Parent Night

Parents visited the classroom this past Wednesday. We talked about thinking symbolically and the power of the metaphor to facilitate higher level thinking. Then the parents got to do some of their own work.

"Think about the emotional journey of an immigrant, the journey of the heart. How can you represent all or part of the journey symbolically?"

The children came back to school the next day to discover the parents' creations. We spend time thinking and discussing the representations. Actually, we spend a whole hour looking at them and talking about them. It is more than one blog can manage, so here are a few.

 

Kali: They made green children because they were multi cultural and they had two different cultures, not just one because if the orange culture is its own culture and the blue culture is its own culture, then they are technically making a new culture when you make it green.

Max: Then if even one orange person came over here, there could be hundred of green people because I more orange people come then maybe one of these orange people could marry another blue person. We Would end up getting a bunch of different cultures that you didn’t even have in the first place if just a few people didn’t immigrate. And it all started with just a few people immigrating here.

 

 

 

 

Cameron: The leaves, I like how she used the leaves because if you are like on a sail boat trying to seek freedom …. when the leaves fall from the tree, the wind could blow them away. Just like if a sail ship is crossing the ocean for a certain destination, the wind could blow them away. For example, the Mayflower was actually attempting to land in Jamestown.

Andrea: Sometimes you may end up where you weren’t intending.

Henry: When a leaf falls, I think that means when one leaf falls, leaves kind of spread. The first leaf starts all of the others. I think that means that if only one or two people land in a place that no one else has been before, they can make a whole settlement and make a civilization.

 

 

 

 

 

Henry: What happens if someone falls down the tree? It is like climbing the tree to Ellis Island but when they get there, someone says, “No, you can’t come!” so they fall back down the tree. I picture this never-ending tree with tons of paths and ways and what I think he means by perspective is that you can look down as past images of your life.

Aliza: I feel like once you get here [pointing to the three colored paddles in the middle of the tree] you have to choose which path to take.

Joe: When you get to the middle maybe you don’t have a job but you have friends and you have a nice place to live. Even though you really want a job, you still feel like you want to stay.

Andrea: You perspective changes along the way?

Mason: What happens when you get to the top of the tree? Do you get back down?

Henry: I keep picturing a never ending tree, like it keeps growing as you grow. I picture that the tree is your life… like your fortune or something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rose: I think it is really interesting. I feel like the blue panel is when they just see them, the red panel is when they are transitioning and the yellow panel is like, “Hey we can see her clearer now!

Henry: I’m not sure if the panels have to go in order. Everyone has a different perspective. Like what if someone sees them like this [put the blue panel on] and someone else sees them like this [puts the red panel on] and someone else sees them like this [puts the yellow panel on].

Andrea: So you are saying that rather than this person having different panels throughout, the people looking have the different panels? Someone sees everything with the red panel. Someone else looks through the yellow…?

Kali: I was thinking that maybe the blue panel meant, “I don’t really know this person.” The yellow means, “ Oh, we’re friends.” And the red is like, “ I hate you!”

Andrea: So maybe the different panels represent different emotions? Maybe one of them would be a prejudice.

Max: What I kind of thought was that you could have cross panels. You could have purple [puts the red and blue together] . It gets really dark. Then he almost becomes invisible to you.  It is not going to help you, so you want to kind of try to take the panel away from your eye. You want to tug it off.