What do you do, anyway? Part 2.

Check it out, we're in the Oregonian!

School Courtyards

Things that school courtyards have in common:
- not used regularly by students or staff
- visible to students and staff thanks to a breezeway or hallway
- very pretty
- some sort of project has been started, possibly abandoned

Case 1: George Middle School, Portland Public Schools, North Portland, built in 1952, 328 students




Case 2: Lynch View Elementary School, Centennial School District, outer Southeast Portland, built in 1958, 492 students

What do you do, anyway?

I get asked what my job is all of the time, and generally I say that I run a project that visits schools, after-school programs, and community-based organizations and teaches young people to make videos. This project is called OLLIE.

Then the other person looks vaguely confused by all of this and says, "Oh... cool."

This is the kind of project I get to make at work. Not all of them are this entertaining, but they have one thing in common: young people learning to use a new tool (video) to express themselves.

Every school we visit has a different theme. This group's theme was school lunch, and my group was particularly concerned with nutrition issues. Because they are kids, of course the students had a laundry list of things they didn't like about school lunch. Finally we settled on one area of focus - the prepackaged Jamwich peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

even more disgusting in real life...

This particular project was really special to me because I got to work with my second cousin, Isaac. We didn't really know each other before this project, it was great to get to know him.

cute runs in the family