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Students at PS 8 are collecting change through the end of March to send to an organization called Foot2Afrika and help in efforts to build a “youth village” that will provide life and trade skills to Tanzanian youth. Learn about how the organization came to the attention of PS 8, the organization’s work and leadership, and what PS 8’s donation will support in the interview below with fifth grade teacher Melissa Browning, fourth grader Sophie Smith, and fifth grader Jason Walter. Anyone interested in knowing more about PS 8’s partnership with Foot2Afrika should contact Ms. Melissa (in Room 5-314). Those interested in supporting Foot2Afrika’s work can read more about the proposed Moshi Youth Village, make online donations to 501(c)(3) partner organizations, and follow ongoing fundraising efforts on Facebook.

How did people at PS 8 first learn about Foot2Afrika?
Melissa Browning (fifth grade teacher): About two years ago, Ms. Noelle (PS 8’s former drama teacher), Assistant Principal Mr. Mikos, and I had discussed volunteering in Africa in the summertime.  I had a friend who had worked in Tanzania and was intrigued by her experience. When I started looking around on the internet at opportunities, I found Foot2Afrika, an organization run by Sadock Johnson. It was particularly interesting because it was an organization entirely run by Tanzanians, there was no foreign umbrella organization.

Once you learned about Foot2Afrika, what did you do?
Ms. Melissa: In the summer of 2010, Ms. Noelle, Mr. Mikos and I traveled to Tanzania to volunteer with Foot2Afrika.  We stayed at its volunteer house and helped at the Msamaria Center for Street Children.  We hung out and played with the kids, and repainted their kitchen and built a chicken coop.

We made videos to document our experience in Africa and showed them to the PS 8 community in the fall of 2010.  The Film Club made a documentary about PS 8 that was sent to the children at Msamaria and last year, Stephanie Zeidner’s second grade class (with the help of paraprofessional Frank Mullervy) started a loose change drive to support Msamaria and raised $1,100! 

What was the impetus for this year’s change drive?
Ms. Melissa: This past February, Sadock Johnson was visiting the United States from Tanzania and visited PS 8.  He spoke at an assembly on February 9, 2012 for third to fifth grade classes and discussed the mission of Foot2Afrika and what life is like in Tanzania. 

Sophie Smith (fourth grade): He told us about life in Africa. He would find kids on the street, and he’d take them to the street centers he was working with.

Jason Walter (fifth grade): He talked about trying to improve school conditions. There are so few supplies. Also, just making sure all the kids on the street have access to an education . . . and helping kids without a home have a home.

Ms. Melissa: Foot2Afrika has several different centers they work with. Msamaria – the center where Ms. Noelle, Mr. Mikos and I worked – is one of them. Now Foot2Afrika is raising money to build its own center. All the volunteers who go to work with the organization will be working to build that center this summer and then working in that center. Foot2Afrika is hoping to teach vocational and artisan skills to Tanzanian youth in the hope that it will transfer over to careers. 

Sophie: At Msamaria, they’ve given homes to the kids. They help with school, they have games . . .

Ms. Melissa: School in Tanzania is not free, so they find sponsors to allow children to attend school. It’s about $120 per student per school per year. Organizations like Foot2Afrika and Msamaria use money from sponsors to send kids to many local schools.

How did you decide on this project?
Sophie: Last year the second graders made money for Msamaria, and someone at the assembly brought up if we were going to do it again. My friend was sitting next to me and he had $2 in his pocket and I had two quarters, and we were giving Mr. Johnson all of that money right then, and then we thought we should get everyone to give.

Ms. Melissa: A lot of people at the assembly were feeling down because we have so much more than kids in Tanzania, so we talked about figuring out what we could do with those feelings that would be productive and helpful. That’s how the change drive was born.

How are you spreading the word about Foot2Afrika and the change drive?
Sophie: My mom takes my friend to school, too, and I always say to her how great Foot2Afrika is . . .

Jason: Our class made signs, and we hung them up all over the school. We handed them out to other classes.

Sophie: Their signs had the words, “Loose change for Afrika” and then a picture of some coins . . .

Jason: Some kids drew a picture of a footprint on the posters.

Do you discuss the loose change project in your classes?
Jason: Well, we’ve only talked about it once or twice. Once was the day we made all the signs for the change jars, and then really let the whole school know about it – putting the signs up and the jars in the classes. And Safi – another girl in my class – and I made an announcement on the loudspeaker.

How is the change drive going?
Jason: We don’t really know exactly how much we’ve raised, but it’s going well.

Sophie: We keep the jar in a closet. Our jar is probably one quarter full; it’s slowly getting filled.

What does this project teach?
Ms. Melissa: It is so important for our students to learn about other cultures, to understand how our lives around the world are both similar and different and to support causes that will create a stronger global community.

Do you want to do something like this again?
Ms. Melissa: We hope that everyone will donate their spare change for an incredible cause and that we can continue this partnership year after year. 

By Ansley Samson
Photo credits to Melissa Browning and Lucia Larson

Just before the winter break, the NYC Panel for Education Policy voted unanimously to approve PS 8’s request for expansion and co-location. Our school is now a PreK-8!

Next year, Grade 6 will be located at Westinghouse High School on Johnson Street in downtown Brooklyn (less than a ten minute walk from the rest of our school.) We will grow gradually until we are a full Pre K-8 during the 2014-2015 school year.

As the process continues, we will let parents know how they can help get our middle school off to a dazzling start. Stay tuned for the date of a Middle School Conversation with Principal Seth Phillips.

And in the meantime, check out the photo below showing the the building which will house our new school (on the right) and the nearby playing field that we’re hopeful our children can use throughout their time at the new PS 8 middle school.

Photo courtesy of Ursula Hahn.

In January, kindergarten through fifth grade classes came together as full grades in the auditorium to perform for their families songs they had been practicing in their weekly music classes. Below, music teacher Mr. Bloom talks about the performances, the music curriculum, and plans for future music performances.

Why did you decide to have the winter music performances?
I’ve done this for my last two years teaching, and have felt the performances are a logical end-product of what I do in class. I do them for the same reason we do publishing parties or celebrations at the ends of units in other classes: to acknowledge and celebrate student work and progress.

How long were students practicing and rehearsing?
It differed from grade to grade. For the third grade, it was entirely songs they learned earlier in the first semester. The kindergarten and first grades, though, learned most of their songs in the last month. There were a lot of winter songs for those grades, and I didn’t want to confuse them!

How did the performances differ from grade to grade?
The celebrations reflect the curriculum, so they follow the different grades’ work – from kindergarten through fifth grades, the pre-kindergarten didn’t do big winter performances. The younger – first grade – songs are more sing-songy. Older classes’, especially fifth grade’s, songs have more percussion and are more complicated musically; they also address more mature subject matter. And the older grades tended to sing songs in different languages. Almost all the third and fourth graders songs were in different languages!

Do you plan to have more performances this year?
Yes, in June. Those performances will probably have the same format – with entire grades coming together to perform in the auditorium – but the third, fourth and fifth grade performances might be more elaborate because those grades are doing recorder now.

How do the performances fit into the music curriculum?
Performing is something you should be doing as part of a music curriculum: music is meant to be performed and enjoyed, and a performance for an audience hits both of those goals. State standards also stress the importance of performance. One standard is based on performance, one on music-making, another on cultural connections. Basically, the standards emphasize that kids should be performing for audiences, knowing the words of the songs they’re singing by heart, and learning songs from a variety of cultures that also tie into science and math.

In our staff meetings, we’ve been talking about how to get students thinking about a subject when they’re not in that subject. I was happy to hear – and I did hear again and again – that students were singing and practicing their performance songs at home; they weren’t saying, “no more music.” I’m already seeing that with recorders, too: my students have been going home and learning songs. It’s great to see emotional investment in the end product of music. It’s a sign I’m doing my job if the kids are still thinking about music when they leave class.

What do you hope the students got out of the music performances?
Part of the justification for music education is giving students the experience of performing. It can be something they refer back to when trying to decide whether to be part of a play or do some other kind of performance. They can say, “Oh, yeah, I did that and I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” I hope they like it, but I don’t take it personally if they don’t. And the performance itself isn’t the main thing for students to take away, it’s the whole experience leading up to it. Even if a performance isn’t perfect, the process leading up to that performance is important for students: practicing, thinking about an audience, learning to be part of a group of performers. That said, if a performance really doesn’t work, a teacher should be thinking about what the students were being asked to do. You need to meet students where they are and find materials they can master and perform successfully. Another part of having music performances as part of a school curriculum is making sure that children are offered the opportunity to experience success. Every student should be able to play a piece that makes him or her feel a success, to feel like a musician.

By Ansley Samson