Building community means getting to know each other. And that means time. Last week we had the first ASA (all-school-activity) of the year and it was a lot of fun.
This year the faculty have divided up the activities for the year and have each taken on the responsibility to be a part of the planning of that event.
Our first ASA was devoted to coming together in groups and as a school. Teachers and mixed age groups of students gathered for introductions and an explanation of the basic idea: Use pens, face silhouette printouts (paper,rough draft), transparencies (final draft), group number and pencils to create an abstract self-portrait using descriptive words and images.
Individual portraits were grouped together to create one large group portrait and each of these portrait quilts are displayed throughout the school.
Jake, Shirley, Jenn, and Malorie walked around photographing the group portraits and sent them to the PDS Twitter feed.
Then the whole school gathered in the theater by activity group and looked at the PDS Twitter feed representing highlights of student portraits and then shared a few things we learned about each other.
