The space where Works in Progress meets
This is the main or “Big” room where Works in Progress meets, the program I help out with on Wednesday nights. For the programs at The Telling Room (like this one), it is my responsibility to set up before the program and clean up after it. These generally take about 5 minutes for set up and 10 for clean up since the office closes once the program is over. Not pictured are the couches, armchairs, and bean bags laid out in the corners of the room for students who prefer differed seating.
Inputting Evaluation Sheets is not a regular occurrence for me, but when I have time I come to a program early to put these Evals into a Google Sheet. They track student data and satisfaction with the various programs, residencies, and workshops run by The Telling Room. This is the “tedious” task often done by intens like myself, but staff also contribute to tackling the stacks of undocumented/uncategorized Eval sheets too. I found the task fairly calming, just inputting data and getting to laugh at the things kids write while listening to music.
My journal generally tracks what I do during Telling Room programs, this day I was at the York High School residency. On this day I was able to contribute to the lesson plan, where the teaching artist, Jude, asked for suggestions on a perspective activity. I proposed the idea of using fairy tales or a movie instead of a boring event from the day to do a retelling of. Jude liked this idea and used it for the first class, which went well, and they asked me to run the activity for the second class. I did, and felt it went well, the students were engaged carving out different perspectives of The Three Little Pigs.
The “poem” at the bottom of my journal was something I wrote during their quiet writing time, where I was modeling good student behavior and contributing to the share session afterwards.
