9/29/10, Class 1 - Heroes and Journalism

I met the kids today and am very excited to work with all of them. Luis, Deonis, Cesar, Alsacia, Dagoberto, William, Eric, Kamaya, Jose, Yissel, Yveliana, Manuel, Estefany, Branton, Deysi and Devonte. They represent a combination of 6th and 7th graders.

Today we introduced the kids to the basics of the "Heroes and Journalism" apprenticeship for Citizen Schools at the Orchard Gardens. We laid out the goals of the apprenticeship: to learn about and explore a career in journalism by researching, meeting and interviewing everyday heroes. To begin to think and act like a journalist we introduced some of the necessary skills including asking different types of questions including "surface" and "deeper" ones. We told the kids surface questions are ones like "what is your name" and "how old are you". "Deeper" or "inferential" questions often require more than 1 word answers such as "how did you feel about that" or "why did you do that." Understanding the differences and getting comfortable and confident asking questions will be one critical skill the kids will develop through the curriculum. To help speed the process along, we watched an interview with Captain Sullenberger, the pilot who saved over 100 lives by landing his planed safely in the Hudson River after birds hit the planes' engines. The kids wrote down the questions that Katie Couric from CBS news asked and classified them as "surface" or "deeper" questions. Importantly, this interview also introduced the concept of a "hero" to the kids since another goal of the apprenticeship is to plant the seed in the kids of the great actions we are all capable of. After this, we watched some video clips from CNN Heroes including a young woman who started a organization to donate books for kids in the hospital as well as a army veteran who is helping homeless veterans. After watching the videos the kids answered questions such as: "what was the problem the hero was trying to solve?", "how did they solve it?", "what qualities did the hero demonstrate?" and finally "what issues or problems exist in your neighborhood or school that need fixing?"......here the kids identified violence and drugs as problems in the school that need to be dealt with.

We finished the class with 2 more things. First, we allowed the kids to get comfortable with the videocamera by asking them questions in front of the camera such as what is your favorite subject, tell me about your family, etc....the goal here was for the kids to speak clearly, confidently, loudly, look into the camera, and importantly SMILE AND HAVE FUN.

We finished the class by going over our class ritual which we will do at the beginning of each class. During the week, each student will keep their eyes and ears out for one thing that makes them say to themselves or another person, "wow, that was a very nice thing something did for someone else." And will share it in front of the class and videorecorder.