divide the world and separate human beings from one one another, the more important it is to remind ourselves we're in this together. Plant more trees...butterfly and hummingbird gardens, clean up the streets, and love thy neighbors. You know, the R E S P E C T part of being good citizens of the world. We are up to 32 English language learners in CWP's summer programs and we culminated the week by reading by reading I Am Human by Susan Verde, thinking about collage as a collaborative art form and breaking into teams of 7 to see where we'd take our thinking.

The rules: (1) each of you are given a bag of art supplies, (2) you must use the pink yarn, (3) you must contribute one poem, (4) your collaboration must have on drawing from the group, and (5) You need to respond to the following question visually: What does it mean to be a human being?

We broke the kids into five rooms, let them play music and said they had an hour to create. This hour, however, turned into two hours because the students were so into the task. We brought in magazines, glue, scissors, etc, and told them stickers, markers, and other scrapbooking material was fair game.

Each room had a shape (which was really a letter) and only a couple guessed what it was going to spell. I worked in room five, and I was totally impressed by how quickly our crew divided tasks, gave one another responsibilities and high-fived over efficiency and creativity. I also took the room with English language learners who also have special needs in the classroom. 6 of them to teach me what they wanted to do (we were the letter "A". 

Three of the five reported similar succinctness and, quickly, finished the task swiftly. Two groups needed longer: one, because they were being extremely detailed with their collaging, and the other, because their were many captains on the same ship and, as a room of task maskers, couldn't quite compromise. There were many debates and flights on how to best make their shape/letter. In the end, however, I was totally surprised by the quality of the each letter that came together to spell: H U M A N.

As a visual literacy project of young people, many in the country with less than one year of English instruction, this is what they created when prompted. I was impressed, too, that all the groups chose to outline their letter with the pink yard they were provided, which solidified the theme for the week. 

We also did an activity today, where every student had to read a children's book to find the humanity in the story. We wanted the kids to begin abstracting from text and visualization to justify the arguments they had for what their books were about. Overall, this has been a stupendous week and simply inspirational on all levels. The teachers have said, "Can you imagine if we had this freedom to do such work in our schools?" 

I simply say, "You have the freedom. You have to make it happen for kids." 

Outside of the box thinking for over 30 years. Do what's best by them and all else will follow.