According to Mark Eichinger-Wiese—or Mr. E-W, as he’s called around school—the majority of his students enter their first Blacksmithing class scared of fire and having never before wielded a hammer. “It’s too heavy,” he often hears. “I can’t do that!” is a popular refrain. Two weeks in, however, and the students are transformed.
Read MoreSelf-expression. Self-confidence. Vulnerability. Empowerment. For a 15-year-old high school student, these are precious—and often hard to come by—qualities. Enter William Davis, former Hillsborough Poet Laureate (2016-18) and current teacher of spoken word.
Read MoreAwkwardly, I walk up to a person sitting in the observation area of a Covid-19 vaccination site in Los Angeles. I hand them my journal and ask them to read the first page—no pressure if they aren’t willing to write in it. I sit at the Check-Out station, bouncing my knee up and down, nervously waiting for their response.
Read MoreThe Reily Brothers might be superheroes. At least, that’s how I saw them when I was younger. Big, tall, and strapping, older than me and cooler than I’d ever be, there wasn’t a task they couldn’t accomplish, a challenge they couldn’t conquer, a foe they couldn’t vanquish.
Read MoreWe human beings use our hands regularly in our daily lives, often for activities that we don’t put much thought into, such as getting dressed and feeding ourselves. The Handwork curriculum not only develops needed fine motor skills through flexibility and dexterity, but it also builds hand-eye coordination, supports math skills, offers multi-step processing of instructions, and offers practice in the ability to follow directions thoroughly.
Read MoreI’m in the midst of applying to law school, and in January I sat down to write my personal statement—a critical component of the application. The prompt—infamous for its vague language—directs prospective students to “introduce themselves to the admissions committee” and “write about important aspects in their lives.” I’ll admit that at first pass, my mind went blank.
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