STREET BLOG: OUR STAFF SHARES THEIR STORIES

AccesSF has been very good to Streetside lately.

Last Friday, Streetside Director Linda Johnson and Deputy Director Tomas Riley appeared on SF Live, a show on AccesSF public access television in San Francisco. You can catch their appearance here.

Streetside staff members Helen McGrath, Pedro Reyes, Bernadette Montez and Erika Padilla Morales were just named certified producers by AccesSF. Congratulations, team!

They went through a 15 hour training program, where they learned to make public service announcements, produce and host TV segments, and run sound, camera and graphics. They'll be producing all kinds of content that gets the word out about Streetside, from PSAs to news features. So stay tuned to cable channel 29 in San Francisco!

Labels: AccesSF, community media, Streetside Stories

Streetside just finished up a great after school workshop at Francisco Middle School as part of our Literate Learners project. Literate Learners is an initiative that offers our Tech Tales, Storytelling Exchange, and Streetside After School programs to middle school English language learners in San Francisco and Oakland.

Often, English learners don't get a lot of arts education, and they miss out on the sizable benefits that the arts provide. Literate Learners is working to fill that gap for 1,000 students. We're even getting a formal evaluation of the project done by WestEd, to find out how we help English learners, and how we can help them even more.

In Literate Learners, we've seen newcomers to the United States get up and do theater, write full stories in English, and share their work with others, out loud. We're very proud of these students, and the power their stories have to get them excited about learning English.

Here's a poem, written by Literate Learners participant Sandy Jiang.

Immigrants are People
Immigrants are people
From north, south, east west
Immigrants are people
Come in spring, summer, fall, winter
Immigrants are people
Work hard, get paid less
Immigrants are people
Speak language differently
Immigrants are people
Honestly
Immigrants are people
Selflessly
Immigrants are people
Same as others
Seeking freedom and happiness

And another, by Vinh Nguyen.

I Am Here
I am here
I am like a big ball
Like a moon,
And I am an apple in trees the wind can’t blow
I want happiness
I feel so good

Labels: Arts education, English language learners, ESL, Streetside Stories, WestEd