Interdisciplinary Collaboration--Creative Writing

We are delighted to share that during January the wonderfully talented visiting artist J’miah Baird has been leading creative writing workshops with Mr Godley and Mr. Senft’s NSD students at Abbott and St. John’s.

These  will be part of our Black Panther Party interdisciplinary collaboration’s partnership with 826NYC,  and later on J’miah will  lead similar workshops with NSP students.  

We are privileged to have J’miah join us to share his warmth and his care for our students as he encourages them to shape  their emotions into stirring poetry.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

 

Zine Collections in Los Angeles!

Los Angeles Public Library Catalog listing Passages' students' zines

Back in December my Belmont colleague Jessica Ernyey, English Language Arts teacher, approached me about collaborating on a zine mini-unit with one of her groups. 

We were celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month then,  but due to Covid concerns we were foregoing the traditional food-oriented event planning.  Then Ms. Ernyey requested we do some zine-making centered around favorite foods and so we co-planned some lessons.  As the students became engaged in zine-making, I happened to learn about the Los Angeles Public Libraries zine collection through this article.  

We discussed it with our zine makers and with their permission we submitted their work to the LAPL collection.  And so now we're proud to say their zine work is part of the circulating collections at several public library branches in Los Angeles - check them out here and here! --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Overturned by Lamar GIles

 

After having his death sentence commuted, Nikki’s dad is eager to come home and get back to his casino business in Las Vegas. This spells bad news for Nikki, who’s been running her father’s show for the past five years while he’s been in prison. Nikki now finds herself needing to expedite her plans to leave Vegas before her father learns too much. Middle school students and older looking for a suspenseful, who-done-it mystery will be glad they picked Overturned up.--Claudio Leon

Giles, Lamar. Overturned. New York: Scholastic, 2017. Print.

Programming Spotlight: Mindful Coloring

Last month during the week of December 20 the library at Belmont collaborated with Rebecca Fernandez, School Psychologist, and Michael Morgan, Social Worker, to offer a mindful coloring program to all seven of the groups currently at Belmont. 

Unfortunately, two groups went into quarantine at the start of the week,  but the remaining five visited the library as a regularly scheduled part of their week and were introduced to mindfulness and mindful coloring.  While we played ambient music in the background, we distributed coloring books and gel pens,  and then and there staff and co-teachers were invited to join the students in mindful coloring.

All the students who participated were gifted with the coloring book they had been using to color,  and were encouraged to use it as a coping tool during the break or whenever stress was getting to them.   To the houses of the two quarantined groups we sent coloring books and directions for mindful coloring for each student.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Kickoff: The Black Panther Party

In spite of attendance challenges, some of us educators at Passages Academy’s Belmont site are kicking off a co-planned interdisciplinary collaborative unit on the Black Panther Party this week.  Social Studies, ELA, Art, and Special Education teachers are collaborating with the Reading Specialist, Speech Language Pathologist, and Librarian to lead students through an exploration of David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s graphic novel, above.   Student engagement is high.  You can read (and watch and listen to!) NYPL's Amber Certain review of the graphic novel here, along with her excellent recommendations for related texts. (Thank you, Hermithe Bernard, for sharing it!)  More soon. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Breaking News

Photo credit: Claudio Leon

Massive congratulations to colleagues Jamila Abdulrashid and Claudio Leon, school librarians serving Bronx Hope and Horizon, respectively, for winning the BUILD Up grant from the NYC Department of Education, Office of School Library Services, and Mackin.  Both school librarians and their school library locations have been awarded $5000 in new school library books for their collections.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber