The Phab Team!
On belay!
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Thank You from Ms. Strauss
Thank you to everyone for your free-spirited enthusiasm! Makayla, Shannen, Seabrina, Greg, Jordan, Brian, Erin, Kara, Erika, Casey, Alex, you are SO phantastic! Thank you to all our parents for dropping off and picking up, and delivering errant lunches! Thanks to Ms. Szafran for everything and especially photography, kites, calls, and joie d' vivre, to Officer Marshall and Ms. D'Arcangelo and Ethan for sharing our trip to Boston, to Bart and Logan and all the great staff at the UNH Browne Center, to Ruth, our PHABulous bus driver, and to the staff of the Boston Public Library and the Mary Baker Eddy Mapparium who greatly enlightened us! Thanks to Ms. McCoy for funding, and Dr. Mohr for her support, too! Let's do it again next summer! Read on!
Ms. Szafran
Wow, team!
Thank you all (That's you, Alex, Beth, Brian, Cara, Casey, Erika, Erin, Greg, Jordyn, Makayla, Seabrina and Shannen!) so much for your hard work, humor, creativity, perspectives, faith and adventurous spirits. This was the best summer reading group we could have hoped for.
Facing a skinny little cable 30 feet in the air; thinking in new ways; being responsible for each other and yourselves; and exploring new books, authors and genres; working toward overcoming small and gigantic challenges: these are the things that make you all Phabulous!
Thank you all (That's you, Alex, Beth, Brian, Cara, Casey, Erika, Erin, Greg, Jordyn, Makayla, Seabrina and Shannen!) so much for your hard work, humor, creativity, perspectives, faith and adventurous spirits. This was the best summer reading group we could have hoped for.
Facing a skinny little cable 30 feet in the air; thinking in new ways; being responsible for each other and yourselves; and exploring new books, authors and genres; working toward overcoming small and gigantic challenges: these are the things that make you all Phabulous!
Ms. Szafran
Thursday was simply amazing. We were able to tour and see bits of Beantown that many of us had neither seen nor previously thought to explore. The Boston Public Library and the Mary Baker Eddy Library and Mapparium gave us the opportunity to consider thinking in new ways, as well as to see art, artifacts and ideas made concrete. (And confusing the finches at lunch was great fun! :) )
This is how I saw things:
Deferrari Hall, Johnson Building, Boston Public Library
Phabbers and Danielle, our trusty tour guide.
The main staircase and one of the twin lions, McKim Building, BPL.
Puvis de Chavannes Gallery, McKim Building, BPL.
Heading upstairs to the (John Singer) Sargent Gallery.
Detail, "Triumph of Religion", John Singer Sargent.
Phabbers and detail, "Triumph of Religion", John Singer Sargent.
Wiggin Gallery and Miniature Book Collection.
Edward Gorey miniature book, The Eclectic Abecedarium.
Communist writings on a tiny scale.
Printing press.
Social Sciences Reference, McKim Building, BPL.
Rebecca and Phabbers, Hall of Ideas, Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Hall of Ideas, Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Phabbers, Hall of Ideas, Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Photography was not permitted in the Mapparium, the giant glass globe we toured. This is pretty much what it looked like:
It was utterly amazing.
click here for a photo of the mapparium
Breakneck speed through the Big Dig.
Friday, July 27, 2007
A Special Thanks (Shannen)
Thank you to Ms. Strauss and Ms. Szafran for being the two most wonderful people and making time and experience great, everyone had a blast thank you!! And with out you two all of us that did this program would not have been enthusiastic about reading our books (which most of us have done or close to being done)! This would have been an impossible mission to complete with out you two!
Ms. Strauss
Unforgettable! What a treat and an honor to work with all our students and Ms. Szafran on the PHAB team- to revel in reading, freak ourselves out on ropes way, way up in the trees (have you got my slack? Yes, we STILL have your slack!),write in our journals, trust each other, create our minibooks and altered books, run our kites, create our own library things, release our books into the wild, lose ourselves in the intoxicating ambiance of the Boston Public Library (rare books, miniature books, artwork, and sculpture!) and the Mary Eddy Baker Library and Mapparium, and connect with our friends and our books. What an exhilarating way to spend summer days! Can't wait to see what unfolds for all of our students in their reading, reflecting, and writing! And, yahoo!, we got to go in a yurt! I feel a yodel coming on . . . .where's my yak?
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Shannen
WOW! This was a great experience I can't believe it is almost done! But there is one thing that is not over and never will be...
those memories that we made, and that we will never forget!
Always remember to hydrate!
Jordyn
Hey its me Jordyn,
And on our last day of this wonderful experience known as the summer reading program, I am sad to say that I will actually miss waking up early and coming to school looking like a bum to read. But other than sad i am really happy that I had the chance to do something like this. I would totally do it again. It was not only fun, but it helped me with my summer reading book, which i drastically needed help with. The Book diary especially, I had no idea what I was do to with it. I am also upset that I missed the chance to go to Boston. I am slightly jealous of those who got to go, but they thats what happens when you have a bad immune system, but anyway. I am glad that I could be part of the ropes course experience, and I hope you do it next year.
And on our last day of this wonderful experience known as the summer reading program, I am sad to say that I will actually miss waking up early and coming to school looking like a bum to read. But other than sad i am really happy that I had the chance to do something like this. I would totally do it again. It was not only fun, but it helped me with my summer reading book, which i drastically needed help with. The Book diary especially, I had no idea what I was do to with it. I am also upset that I missed the chance to go to Boston. I am slightly jealous of those who got to go, but they thats what happens when you have a bad immune system, but anyway. I am glad that I could be part of the ropes course experience, and I hope you do it next year.
Erika
I am glad that I decided to do this Summer Reading Program. I probably would have never started my book if it wasn't for this. We did so many fun things like kite flying and the ropes course. The ropes course was so fun and if it wasn't for this program I would have never had the experience to climb trees and wires. I was so bored at home, but this program gave me a chance to do things and have fun. Today is our last day and it feels like we just started yesterday. I'm going to miss everyone, but at least we all go to the same school so I will be seeing them all again. =]
Makaylaaaa
Yesterday when we went to Boston I LOVEDDD it. It was amazing and soooo much fun. The part that I like the most was the Mapparium. I loved how it explained so much to us and when it did the part that it was talking about was lighting up. I also liked when we got to use the computers. And when we went out for ice cream in the middle of the mall that was weird but awesome... we did soo much yesterday... and for the first time I realized that I can accomplish things in life with out getting frustrated or mad! When we went to the library and walked around I never seen any thing like it before the rooms and the paints were soo beautiful and had so much meaning to them. Then on the ride home me and Shannen had a blast from talking to strangers to taking random pictures of people on the street.
I can honestly say this summer reading program is the BEST reading experience I've ever had! When I first found out I was coming to this reading program I was like great know I have to spend my summer inside of a school reading for hours. But know that it's over I realized how much fun I had, and I
made great new friends here to which is always a plus on my mind!!!
I can honestly say this summer reading program is the BEST reading experience I've ever had! When I first found out I was coming to this reading program I was like great know I have to spend my summer inside of a school reading for hours. But know that it's over I realized how much fun I had, and I
made great new friends here to which is always a plus on my mind!!!Greg
The summer Reading Program was fun because we read our summer reading books for next year. Another thing that was a good time was that we went to UNH for the ropes course and went to the Library that I didn't go to, but I heard it was a fun time.The day of the ropes course we worked together and cheered on the other person to get across the course that we were on. Another day we flew kites outside, it was very tiring. I would say because we had to run to get the kites up if there was no breeze going to get our kites up in the sky. Throughout the six days the other kids and I were here we made Mini books and Altered books if we didn't want to read our summer reading books. All the kids at this Summer Reading Program had a awesome time going to UNH and to Boston.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Alex
me and my wonderful star ^^^
Last Friday we went on a field trip to the ropes course at UNH. It was a lot of fun. Our journey was filled with self-discovery and we learned how to trust each other. When we walked into the UNH building that morning we were a group of people who wanted to have fun. We came out as a team, with friends that knew our strengths and cheered us on through our weaknesses. The hardest part for me was the first high element, where we had to climb up a tree and walk across a wire to another tree about thirty feet away. It was a little bit scary, because the only thing really holding you up was a wire, and the rope attached to your harness thingy. We spent the whole day solving challenges and being a team. It was awesome. =D
Ms. Szafran
"The key to the universe is that you can change your perception of anything." -Tom Robbins
What kind of Summer Reading group heads into the woods and climbs trees, gets covered in dirt and mulch and bug bites and is responsible, quite literally, for the safety and well-being of each other member?
What business do we have straying from the traditional format of academic drudgery, that of sitting quietly in classrooms whilst summer wheels on around us? Why in the world would taking eleven high school students to a ropes course at UNH Durham and encouraging them to push themselves in team building activities, on high cables suspended between trees, respecting their desires to not be a part of activities, and learning more about each other have to do with books? With reading?
Really, now. I think the more relevant question should be why have we not done this sooner? Books and reading, discovering the joy of identifying with characters, with their difficulties and joys, their imaginings and idiosyncrasies; these things are as heady as trusting friends and classmates as fears of falling--and flying-- are faced and overcome.
The challenges we faced--whether they were as simple as a fear of heights or as overwhelming as arachnophobia-- were of similar intensity to overcoming the trepidation some of us feel when we start a new book or meet a new author. Both take faith. Both take work.
Facing physical and intellectual challenges can bring about phantastic insight to ourselves and our perceptions of the world. Having the guts and Sisu to undertake both has the potential for awakening within us shifts of perception--and being open to such things allows the universe--whether that universe extends to the borders of Pelham or the borders of the known world--to become ours.
What business do we have straying from the traditional format of academic drudgery, that of sitting quietly in classrooms whilst summer wheels on around us? Why in the world would taking eleven high school students to a ropes course at UNH Durham and encouraging them to push themselves in team building activities, on high cables suspended between trees, respecting their desires to not be a part of activities, and learning more about each other have to do with books? With reading?
Really, now. I think the more relevant question should be why have we not done this sooner? Books and reading, discovering the joy of identifying with characters, with their difficulties and joys, their imaginings and idiosyncrasies; these things are as heady as trusting friends and classmates as fears of falling--and flying-- are faced and overcome.
The challenges we faced--whether they were as simple as a fear of heights or as overwhelming as arachnophobia-- were of similar intensity to overcoming the trepidation some of us feel when we start a new book or meet a new author. Both take faith. Both take work.
Facing physical and intellectual challenges can bring about phantastic insight to ourselves and our perceptions of the world. Having the guts and Sisu to undertake both has the potential for awakening within us shifts of perception--and being open to such things allows the universe--whether that universe extends to the borders of Pelham or the borders of the known world--to become ours.
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