Don't forget to check out the blogs of the 826LA Good Times, our student-run newspaper produced at 826LA East, and The Venice Wave, its 826LA West counterpart.
After extensively volunteering at all the workshops, after-school tutoring, and in-schools projects that 826LA has to offer, did you ever wish that there was a program for adults (or aspiring adults) that allowed them to congregate with other creative minds? Did you? Did you? Wish no more, 826LA has brought back The Book Club at both its Echo Park and Venice locations.
We are reading one book a month. Our March book club meetings are soon approaching and you still have two long, full weeks to read either (or both, if ambition strikes) books. Mondays on the West side, Thursdays on the East side!
If you've read these books already, take a chance to revisit them and have your most pressing questions ready for the meeting. (If you've written a thesis or published article on either on these books, please come with several printed copies).
Questions?
Contact Zoë Ruiz, Volunteer Coordinator and Programs Assistant at: zoe@826la.org
Super Bowl Sunday for 826LA fans had nothing to do with the Super Bowl. 826LA students and their families, along with staff and supporters, boarded a school bus and made the long journey to Glendale. They arrived at the Alex Theatre ready for an afternoon full of family fun, poetry, trumpets trumpeting, and violins happily playing away.
826LA students recently had the opportunity to learn about the unique coupling of music and poetry along with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s composer-in-residence, Derek Bermel. On this sunny Sunday afternoon, the LA Chamber Orchestra gracefully demonstrated this coupling for students of all ages, reading aloud the poetry written by 826LA students while performing the playful Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns. 826LA students and their families were present to hear their works performed.
The performance was a fantastic time for 826LA students to witness a professional orchestra perform, and the Carnival of the Animals provided an excellent backdrop for their imaginations to soar against. 826LA students spent the duration of the performance pretending to conduct the orchestra from the balcony, flitting their hands to the sounds of birds taking flight, and debating which instrument was the coolest.
We are very excited to announce that Xena Ayala, a student who has been attending tutoring at 826LA since 2006, has made honor roll at John Adams Middle School!
Xena has been coming to 826LA West in Venice Monday through Thursday for the past four years. Her mother Hilda tells us:
"I cannot thank you enough for all the help and support that you have given me and my daughter Xena these last couple of years…my daughter goes to 826LA Monday through Thursday, and she loves all her tutors. I work full-time and take my lunch hour at 2:30 just so I can take her for tutoring, and after work I pick her up at 5:30. It is so wonderful to have 826LA close in our community. I do not know what I would do without the help she gets from 826LA."
But Hilda's not the only one that appreciates 826LA—Xena actually enjoys coming here too!
"I've been here since 3rd grade. It's helped me a lot, improved my grades, and helped with my dyslexia. All the tutors are extremely encouraging, awesome, smart, and keep me on track. I have never left 826LA unconfident in the work I did. I just want to say thank you to all the people that helped me with my work ethic and helped me achieve the grades I have now."
Xena most recently participated in our student song writing program, where she helped write "New Beginning." A cover of the song has been recorded by local Los Angeles band Dum Dum Girls, and will be performed at Chickens in Love, a benefit concert for 826LA on March 6. Check out Xena (with bandmates Kimi and Shizuku) performing the song below. (That's her on the left of the couch.)
Never really having been on this side of the teacher/student dichotomy before, I came in with no clear idea of how to go about helping kids with their homework. But it’s quickly becoming clear to me that, when it comes to actual learning, the homework problems are sometimes secondary.
Because sure, it’s important for me to go over the 7 times tables with them, or to explore the unique sound made by the vowel combination OU, or to try to convince them to read something slightly more difficult than The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.
But it’s just as--if not more--important that I’m simply there to listen to what they have to say on subjects varying in seriousness from Lay’s potato chips to getting poked in the ribs by a girl to finding a pack of cigarettes in an uncle’s room. I’ve found that nothing seems more helpful to the general learning process than to just take these kids seriously, and acknowledge that their ideas are important. Then the flow of ideas really begins, and complex word problems might not seem so daunting anymore.
And sometimes, I even have to say it’s okay if they don’t get how to divide fractions right away, and that I don’t really get it either, and maybe we should go see what Calvin and Hobbes have to say about it.
Sam Cheney
Are you sensing a theme here, reading these intern posts? Are we noticing a common tone, maybe? Does it feel a little too pleasant? Too sentimental, too positive, too kids-and-fun-and-rewarding-and-hilarious? Yeah, I think so, too.
So here He comes, New Intern #4, flying facefirst into the Wall of Lies, here to give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but it, so help us all.
Let me begin with the beginning:
Monday, January 25
-- LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR WORKSHEET
I know, right? Kids have those! And I had to try and help!
But it was, as I said, only the beginning…
Friday, January 29
-- Chapbook-making
How many stories of self-robotization can one man be asked to read? How many aliens-and-humans morality plays will it take to teach the simple lesson? Worst of all, how much are you going to write about music, writers? WHO EVEN LIKES MUSIC??
At this point I think to myself, “Maybe this is just some sort of First Week Blues. Maybe I’ve just shown up at a bad time. Maybe—and why not?—maybe things will get better.”
Oh, the cruel jokes of the world.
Monday, February 1
-- JESSE ONLY GIVES ME ONE (ONE!) OF HIS FLAMING HOT CHEETOS.
Can you even grasp how thankless, how ungrateful these kids are? I bet if you asked for Flaming Hot Cheetos from every student at every table one every afternoon for a week, you’d be looking at three flaming, hot, miniscule, twice-licked, broken Cheetos come Friday afternoon. THANKLESS, I SAY!
I write to you now from an undisclosed location. I am in hiding, strategizing my next offensive against Falsehood. The War Against Lies must continue to be fought, and continue to fight I will.
The below is from an email I got from an LAUSD teacher yesterday…
PS. Tell Philippe [one of our tutors] he made at least one hard-core fan Monday. I have been connecting several of my students with on-line writing tutors. As I was doing this today, one girl—perhaps our brightest student—politely declined. "I'd rather work with Philippe," she told me. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll just wait for Philippe to come back."
Posted by Zoë Ruiz, Volunteer Coordinator and Programs Assistant
826LA has joined "The Echo Park FamilySource Center," an innovative partnership with six other local organizations! On January 28th, El Centro del Pueblo launched the Grand Opening of the FamilySource Center, as well as the 2010 Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, State Controller Jonn Chiang, Council President Eric Garcetti, and Councilmember Richard Alarcon held a press conference and reception. There was also a ribbon cutting in front of El Centro de Pueblo, celebrating the FamilySource Center.
In a recent Huffington Post article, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wrote "This year, through our FamilySource Centers and One-e-App system, we have added 21 additional free tax preparation sites which include screening for EITC eligibility."
The Echo Park FamilySource Center is designed to provide many free services, some of which include free counseling, education, and financial help. 826LA is excited about this partnership and enjoyed the event!
To view more pictures of 826 staff and partners at the Grand Opening, check out our Facebook group page!
The 826 folks are awesome and the kids aren't scared to make fun of me. It's both deeply gratifying and truly terrifying. Some early challenges have been remembering all the young writers names, trying not to feel too satisfied with myself when I know the answer to a 3rd grader's homework, and refraining from eating all of Jesse's Flaming Hot Cheetos.
I found the tutorial on how to run the Time Travel Mart storefront to be highly difficult to follow. Not because Christina didn't do an excellent job explaining the ins and outs, it's just, well, how many time do you come across bottled dead languages? Or robot milk? Or, Michael Jordan Pogs!?
I remember first interviewing with Bonnie over the phone when I was 3,000 miles away. I asked her how she got involved with 826LA and she said she’d started out as an intern as well and loved it so much that she just never left. In the past I’d gone into internships with an idea of an expiration date, and Bonnie’s emphatic sentiment didn’t really sway that at the time.
The first time a kid looked up at me and said “27, is that right?” and I said, “Do you think it’s right?” and they nodded enthusiastically and wrote down the answer, I got it. Helping a student look up L words and O words and V and E words for an acrostic poem on LOVE, I got it. Helping a student figure out how it is, exactly, that leopards love, I got it. Hearing that favorite question of mine at the end of the day, “Will you be here tomorrow?” I got it.
I understood why you come to 826LA with a temporary timeline and end up in the realm of indefinitely. Even before the kids got here at the very beginning of January, I remember flipping through “Tight Red Pants, Tight Red Shirt, And A Mohawk” and thinking, these kids are brilliant (and hilarious), and I knew that every spreadsheet and all the Ikea research was worth it. Now my problem is that expiration date and I know that I’ll have to find my way back here after other things, like a silly higher education, get in the way. No matter how hard it is to roll off my air mattress in the mornings, or how exhausted I may be by the end of the day, I keep coming back, 30 minutes of traffic each way, with a stupid smile slapped on my face.
Sam Geer
My first few weeks at 826 have been exhaustingly invigorating – from day one I’ve found myself both socially and mentally challenged. There’s nothing like a poorly-phrased word problem to remind yourself just how much dust your pre-algebra skills have collected over the years. Another dilemma: how exactly does one maintain “cool dude” status with a given student while simultaneously attempting to wrangle and focus their attention on homework they have little to no interest in doing? At what point does one cease pushing a student to try and allow them to wallow in frustration over concepts misunderstood? Should efforts be redoubled, or should difficult concepts be revisited later? Tough stuff.
But the gratification is there, in both the instant and gestating varieties. Crawling along a worksheet over an hour with a boy who has trouble remembering his multiplication tables yielded an astonishing counter-display of memorization, as the same boy taught me step-by-step instructions to create an origami dragon. Getting a high five from a young girl on her way out because now, thanks to me, she’s got regrouping numbers for double-digit subtraction under lock-and-key. Even the simple refrain of “Thank you, Mr. Sam” is a soul-warmer. Not to mention one peripheral bonus since my tenure at 826 began: nightly sleep has gone from precarious to the like-a-rock/make-a-newborn-jealous caliber.
Despite the challenges involved, and through attempting to meet them, I always feel great at the end of the day. Even in the midst of dealing with the throes of whiney anti-homework disinterest, I’ve found the 826 kids’ wacky, unbridled imaginations to be a constant source of fuel for living the life positive.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Posted by Sarah B.
On Thursday, December 28, the kids, families and tutors of 826LA East gathered for a festive holiday release party. The latest chapbook, titled, "Tight Red Pants, Tight Red Shirt, and a Mohawk," features students’ musings on music and musicians. As the proud authors read selections from their work, their audience listened with rapt attention to passages on Justin Bieber, the lifestyles of would-be rockstars, and the melodic verses of original songs!
Following the reading, we were paid a very special surprise visit from Jeff Kinney, author of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" book series. Kinney shared a bit of his creative process, revealing that the books were not only inspired by his own experiences as a wimpy kid, but that the books were initially targeted towards grown-up audiences. The author enthusiastically praised the resident authors of 826LA East, encouraging them to keep a journal and to discover the value of writing about daily life.
Following his talk, Kinney answered a few questions from the youth of 826LA, fielding inquiries concerning the books’ characters, as well as he the upcoming "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" feature-length motion picture.. Afterwards, we all enjoyed a festive holiday feast of Mexican food, courtesy of a donation from The William C. Bannerman Foundation. After celebrating our hard work, our special guest, and the upcoming holiday season, we parted ways for the winter break. We at 826LA wish you a very happy and healthy new year, and we look forward to seeing you in 2010!
