FALL 2020 DAYTIME CLASSES
SEPTEMBER 2020 - NOVEMBER 2020
Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Fall 2020 daytime classes were held once a week in small groups. They were held entirely outside at our urban garden classroom at 59 N. Front St. After each class, students took activities and projects home, to complete throughout the week on their own time. Teachers and students were required to follow careful safety protocol while meeting.
LAND, LANGUAGE, LIBERACIÓN
Tuesdays | Ages 8 - 14
Learning Spanish through gardening, herbalism, stories, and stewardship. With Xóchicoatl Bello and Heylan Tsumagari
How can listening to the land help us to learn new ways of thinking and speaking? This semester our En Español language class was held in our community garden tended by hands from around the world. As gardeners and herbalists, we developed our language skills by engaging both our minds and bodies. We practiced remembering through dance, song, the stories of abuelitas and the measurements of herbolarias.
As we learned to describe the world around us in new ways, we also dug into the power of language to name, uncover, colonize, erase, connect, and reclaim. As we practiced our new vocabulary and harvested fall crops, we expanded our imaginations, too: connecting to the history of the land we’re on and imagining liberatory and multilingual futures.
DATA WORLDS
Thursdays | 9am - 11:30am, 1pm- 3:30pm | Ages 8 - 14
A math and art class for people who love to ask questions. With Zebi Williams
Where do numbers come from? How can counting and organizing information help us better understand ourselves and the world? What things are unquantifiable? In this class we wove together math, art, and philosophy to develop our data literacy skills, become our own data collectors and artists, and dive into some of the deep questions of our time.
Becoming data collectors. How many times do you feel like you’re hungry in a day? When in the day do you usually feel tired? What can we learn about ourselves by becoming our own data collectors? Together we counted, measured, and mapped the data trails of our own lives, learning how data can be a powerful tool for better understanding ourselves and for making decisions.
Developing data literacy. We practiced working with numbers and statistics, learning skills around spreadsheets and making superhero charts. We worked to make sense of math and simplify numbers through painting and sculptures, taking complex issues and breaking them down into visuals. We uncovered some of the key ways that journalists and politicians can use data to confuse us, and discovered the positive and transformative power of data when it is owned and understood by the people.
