First Day, Week Three, Wusah! Ubuntu! Rick Shaefer Art! Little Lab Shenanigans and a Dinner in Orange (I'm Not Cooking)

 I hold my breath on the first day when the big shebang begins. Will the buses get the kids from Bassick High School? Will the young novelists be okay in a large lecture hall with four instructors? Will all the parents be happy with the Little Lab for Big Imaginations?

And I'm all over the place, showing the 100 kids to their rooms, the parents to their teachers, and getting the tools to the right labs. By 10 a.m., too, I'm teaching, and I try to make an appearance in each of the labs.

Highlights from day one, week three, was doing a workshop with the kids from Eritrea, Congo, Honduras, Sudan, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Pakistan. I came up with questions for Rick Shafer's artwork which taught them to look deeper into the paintings and resulted in storytelling and sharing about border crossing, relocation, and what it means to be a human being.

This followed with a script writing exercise where the Ubuntu kids worked with our littlest writers and they interacted on dialogues and possible scenarios. Of course, Will Smith tapped into his inner Nikki Menaj so he could perform a skit with Abu. Something tells me this may be his new look for teaching at Bassick next year.

Seriously, though...it always makes me feel great to know when everything comes together and I celebrated by shopping for more snacks at BJs and by being talked into going for Mexican food in Orange (where we rewrote the tv show My Three Sons coming up with ways to make a sitcom of the comedy that occurs in our summer routines. The one-liners are too many, but we do our best to capture as many as we can.

Okay, Tuesday. We're ready for you. Bring it on!