STREET BLOG: OUR STAFF SHARES THEIR STORIES

At the end of each of our Streetside After School workshops, Streetside has a sharing day. On that day, students share the stories they created with Streetside for an audience of fellow students, parents, teachers and friends. They get recognition for being part of a community of storytellers, in the form of a certificate of achievement and lots of applause. Many of our older students even get a cash stipend for completing the program. Then everyone has pizza and juice.

This year, Streetside is having at least 38 sharing days. Wow, that's a lot of pizza!

Last week, we had a sharing day at Glen Park Elementary in San Francisco, where we helped 60 kindergarten through second grade students become storytellers. All of these brave students got up on stage, shared stories and showed off the books they created.

Above, staff member Erika Alexander helps a student practice before taking the stage.

Streetside Stories
Arts Education
afterschool programs
Glen Park Elementary

Labels: afterschool programs, Arts education, Glen Park Elementary School, Streetside Stories

There was a great article in Edutopia recently about trends in education.

One trend that was highlighted is the move away from arts education in schools, due partly to the rigors of the No Child Left Behind law. At the same time, though, arts education is being seen more and more, by parents and educators, as a crucial part of education and achievement.

(Statistics here, for those who want more info about arts education's impact).

The resulting demand for arts education, coupled with the lack of school time for arts, means that community-based organizations like Streetside are being called on more and more to provide arts programs. That often happens after school, or
during school, when teaching artists make the arts part of subjects like language arts and social studies.

In San Francisco, The San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Families has been at the forefront of this trend. They've begun supporting the arts after school, giving new grants to many of San Francisco's finest arts providers, like 826 Valencia, Cellspace, and Performing Arts Workshop, not to mention Streetside.

For Streetside, the increased interest in the arts after school means that we are
offering after school programming to over 400 students this year--so
far. Our schedule of after school workshops used to be a couple of pages long. Now it's 11 pages long. Just today, three new staff people came in, reporting back excitedly about their new groups, who were choosing blog names and playing theater games.

Labels: 826 Valencia, afterschool programs, Arts education, Edutopia, No Child Left Behind, Performing Arts Workshop, Streetside Stories

Streetside students were big winners at Young At Art, San Francisco's youth arts celebration! Our students won a bunch of awards this year. Congratulations to Streetside intern Tanea Lunsford, a School of the Arts student who won a Bronze in the Short Story category. And also to:

Polly Lesaguis Honorable Mention Personal Essay/Memoir
Christoper Li'O Honorable Mention Personal Essay/Memoir
Shayna Ryan Honorable Mention Personal Essay/Memoir
Yasi At-Chan Bronze Poetry
Ciera Moberg Bronze Poetry

Lots of student work from our KIPP Digital Teachers project and our Tech Tales program was also highlighted at the Media Arts celebration.

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Every three years, The San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families has a new funding round. People who work at nonprofits all over San Francisco agonize over their proposals and rush to DCYF to drop off their applications before the deadline.

Last week, we found out that we were one of the 172 organizations funded (450 proposals were submitted). We received funding to offer even more of our quality afterschool programming to elementary and middle school students around the city. Next year, we'll serve triple the number of students after school that we served in 2005!

Every year, nonprofits often have to fundraise like crazy, raising their budgets all over again. Getting multi-year funding from DCYF helps us concentrate on making our work better instead. Thanks, DCYF!

Young At Art
San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families
afterschool programs
Streetside Stories

Labels: afterschool programs, DCYF, Streetside Stories, Young At Art

Most of the writing students do in our programs is in story form. But a few years ago, when we were developing our Streetside After School program, we surveyed youth and found that they really wanted to write poetry after school. So we added a unit on poetry focused on self and identity to our new program.

A few years later, the youth we work with have written hundreds of really cool poems.

Here's one recent one, by Timmy Yu of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in San Francisco.

Like Me

I am from life,
from the honor of honor.
I am from the place, as strange as yet to be
like the wind and the breeze.
I am from the autumn,
still many from dawn.
I am from the herd
From the red and the blue,
A piston in birth

Please, I am from me.
From the brain mechanic,
From dare of truth.
I am from

I am from a place like me.

poetry
Streetside Stories
afterschool programs

Labels: afterschool programs, poetry, Streetside Stories