“Streetside’s effectiveness, their engaging and academically rigorous curriculum, and their cultural competence, make Streetside’s programs invaluable.”
— Jason Wyman, Youth Development Consultant
Streetside BlogRoll
STREET BLOG: OUR STAFF SHARES THEIR STORIES
Monday, May 19, 2008
Streetside in the News!
Recently, Streetside was in the news!
You can check out an interview with Streetside Stories staffers Tara and Linda here, on KPFA's Flashpoints program. Just click on May 16th ; Streetside's interview begins at about the 30 minute mark.
Streetside was also featured in Just Cause, a new magazine that focuses on the causes that unite us. You can read the article here.
Last Friday, Streetside Director Linda Johnson and Deputy Director Tomas Riley appeared on SF Live, a show on AccesSF public access television in San Francisco. You can catch their appearance here.
Streetside staff members Helen McGrath, Pedro Reyes, Bernadette Montez and Erika Padilla Morales were just named certified producers by AccesSF. Congratulations, team!
They went through a 15 hour training program, where they learned to make public service announcements, produce and host TV segments, and run sound, camera and graphics. They'll be producing all kinds of content that gets the word out about Streetside, from PSAs to news features. So stay tuned to cable channel 29 in San Francisco!
Streetside just finished up a great after school workshop at Francisco Middle School as part of our Literate Learners project. Literate Learners is an initiative that offers our Tech Tales, Storytelling Exchange, and Streetside After School programs to middle school English language learners in San Francisco and Oakland.
Often, English learners don't get a lot of arts education, and they miss out on the sizable benefits that the arts provide. Literate Learners is working to fill that gap for 1,000 students. We're even getting a formal evaluation of the project done by WestEd, to find out how we help English learners, and how we can help them even more.
In Literate Learners, we've seen newcomers to the United States get up and do theater, write full stories in English, and share their work with others, out loud. We're very proud of these students, and the power their stories have to get them excited about learning English.
Here's a poem, written by Literate Learners participant Sandy Jiang.
Immigrants are People Immigrants are people From north, south, east west Immigrants are people Come in spring, summer, fall, winter Immigrants are people Work hard, get paid less Immigrants are people Speak language differently Immigrants are people Honestly Immigrants are people Selflessly Immigrants are people Same as others Seeking freedom and happiness
And another, by Vinh Nguyen.
I Am Here I am here I am like a big ball Like a moon, And I am an apple in trees the wind can’t blow I want happiness I feel so good
We just learned about an amazing new web tool called GoodSearch. And we hope you'll use it to benefit Streetside.
GoodSearch is a search engine, and a good one (it's got the same capabilities as Yahoo!)
For every search you perform on GoodSearch, Streetside will receive a little more than a cent. Sounds like nothing, right? Well, think about how many web searches you do each day. Then imagine 100 people or more using GoodSearch every day. That's a lot of searches.
Streetside can earn $500, $1,000 or even $1,500 a year if a bunch of people use GoodSearch as their search engine. $1,000 is enough to buy all of the art supplies we use in our after school programs this year. It's enough to buy a new laptop for one of our tech programs. It's enough to pay for printing student learning materials for 1,000 students. In short, it makes a big difference.
Here's how:
Just go to http://www.goodsearch.com/. In the box that asks who you GoodSearch for, enter Streetside Stories. Then, click to add GoodSearch to your toolbar (it works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari). Or click to make it your homepage. Either way, it will make using GoodSearch automatic.
GoodSearch also has something called GoodShop, which directs a percentage of your purchases from popular stores like J. Crew, Zappos and Best Buy to your chosen charity. You'll see more info on the GoodSearch page.
At the end of each of our Streetside After School workshops, Streetside has a sharing day. On that day, students share the stories they created with Streetside for an audience of fellow students, parents, teachers and friends. They get recognition for being part of a community of storytellers, in the form of a certificate of achievement and lots of applause. Many of our older students even get a cash stipend for completing the program. Then everyone has pizza and juice.
This year, Streetside is having at least 38 sharing days. Wow, that's a lot of pizza!
Last week, we had a sharing day at Glen Park Elementary in San Francisco, where we helped 60 kindergarten through second grade students become storytellers. All of these brave students got up on stage, shared stories and showed off the books they created.
Above, staff member Erika Alexander helps a student practice before taking the stage.
On December 14, Streetside students showcased the stories they created this fall. There were lots of holiday treats, a showing of our Streetside video, and lots of digital stories, photos, and published work.
Best of all, the second hour of the showcase was broadcast live on KPFA's La Onda Bajita radio show.
Streetside kids and their families chatted with the hosts and shared stories, with a cheering audience backing them up. As Streetside kids, headphones on, spoke into the mic, their parents were standing beside them, full of pride.
