Final Mural Photos

February 9, 2014
 
Thank you to Aisha Zakiya, who took these professional photos of our murals for the VI Daily News.  (I found them online - somehow I lost my photos of the finished murals!

It occurred to me that I never finished the mural story.  We finished mural #2 in 2012, and during the summer I added bullnose tile as a border to the top edge of both murals (the kind of narrow tile that curves to the wall - check out your bathroom tile and you'll see what I mean).

Then my very dear friend Jestina, our Drafting teacher, helped me grout the two murals.  Really, how many friends do you have who will volunteer to show up during the summer to grout?  At about 6:30 or 7 AM?  VOLUNTEER to do this?  Because she knew I needed help, and knew I also wouldn't ask.  WHAT a wonderful friend!!!!!!  (And I miss her greatly.)

This was my swan song - finishing the two murals, creating a small underwater mural outside my classroom, and then retiring and moving on to other things.  Like touring the world.

Anyway, so here are the pictures of all the murals, finished and grouted.  Signs have been put up listing the names of the student designers, all the student workers (every single student!), and the name of the principal.  Oh yes, and the art teacher.  And the title of the mural.  Plus my advanced art students created a brochure for the BCB Mural Walk.  Because they needed another writing project, and we agreed that there was some info we just wanted to share with people who looked at our murals.

What do teachers do when they retire?  Miss their students!  Really, I miss being surrounded by crazy teenagers. 


 

School Year 2010-2011 - A Mural and a Palio

We started school year 2010-11 three days late, due to a hurricane passing by.  We lost another three days in October.  It was quite a year.

I had planned to finish last year's mural, but then someone from the University of the Virgin Islands came to us with a proposal for a new mural (painted on plywood and then displayed at the front of the school).  Plus I submitted a grant proposal for a program studying medieval and Renaissance art, focusing on heraldry, and culminating in a big event.

So - mural #2 was put on hold, and we started mural #3.

Socially conscious students

My students never cease to amaze me - they say things out of the blue that just make me see them in a new light.

I have one little boy, 7th grade, small, very cute, who just comes across as having a chip on his shoulder. He never smiles, usually scowls, and just has ATTITUDE.

But he did a beautiful job on his assignment - enlarging a drawing by Keith Haring - and he selected a rather difficult drawing to do. Did a great job. Spent a lot of time coloring. Showed a lot of dedication and commitment to producing quality work. So I gave him a lot of verbal encouragement, told him how great it was.

Til he started coloring the ocean, which he just scribbled in. We talked, I told him it was looking so beautiful but then his scribbly ocean was just making the picture look bad. He agreed, and the next day started doing a nice careful job coloring the ocean.

However - he started the ocean in orange. But many of the orange markers are drying out (as are the blue, hence the orange) - so he switched to purple. I told him ahead of time that purple over orange will not be a good look, but he went ahead. Happily and neatly coloring his ocean purple.

So in my cruise around the room, checking on student progress and helping as needed, I checked in with little Mr Attitude - and he looked up, gave me a sly smile, pointed at the brownish color made when the purple marker is over the orange, and he said, "The ocean is polluted."

I about fell over laughing!!!!!!!!

We were asked to do a mural!!!!!

There's a group working on marine environment education - they have a series of TV commercials; they worked with some schools to produce an activity book; now they're working on murals with middle/junior high schools.

They came to our school today, and the principal called me in for the presentation.

Basically, they want us to paint four 4 x 8 plywood panels for the mural, which will be put up at the school gate or fence. Of course, I told them I'd have my students design something, vote, the principals will have final say, and then the students and I will enlarge and then paint our original design. The science classes will do some research and report back to us so that we're accurately depicting the marine animals.

Best part - the organization will pay for all supplies - YAY!!!!!!!

I'm so excited!!!!! It changes my plan for the fall, but it's a great opportunity for my students - and I'm fine with making changes if the kids benefit. YAY!!!!!!!!

Collaborative design and concensus

My students looked at information on coral reefs, and local fish, and what our coral looks like, and learned about runoff and non-point source pollution.  We talked about what makes good, healthy reefs, and what makes unhealthy or dying reefs.  We talked about the motto: "In the Virgin Islands, the coral reefs are closer than you think."  We talked about how our school is across the street from the garbage dump, and how that impacts the reefs.

Then the students drew their ideas on paper, and added color.  Some drew only healthy reefs.  Some drew only sick reefs.  Some drew both, showing the difference.  We had many many designs. 

But one design in particular stood out.  It wasn't the best DRAWN design - but it definitely was the best conceived design.  It showed one hill, cut in half - on one side, the hill was green and covered with plants, the reef was healthy, there were many sea creatures; on the other side, the hill was denuded, bulldozers were mowing down trees, the reef was covered with runoff and was sick and dying.

I talked with all of my students, and showed everyone the designs.  We discussed how this one design showed the idea of what makes a healthy reef, and what kills the reef.  We talked about the idea of using this concept, and each person would add something from their design - sea creatures, or trucks and bulldozers, or whatever.  We could play to each individuals strengths.

Everyone agreed that this was a good idea.  We had a design!

Beginning

The plywood has arrived, along with primer, paint, and brushes.  Each group of tables has a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood, and the students were assigned the job of painting on primer.  The following day, we measured the sand at the bottom of the ocean (2" of sand), measured sky and hills, and made sure each panel would line up with the one next to it.  Lots of measuring!  We discussed why this was so important, in fact crucial!

Students then chose whether they wanted to work on the healthy or unhealthy reef.  We painted the skies a pale blue, with clouds and lightning on the unhealthy side.  (Because dead reefs contribute to warmer oceans, which will eventually stop circulating, which will add to global warming and climate change, which is causing more and larger storms.)

The sand was painted pale beige.  The ocean was painted turquoise.

And the hills were painted in a dappled yellow-and-green mix to look like trees (healthy side) or a dappled brown and grey mix, to show the denuded and unhealthy hills.

I've explained that we always paint the background first, so that our houses, animals, trucks, fish, etc. can all look as if they are IN the background scenery, not SURROUNDED by the scenery.

This is looking good.

Sea life

My students are painting either healthy and happy coral reefs with beautiful tropical fish, or they are painting sharks and barracudas who will come closer to shore in search of food once the reef fish are gone.

Other students are happily painting garbage in the water - plastic bags floating, soda cans, car tires, even a boat anchor that has broken some coral.

My advanced students are painting small sub-environments - we have a huge, detailed coral reef where D is painting in a pointillist manner.  R is painting her angelfish swimming through sea grass.  J has a huge turtle, with detail showing each and every wrinkle of skin and scale on his shell.  We have jellyfish and seahorses and moray eels.

Some of the basic classes have talented students, who are challenging themselves with egrets, terns, and other shore birds.  Mostly are drawing/painting the bulldozers and trucks killing the trees.  On the healthy side, we have spaced apart small houses, lovingly painted, with a few electric cars parked by the houses.  The unhealthy side has a huge factory spewing pollution into the air, and runoff darkening the ocean.

What a fabulous reef!

Am I a mean teacher?

My third class of the day is full of the kind of teen age boy who makes adults cringe. Rude, crude, loud, and know-it-alls. They make the class not fun, for anyone. A few have settled down and will work - but a few just insist on bothering everyone else.

One boy in particular is convinced that he's smarter than anyone else - and he has learned to act stupid, so that no one will expect anything of him. He thinks he has everyone fooled. Then he'll do something to bother someone, and claim it wasn't him. Eyes all big, feigning innocence. Over and over again.

Today, I got him to paint a bit on the coral reef mural. Then he got up and managed to get green paint in someone's hair. This was ready to turn into a huge problem - all the boys jumped up and were ready to see a fight - but I made paint guy get a wet cloth and clean the other guy's head.

However, other guy was sneaky - and he got a finger in red paint and got it into paint guy's hair. I figured paint guy deserved it. So while the other boys started howling with laughter, I told them to shush so no one would tip off paint guy, and he'd walk around all day with paint in his hair. They giggled and agreed and got quiet and back to work. Paint guy cleaned up other guy. Everyone went back to work, with the occasional giggle.

At the end of class, I kept in other guy and his crew - and told him that next time he does that, he's in trouble. But that I thought paint guy deserved to go around with paint in his hair - just that next time, tell me first and we'll give paint guy a zero, or send him to the office, or something other than retaliating with paint in his hair. Okay? Okay, he was satisfied with that.

So - I feel kind of mean - but paint guy so totally deserved this punishment! (Maybe I just think like an 8th grader, LOL!)

Sequel to Paint Guy

So the kid who put paint in the other kid's hair yesterday, and ended up with paint in his own hair, came in today and told me he did have paint in his hair yesterday. I told him he deserved it, after putting paint in someone else's hair. He said, "How dare you??????" I responded with a very teacherly, "How dare I?????? How dare *I*?????? How could you think it was okay to put paint in someone's hair, but not okay for you to have paint in your hair???"

I went on to tell him that he was going to have to watch it, he was on my list and the minute - the MINUTE - he did something wrong he was going to have me on his back. That he couldn't BREATHE wrong, or I'd deal with it. Now, imagine me at 5' 5" looking up at this guy over 6' tall, frowning, shaking a finger in his face, and he's quaking in his shoes. Not.

But he did shape up, followed most directions, and didn't bother anyone today. So I guess the lesson was learned.

Turns out someone at lunch saw the paint in his hair, and they cleaned it up.

HALLELUJAH!!!!! PRAAAAAAAAAISE the Lord!!!!!!

No, really, I mean it!

I have two functioning sinks in my classroom!!! TWO!!!!!!! Not none, the way I have had for the past almost two years. Not just one. And not two sort-of-functioning sinks.

No! I have TWO SINKS where we can use the sink, let the water go down the drain, and the water actually goes down the pipe and into the filter trap and then out. NOTHING BACKS UP! Everything goes down the drain!!!!! We don't have to wash in BUCKETS!!!!!!!!

Really, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we now have working sinks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And YES, I worked on a mosaic mural last year WITHOUT functioning sinks.  Water in but no water out the drain.  Cleaning hands and tools and buckets and dumping all the water outside.  And YES, we worked on the mural for a few months without functioning sinks.  I may be crazy, but I'm also a committed teacher.  So what if a sink drain doesn't work?  I'm not letting that stop me!

Bunny episode

I drove in and parked around the corner at the back of school. Went to my room to drop my stuff. Went up to the office to sign in, say hi, etc. Walked back out to say good morning to the assistant principal - who was looking down the hill at the parking area and the grass nearby. There was a brown and white rabbit nibbling on the grass and hopping around, while the night security guard and a few students tried to chase the rabbit into a box.

Rabbit didn't seem to mind the people being so near it, but he wasn't about to get into the box. He hopped one way, the people followed, he'd hop the other way, they'd scurry around.

Turned out that the rabbit didn't belong to anyone, and he (she?) eventually hopped into the bush (low forest?) across the driveway - it's probably several acres of wild, uncut bush, with lots of good stuff for bunnies to eat. The music teacher said he's seen grey rabbits hopping around in the early morning or evening - so we guessed there must be a bunny family living in the bush.

He was so cute! One of my students said she had a bunny as a pet, and she wanted to catch this one. However, the bunny returned to the wild.

There's so much excitement at my school, LOL!

Rabbit Redux (sorry, I had to)

I parked at school - I was early so I could set up the projector and computer so my classes could look at photos.

There were a few boys peering into a box. This is suspicious behavior among early adolescent boys. So I asked what they had - yup, they had caught the rabbit.

Now I have 3 younger brothers. Plus I've taught middle school for 23 years. So I know what we can expect from early teen boys. And treating animals well isn't part of that...............So I started a serious discussion on rabbit care. Do you have a cage? What will you feed it? Do you know how to clean a rabbit cage? Make sure your parents are okay with a pet rabbit before you bring it home. Of course, with think time between my queries.

Lead boy finally looked at me and asked if I wanted the rabbit. I said I had a cat, so we couldn't keep the rabbit, but that I'd call the animal shelter and they could find rabbit a new home. So they agreed. The three boys carried the box to my room and set it on a desk. We left, I had to sign in at the office. Talked to Mr. Principal, who agreed the rabbit should go to the shelter. (Note - this was a brown and white rabbit who was letting people pet it - this was not a wild rabbit, even though it had been living in the bush.)

My advanced art kids helped me poke holes in a new box, and two of them lifted out Rabbit and put him/her in the new box. I added a few baby carrots from my lunch, and we put the top on (after every other student just had to pet the rabbit). I called the shelter all through the morning - it wasn't until halfway through my 3rd class that someone finally answered. And they couldn't come get the rabbit, there was a police tow truck moving abandoned vehicles from around the shelter property, and the road was blocked.

So after class (again, all students had to see the rabbit - you haven't lived til you've seen a 6' 4" 14 yr old petting a little bunny!!!!) I loaded the box into the car and drove Rabbit over to the shelter. OH, and the rabbit catcher kids came by to say hello and I told them they should say goodbye to the rabbit.

I left my name, so if no one adopts it I can pick it up - someone knows people who raise rabbits, and hopefully Rabbit can go live there (unless they eat them, then I won't.........).

And, of course, the tow truck was blocking me when I left - but they were nice and moved the truck, especially when the cop found out I was a teacher and had delivered a rabbit caught at school - he thought that was pretty funny.

So - does anyone want to adopt a nice bunny? We guess he's either an escaped pet, or he was abandoned by his owners. I hope he (she) gets a good home. (The kids thought it had an injured foot - I told the shelter people, they said they have a vet who always checks the animals first.) And my couple of students who wanted to adopt it - I explained that it needs to be checked by the vet, the shelter will see if it's a lost pet, and if the kid wants to adopt it they need their parents' permission and then the family could go adopt it. (I'm big on teaching responsibility.)

It was quite a morning!!!

Rabbit was adopted - I'm so relieved

I just called to check - the person at the shelter said he was adopted last week.

They ran his picture in the newspaper (and they named him "Bugs") - he apparently was a young male, already neutered, and very friendly. He was very patient in my classroom, allowing the students to pet him, so I figured he was an escaped pet.

I'm so glad he's been adopted - I was worried about him.

On a semi-serious-semi-funny note, there was an article about the animal shelter getting flooded in the rains of last week (the storm that turned into Otto). The dogs were moved to the new shelter (not yet finished) so they wouldn't get wet. The cats, kittens, and one rabbit (our school's rabbit!) were put in upper cages so they'd all stay dry. I just found it funny, the way the newspaper reported "17 cats and kittens, and one rabbit" !!!

Another mural emergency

I seem to be collecting mural emergencies and mishaps. 

I got to my classroom, students came in, I checked with each one re what they are doing (advanced art so a lot of independent work), I helped a few select images from the internet to help them in their project.

I came out of my office and noticed that the coral reef mural boards were gone - the back of the room looked open and empty and I could see the wall and reach the cupboards!  I said something, and the kids said yes, the mural was up by the gate - so we all put down our projects and went up to the gate, all excited.  Turns out the maintenance guy put it on the INSIDE of the fence, so the chainlink and the posts blocked part of the design.  Plus we had numbered the back of each plywood panel, and he had put them up according to the numbers left to right.  But he didn't look at the image - we numbered the panels when they were in sequence from the front (meaning the numbers were in reverse sequence on the back).  So our image was not only backwards, it didn't line up.

The students and I walked back to the office and discussed this with Mr. Principal.  He said Mr. Maintenance Guy was worried that people would steal the plywood, that's why he put it on the inside of the fence.  I said another school was using padlocks to keep the plywood in place, and he said he'd get some.  Then, while all 12 of us were packed into the principal's office, he went ahead and called Mr. Maintenance Guy and explained all of the issues - it will be taken care of by tomorrow, when the newspaper and TV reporters come for interviews and photos with the kids.  Two assistant principals and one teacher came by, took one look at all of us, and assumed I had a discipline problem.  I told them we were having a mural emergency, and were dealing with that - they were nice and waited in the hall.

I'll report back tomorrow!

Coral reef photos and publicity

We did our coral reef photo shoot today, with my advanced art class.  Second class (basic art) was interviewed for the online newspaper.  The students were excited to have the recognition of their work, as well as publicity.  Even Mr. Principal came out for this event.

This student designed much of our pollution, especially the floating plastic bags.


















This girl painted our cute little houses.

M and her butterfly fish.

R and her mini-environment - the angelfish among the sea grass and coral, lower left corner.

J and his extremely detailed (and happy) hawksbill turtle.

T, also known as the Heartthrob Kid - a background painter.  One of those loveable kids who doesn't do as well as he could if he'd just apply himself - but he's hard to get mad at because he's just so nice and personable.

D and his extremely detailed coral - a great artist, but he needs to build up some speed!

J and his sharks, circling hungrily.

A and her unfriendly moray, another predator who is looking for food amongst the garbage.

J painted this lovely truck which dominates the denuded landscape.

My favorite touch is the lightning bolt striking the communications tower!

An overview of the entire mural.  (We need to repaint the lower right corner, a chunk broke off.)

Healthy and happy reef environment.

Unhealthy and dying reef due to the environment and human destruction.

Turtles and other sea creatures

Since we made the coral reef mural this year, we won't have time to complete another mural. But I had my students make ceramic sea creatures for the mural I want to make next school year. They've been great about making one sea animal, glazing it, and putting it in my "sea creature" box.

These are some of my favorites - plus a few of my 21 turtles. And yes, I used a cookie cutter for the baby turtles, and then used a shoe or the back of a tile to imprint a design on the shell area. Then glaze plus some crystals for mottled colors on the shells. (Students who had completed all of their work were given a few turtles to glaze, following those directions.)

Shakespeare for Middle School

Come January, I'm going to work with my students on Renaissance (and medieval) ornamentation and design - repeat patterns, motifs, emblems, crests, etc. This will all culminate in a parade and a race (like the Palio in Italy) some time in April or May.

The community theatre group holds a Shakespearean festival in April - school groups perform short (15 minute) summarized versions of various plays.

So I talked to my Advanced Art class about possibly finishing our T shirts, flags, banners, etc. in time for the Shakespeare festival, and doing some kind of performance. They readily agreed. Then one boy - the kid who does amazing backflips, was one of our best ballroom dancers, and is just generally a fun kid - said, "Well, let's do Romeo and Juliet."

Now, I know this kid, he was in Basic Art with me last year. I know he has a girlfriend (his dance partner). I also know he has several much older brothers (who have a music group, and hordes of groupies).

So I just looked at him and said, "Well, it's only going to be this class doing our performance."

He looked around the room (at the girls), shook his head, and said, "Okay, never mind."

I just had to laugh at him. It was all about the love scenes for him. Which was very cute.

I'm favoring Midsummer Night's Dream. He could backflip across the stage and play the part of Puck. We could do a lot of marching around and flag waving, staging mostly a pageant. Then, students who want a part could read a summary of their character's story, using Shakespearean English. Sort of a cross between performance art and readers' theatre. With maybe some twinkle lights as our stage set. Because for me, it's all about the design, pattern, emblems, motif - that's the art part they're learning, plus fabric design techniques and media. And I know little about acting. To make it easier for the kids to perform, and for me to coach, I think we need to go minimalist. But with a lot of color and pageantry.

Encouraging students to read

I have a few students who love to read, so they have chosen to take a summarized version of a play by Shakespeare, read it over the school break, write a short one-page summary, and bring it back in January.

The rest will do this in class in January. (This is only for my Advanced art group, all 8th graders.)

The conversation with one girl continued:

Me: "Alana, remember I said I'm going to Spain for the vacation?"

A: "Yeah......"

Me: "And it's a really really long plane trip, there and back."

A: "So you're going to read Shakespeare?"

Me: "No, I bought a book just for the flight. And if I have room in my luggage to bring the book back, I'll give it to you when we return to school."

A: "Oh, thank you!"

Me: "Would you like to know what book it is?"

A: (sharp intake of breath, in a whisper and a hopeful expression) "Deathly Hallows?????"

Me: (smiling) "Yes!"

A: "Oh, I can't WAIT!!!!!!"


I think I made her day! Although now, the two-week break will draaaaaaaaaaaag on forever while she waits for the book!

More on teaching students to read

My advanced art kids agreed they'll work on a performance for the local theatre's Shakespeare festival. So today, I gave a quick (one sentence) summary of 15 of Shakespeare's comedies, handed them out, and explained how to read the summary and make notes to further summarize - as in: "take a highlighter and mark the super-duper really important stuff, and later compile that into a one page summary."

Comments:

"Ms. Schwartz, what does "toil" mean?"
Me: "It means to work really hard, especially physical labor. Aren't you glad to learn new vocabulary?"
"Yeah, I don't think I'll ever use that word again."


"Ms. Schwartz, I need help. I think someone is cheating on someone in this story, but I can't figure it out."



"Ms. Schwartz, what does "intimation" mean?"
Me: "Implication - someone is implying something. See here, the dad is saying that if one of Bianca's suitors - boyfriends - wants to marry her sister Katherine, the guy can have her."
"Oh, 'cause she's the shrew?"
Me: "Right!"



"And what's this mean?"
Me: "That's a dowry. Women couldn't inherit family money or property, it went to men in the family - so when they got married, they received a chunk of money from the family."
"Well that's not fair!"



This project is going to crack me up! Mind you, these are summaries in regular English that we're reading - just wait until we vote on a play and then start reading that!

Middle English, 8th grade style

We're reading and summarizing the summaries of Shakespeare's comedies.  Really, the online summaries are 7 to 12 pages long.  I want one-pagers.  So the Advanced Art classes are getting in their reading.

One boy looks up at another and says, "Fie!"  Other kid looks up and says, "Forsooth!"

One girl starts goofing around.  I look up from my play summary and say, "Forsooth, methinks S cannot do her work!"  Class giggles, we get back to reading and highlighting and summarizing.

Shakespeare in four pages - Really!!!

My Advanced Art class is very willing to participate in a Shakespearean festival. But with stipulations:

One girl wants to be the narrator, and not act any part.

One boy wants to do cartwheels and flips across the stage, or down the aisle of the auditorium. (He's my court jester.)

Everyone else wants to do a fencing scene, and is willing to ACT but not SPEAK.


So, my compromise - or solution - to make sure everyone is happy:

We will do "Romeo and Juliet." My narrator will make a long scroll, complete with torn and browned edges, and she'll have her words on that. She will read the prologue; the rest of the class will have what we refer to as the gang fight; after a few minutes of battle, the Montagues and Capulets will separate, Romeo and Juliet will come forward; as the narrator reads the part of the Friar at the end, explaining the action, Romeo and Juliet will pantomime getting married, Romeo killing Tybalt, Romeo running away, Juliet running away and taking the sleeping potion, Romeo finding her and killing himself, and then Juliet waking up and killing herself. Then, hopefully, I can get a Capulet and Montague to do the final agreement lines, and the narrator (who at this point is now reading the lines of the Prince) will read the wrap up.

Four pages. Lots of heraldic flags to identify the two families, with T shirts to match. We have yet to make our weapons (cardboard and yardsticks covered in foil), and my narrator would like to make a crown since she's the prince.

Tomorrow I will read the four pages to the students, and then we'll go on from there. Whew!

An OMG embarrassing moment!

Okay, not the entire class, but SO embarrassing!

Now that I have your attention - my students are now working in small groups on heraldic flags. We're basically finding emblems, students create their own version of the group's emblem, personalize the background, but the group has a color scheme. So they're learning about heraldry and the images used during the medieval and Renaissance times (art history) while learning about pattern, color, variations on a theme, and various media we're using.

Three boys wanted lions rampant for their group emblem - lions rampant meaning lions standing on the two hind feet, with the front feet in the air. I brought them in my office for a google image search. They selected several images for me to go to the page and save the image, then print. We went through several images, and suddenly one page turned to a page of porn!!!!!!! I swear, it was a perfectly innocent image of a standing lion in the search - but open the image and bam, naked women and men all over the place!!!!!!! ACK!!!!! The three boys started laughing, and I tried to close the tab - which of course took several clicks as I'm yelling "go away, go away" at the page - and of course the kids (8th graders) thought I meant them so they left the office, all falling over laughing!!!!!

I told them I didn't mean them, they came back in, one kid said, "It's okay Ms. Schwartz, we won't tell anyone about this" - I laughed and said that was the weirdest thing ever, and we agreed we wouldn't talk about it again. Of course, they continued to laugh, but we managed to print out several lions rampant and they went back to work.

OMG, the only thing worse would be if my pants fell down in class, that's how embarrassing it was!!!!!!!

I did tell the principal - who asked what have you done now, Ms. Schwartz - and he had me report it to the DOE help desk.  It was just SO embarrassing!

The things teachers have to worry about

Okay, so I'm working on a big project with my students - we're learning about medieval and Renaissance art (and literature and history) through heraldry, pageantry, and comparing all of this to our local Carnival. We will have a culminating event (a parade and a race) right before Carnival - students will hang their groups' banners, wear coordinating T shirts, have "histories" of their groups, and will also have flags to wave around. My principal wants this to be a presentation/event for the entire school, but I need to talk to my classes before I agree to that.

Plus my advanced art class will perform a (very) condensed version of Romeo and Juliet at the territorial Shakespeare Festival.

So - all of this is to say that there is a need to study medieval and Renaissance weaponry. Especially for Romeo and Juliet. And I have a friend who has travelled the world, and he collects weapons and various artifacts on his travels. (His wife collects fabric and jewelry - they have some truly incredible pieces.) So I asked my friend if he could come talk to my classes about weapons, especially swords - and bring some examples to show the students. We set a time and date, I explained how to find my class - and he said "Now this is okay, right, me bringing weapons to school?" I know my principal, and I assured the friend that this was okay. THEN I raced up to Mr Principal and explained our project, the situation, what I wanted from my "guest speaker" and finished with "so it IS okay to bring the weapons to school for this, right?" He laughed and assured me that this was okay.

Whew! It didn't occur to me that it might NOT be okay, til the friend asked!!!! I mean, we're talking antique swords here - I can't imagine the school police picking him up for possible assault or anything! But now I have a verbal okay, so there shouldn't be any problem.

My kids are going to be beyond thrilled!!!!!

Yardsticks versus T squares

Yesterday I added a matt board "point" to a T-square, thinking it would work as a "sword" for our upcoming condensed version of Romeo and Juliet.

My class came in, and I grabbed the student who is furthest along with his art projects - he's also our school chess champion, and is one of those kids who is into karate movies, fantasy worlds, all of that.

I explained that he and I would need to test my T-square sword - so I gave it to him, grabbed a yardstick, and we proceeded to have a test battle, knocking our "swords" together and advancing and parrying and who knows what else.

I ended up with a T-square along my neck, so I declared that my head was cut off and that round was over. We then both used yardsticks, and agreed that the grip was much better and that the T-square was difficult to hold. We joined a T-square plus a yardstick, with a matt board point, to make our basic sword forms. These are all taped together, and later on we'll cover them with foil.

So - as if the student and me sword fighting hadn't been bizarre enough - the entire class just came in, looked at us, got their work out, and began working on their flags, T shirts, etc. I couldn't believe it - not one comment, not one student asking to join in, nada, nothing, zip, zilch.

I can't decide if they are used to my craziness, or if they were overwhelmed, LOL!

Weapons day in my class

My first class LOVED the weapons my friend brought - he showed a big sword one needs two hands to use, a modified broad sword (the kind used in medieval times), a rapier similar to what was used during the Renaissance (lighter, one-handed sword), and various short swords, knives, daggers, and things with different names (a kriss, for example).

The kids had a great time - my first class (Advanced art) had a ton of questions, wanted to hold each and every sword, a few kids went into corners of the room to pretend they were fighting (I figured if they were smart enough to move far away from everyone, they could swing it once or twice), and my fave - they took cell phone photos of each other holding the different swords. They were SO into it!!!!! And they all agreed that this was one of the BEST guest speakers they've ever had in their entire lives!

Second class was just bored - they were polite, they sat quietly, but they didn't want to touch anything, they didn't have questions, they were like lumps on the chairs. Boring! Oh well, at least they applauded - and the two boys who thought it was cool helped carry everything back to the car, and I think they probably had questions at that point. (They were kind of cute, when I asked for assistants they ran up and said, ME ME ME!)

Third class was normal - my friend had to go back to work.

Anyway, it was a good morning!!!!