Grass Roots School Program

Submitted by Gabe W on Thu, 08/02/2007 - 11:01am.

Gabe W

Posts: 71
Joined: 2007-04-18

Sarah Nick and I met up with Nick, He works and the school where the Youth Activist Conferance was and He came to our party. He is interested in starting a charter school in Brooklyn,, Leanne is also workiing with him too. There is much more to it than that, but thats the general idea. So yesterday over dinner we talked about ways the space can help his new project get off the ground. We havent made it certain or have a plan but I thik it could be really interesting, its a grat idea and project. The space is here to help us explore self education,through whatever way we want, its a space were no one has to be worried if their ideas are good enough or whatever, because if you want to learn it, go for it. So i would say soon, once the building iis mostly done, we get together and talk about programs we can run, hours, etc. Ask anyone and everyone who is doing something interesting if they want to use the space to do something positive. So, thougt i would catch you all up.

Also we should get the freegans and New World in for another meeting soon in order to discuss gound rules and who uses what etcc...

PEace!

Gabe W

Thu, 08/02/2007 - 9:10pm

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

the means of production

hey gabe thanks for posting about this

yeah, the space can be a great place to experiment with different learning projects and methods. This is what i'm thinking as far as a time line: We can have the basic set up build within a week or two tops. Then i feel we should take a little time to try out some of our personal art projects using the facilitates we created and implement some of that self education stuff. I know that during this time i really want to work on some new misled youth materials that look really great and represent where we are now in our work. i've started doing a little writing for that. Also it's likely that things will be a little slow at the end of august since people are out of town, etc. So i think it's realistic to take a break before doing some big things in the space starting in September. I think it would be cool to start doing classes and art projects at the space at the same time that school is starting.

Another thing Nick talked about is that he got a grant to train teachers is using wikis in the classroom to promote more participation with the students. $3000 of that grant is set aside to go to printing a publication about this project. Nick's idea is to put that money into book making equipment so that we can not only create the wiki book but also have the means to produce whatever else we want. This would be at the renaissance school in queens, and they already have a high end laser printer. We'd need to purchase cutting and binding machines, which are expensive. It would also be cool to get a offset printed for that old school look, though that costs plenty of money too. So for now i guess we should just keep an eye out for this equipment, once we get it we'll have the ability to print real books! That could really tie into everything else that we're doing.

so i think things are coming along and that there will be some exciting collaborations with nyc grassroots in the future.

sarah