The Anti-Slavery Show is now live at United World Radio! Listen to the interviews from people around the world who are helping to change the lives of children oppressed under enforced labor!
I have much more to write, but am still in the middle of my crunch time. Happy Birthday to my dear and much loved blog (and Real Life) friend, Carroll!!!!! Love you so much, sweetie!
My students have been working hard on United World Radio, their new internet radio show where they will highlight Cultivators of Hope from around the world.
They put together a short (9-minute) preview based on the immersion trip through northern New Mexico they took a few months back. The show has teaser interviews with a scientist who was locked in Biosphere 2 for two years, an activist in Santa Fe who works with teens and art, and an original Hippie from The Hog Farm.
You can listen to their show at United World Radio.
Please give them an encouraging comment!
They did EVERYTHING - from designing their site and logo to recording to scripting to editing to composing and singing the theme song! I am so proud of them! Their production values are steadily increasing, so the next shows they post will be even better. I think this is a great start.
I haven't had time to write a good story about our expedition. My students are creating an internet radio show called United World Radio. Here is Louis (left) and a classmate getting ready to conduct an interview at the Bioneer Conference in Santa Fe last week.
United World Radio will consist of a series of 40-minute podcasts, each centered around a different Cultivator of Hope - a person or organization that is working toward a sustainable and just future. We are choosing lesser-known activists and groups in order to shine light on their important work.
The series will contain six episodes, each fully scripted, recorded, and produced by small "pods" of 3 - 7 students. Louis' group (three students) is focusing on Social Justice and Personal Freedoms, and will be interviewing revolutionaries and activists around the world who are working toward freedom of body and mind. Other pods are focusing on education, health, slavery and servitude, environmental issues, and arts and technology. NPR stations around the country have already expressed an interest in our series. The first shows will be going online in roughly a month. The United World College community has been incredibly supportive and helpful - helping my students make connections with activists around the world as well as teaching them about their own cultures.
It's an exciting expedition! The 7th and 8th grade students are doing everything - from designing their web page to writing their radio scripts, to researching the activism topics to interviewing, recording, and editing their podcasts. I hope to post more on this, soon!
Click on any photo to view a larger image.
My students, taken inside our bus. Yeah, we're gettin' along...
This past week I:
- took the class girls to see Eve Ensler's play, The Good Body, performed by United World College students.
- taught my students how to make their own crystal radio using items you can find around the house.. and they worked!
- started teaching guitar again in addition to everything else...
- continued teaching my math group (who is learning geometry and algebra this year) the physics and math of paper airplanes. We're going to enter a regional middle school paper airplane competition in the spring!
- made a "Women Only" box for my female students and filled it with all those essentials that girls need, including feminine supplies, hair ties, a mirror. We chicas gathered together and found a safe place where the boys won't find it...
- realized I lost a good 15 - 20 pounds (the weight I gained after my car wreck) from hiking up and down the 116 steps of the UWC campus three times a day in addition to running around during PE. Now I'm super fit! Yay!
- picked 30 prickers out of a student who fell into a cactus.
- discovered that it's good to do simple things, to be an offline person, to let the world be.
And please don't shoot me for neglecting to mention this until now, but I am the new Arts and Entertainment writer for the Las Vegas Optic, the largest paper in the county. I write two (and sometimes three) columns a week where I highlight upcoming events and provide reviews of festivals, art shows, and concerts. The Optic doesn't post their stories online (they only provide teasers and community notices at their site), so I can't point you to my work. But it's good to write for my neighbors. It's working out.
My new permanent email is birdie at desertgate dot com. I haven't been receiving or able to send from my old email, so please make a note and if you've sent me something to my old address, please resend to my new one. I'll change my email link here when I do my next site update. Thank you!
Me and three of my students interviewing Brad Hockmeyer of KTAO. This was our last stop, and none of us had showered in over three days. Eeek! Poor Brad! He was a great sport, and gave the students some wonderful insight into what makes a successful radio station.
Louis climbing a bottle house located in the hippie commune we called home for two days.
Roxanne Swentzel's art tower at the Pojoaque Pueblo.
Mark Nelson, Biosphere 2 scientist, shows us his human wastewater garden.
One of Roxanne Swentzel's amazing sculptures.
I've returned home after several days on the New Mexican road (camping in tents and a haunted theatre) with twenty-eight 7th and 8th graders. Our expedition this semester is titled "Cultivators of Hope," and as a kick-off to the project, we interviewed an incredible array of activists. Just a few of the folks we visited:
At Synergia Ranch: Mark (left), who spent two years in Biosphere 2 as a scientist, and Bill (right) who was one of the central engineers on the Biosphere 2 project. My students are interviewing them for a podcast project we have started. More on this later.
Roxanne Swentzel, world-renowned pueblo artist.
Louis and friend hamming it up at the Wise Fool Theatre.
"Oxygen," founding member of the Hog Farm Hippie Commune, tells the students about Woodstock.
Don't ya wish you went camping with us?!
