AGLA hears from Holocaust Survivor

Throughout the year, AGLA High School students have hosted a series of speakers to enrich student perspectives and inspire them to take action in our community. Before the winter break, Holocaust  survivor, Harry Davids and Coordinator of the Righteous Conversations Project, Rachel Fidler were the guest speakers.

The Righteous Conversations Project  is a program run by Ms. Fidler at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH).  Part of Ms. Fidler's job is to encourage the survivors to share their usually horrific stories that may have  been untold for a lifetime due to the pain in re-living the Holocaust years. She pairs teens from the community with the survivors.

The Righteous Conversations Project also holds a four day workshop called"Remember Us" each summer at the Harvard-Westlake School. In 2013, AGLA students Trey Carlisle, Purag Moumdjian, Arine Eisaian, Jake Fernandez, Milo Schureman, Matthew Martinez, Lilia Pankers and Kali Van Dusen participated.  The teens met with holocaust survivors and seasoned filmmakers to hear their stories, brainstorm current injustices with similar themes, and then script, direct, act in, and edit  Public Service Announcements (PSAs.)  These finished PSAs were then "gifted" to non-profits that the students feel would benefit most from their message. The program culminates in a  "gifting ceremony."

Mr. Davids partnered with the students for the Remember Usproject. He shared his story with the rest of AGLA during the December speakers series event in a hushed room after Trey Carlisle introduced him.  

In 1942, Mr. Davids was "given" as a baby to a family named the Bakkers who were a part of the Dutch Resistance. The Bakker family was secretly packaging and mailing guns and ammunition through their family-run post office and was also very active in hiding Jews in need of cover. They told neighbors the infant was from friends in the big city who sent him their way to get over his illness. They told German soldiers who knocked on their door that he was their own fifth child. With Davids' real parents in an internment camp, they struggled to find distant doctors willing to risk treating a Jewish baby. (Something more difficult for boys to hide, as only the Jewish infants were circumcised back then.)

Once baby Davids had recovered and the war was settling down, an uncle appeared from South Africa to fight for and win guardianship of the child. Mr. Davids' life unfolded in South Africa after that, where he bore witness to the injustices of apartheid. When politics drove him out of the country, he relocated to Southern California. By then, Mr. Davids had had a life of experience that made him appreciate the Edmund Burke quote:  "The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing." It was with this story that the AGLA teens who partnered with Mr. Davids decided to target the issue of bullying in their PSA. 

Cyber bullying  and a holocaust story may not seem an obvious match, but when you consider Mr. Davids' mission to "try to bring more upstanders out of those bystanders," you see that they are definitely of the same vein.  As AGLA student, Trey Carlisle, put it: "We can carry the torch...make sure injustices don't happen again."  Their PSA, Open the Door,  is on the Aveson YouTube channel along with several others.

These guest speakers were brought to AGLA to inspire us to never stop telling our stories. In many regions, history ignores the holocaust in school. A recent Anti-Defamation League report surveyed 53,000 people in over 100 countries, and found that only 54% had heard of the Holocaust. Of those, 32% believe it’s a myth or greatly exaggerated.

Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors alive to personally hand down the facts from that time period. Thanks to programs like The Righteous Conversations Project and museums like the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the next generation of upstanders is hearing, learning, and  preserving their stories.  

Congratulations and thank you to the AGLA students who have already started leading by example!

Vision means seeing what could be and what will be and living the difference.

To learn more about the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, visit their website at: www.lamoth.org

Click here to view some of the PSA's the students helped create:

Open the Door

Disconnect to Connect

History Lesson

Energy Crisis Elective and CAL TECH

One of our first year staff members is quickly making an impact with our students, bringing her 'energy' and passion to a new elective at AGLA called "Energy Crisis".

In 'Energy Crisis' instructional aide Mackenzie Brown is helping students learn about the various sources of energy while working to understand where Aveson's electricity comes from. Their long term goal is to make recommendations on how to make their community more "green" and sustainable.

The elective spent the first half of their time focusing on different techniques for producing energy including solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, and more traditional oil/natural gas steam turbine plants. Students were tasked with designing the basics of how they might design energy alternatives.

Last month, they took a field trip to explore Caltech's energy technology and sustainability efforts. They were given a guided tour around campus by the Office of Sustainability. On the tour Aveson students experienced the recycling center, solar panels, fuel cells, the outside of a CoGeneration power plant, 3 LEED certified buildings, and passive/natural air conditioning alternatives. 

The tour ended with a conversation about problems of sustainability and potential solutions in general, at Caltech, and at Aveson. Students collaborated on a fact finding worksheet and developed questions of their own.

"We chose this experience because of my prior work with the Caltech Office of Sustainability", explains Ms. Mackenzie, "as well as their leadership nationally for the green schools movement." Seeing the scale of energy production at Caltech pushed the students to see how their small wind, water and solar experiments were similar/different to 'the real deal.' Students started to see the connection between energy production and conservation.

Highlights included touring the inside of Linde Robinson, the most energy efficient remodeled lab space in the country and seeing solar panels close up.

Ms. Mackenzie continued, "The goal of this field trip was for students to see the technologies that we have talked about and modeled on a larger scale. It will also help us begin to develop a proposal in order to make Aveson more sustainable. I hoped that students would see the real world need for better energy management. Caltech is the ideal research hub and a model of responsible energy use."

Here are a few student responses to the question: "The most awesome thing I've learned at Caltech is…"

- "there is a building that is in charge of finding artificial photosynthesis."

- "I like the natural gas idea. And that you can use it in so many different ways"

- "the live image of the sun!"

 

Ms. Mackenzie has a degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College. In addition, she studied abroad in  Iceland to learn about their industry-leading renewable energy production. She has also worked at a local small solar installation company and in the undergraduate admissions office at Caltech. 

3rd - 5th grade students Investigate the Pasadena History Museum

The 3-5 ISP class visited the Pasadena History Museum and Fenyes Mansion using public transit. (Thank you, Metro, for providing us free days passes!!!)

Our group of 21 kids were broken up into 2 groups and we got a tour of Fenyes family Mansion and the Pasadena History Museum which featured an art exhibit. The art was an exhibit featured local artists that painted or photographed images of the local Pasadena area.

We wanted to tour a museum to expose students to how museums work and what goes into running one and creating exhibits.

The goal is to incorporate our research and have the students create their own museum in our classroom in our next project about California. This museum was a good first look at museums. We will use it to compare with the Asian Museum in a couple weeks and use both experiences as research for our next project.

Some of the unexpected highlights of this experience.

- The kitchen had an old ice box that we connected to our STEM challenge of the week in which the students were challenge to build a cooler to keep their ice cold using various conductors and insulators.

- The Jr. docents were a great treat, because they were led by high school students through the museum. This will go nicely when we build our museum and become docents ourselves when we have our "museum" opening at Celebration of Learning.

Reflection provided by Mrs. Kendra De Felice 3-5 ISP Advisor

AGLA Hosts Douglas Kearney, Local Poet

AGLA hosts Douglas Kearney, Local Poet

Walking into the cavernous multi-purpose room at Aveson Global Leadership Academy (AGLA), the room that usually houses 2 salad bars and a dozen or so cafe tables surrounded by kids on Chromebooks, a man is walking through an audience of 80-plus teens who have, some of them, let their jaws drop and eyes grow wide. He is rapping, shouting, even growling. This is poetry at it’s best. This is Douglas Kearney. 

    

Douglas Kearney is an award winning poet, a professor at Cal Arts, and perhaps most importantly: an Altadena native. He is as local as the definition of local allows.

"I composed this poem," he tells the teens, "On the corner of El Molino and Altadena." The poem he recites--if that word can even be abstracted from his staccato, gripping, performance--is "Orange Alert", about the fires in the mountains behind our homes in the fall of 2009. He has them. All of them.

The photographer is there to take pictures, but her camera does not focus on this man. She is sucked into his poetry, swirled around the still air of the multi-purpose room, startled out of it when he abruptly ends. This man is genius - a local genius.  He is here to teach kids and there is nowhere but up for them to go now.

Embedded in other words of wisdom is advice such as "Read everything!" And with poetry, especially in the beginning: "Be genuine. The rewards of poetry don't come if it's not an actual interpretation of yourself...You have to be present in the work. Try to be your whole self when you sit down to write."

A boy in the front who looks like he's groomed for the 1950's shoots his hand up, asking if Poe is an influence, specifically, “The Raven.”  Kearney doesn’t skip a beat, he recalls Poe that was personally more influential; a poem that is lesser known; catchy and cutesy-at-first, entitled "Bells." He finds it online, projects it for the teens, and performs it in a way that no Poe savant could even stutter. This is Public Enemy Poe, Poe 2014...Altadena Poe?

Kearney  internalizes the poetry, establishes the rhythm, and introduces the crowd to the power of language. The absolute, engulfing, strength of the written word, when spoken. Kearney is a master. AGLA students seemed to recognize that and honor that. Fully attentive, they dig deeper: "What is your most meaningful work?"  "Do you plan your piece before you start?" "What one emotion would you say is in each of your poems?"

Confusion, Kearney admits, is the strength in his poetry. He uses both anger and fear. Because rage can be vulnerable. And being vulnerable can induce rage. He turns to his recent work, “Patter,” as example. Fatherhood. The process itself is scary. The scarring of miscarriages, the extremes of renewal and birth and timed delivery. Then the Kabam of fatherhood! You're new role! Your oh-my-god-Trayvon Martin. My son could be Trayvon. Suddenly it's all about some Skittles: it could end like that! Fear. And rage. In his delivery of his poems, the room vibrates with those emotions. He offers a hand to the teens and then drags them through the uncomfortable. No plan. But completely premeditated. Grab on. It is worth the ride!

Thank you, AGLA, Jessie Gloyd specifically, for bringing this incredible voice home.

Douglas Kearney was raised in Altadena and graduated from John Muir High in 1994.

AGLA students weigh perspectives at Cal Tech

8th graders visits Cal Tech.

Reflection provided by 8th grade Advisor Jessica Evangelista -

Our group of 80 was broken up into 3 groups and we got a tour of the campus. They talked about Caltech's history of pranks, we toured dorm rooms, we heard some founder history, toured a lab, and talked to many students on campus. We then did a scavenger hunt around campus which encouraged our students to interact with College students on campus. The scavenger hunt asked them to find people like an international student, a freshman, and a east coast student.  

We wanted to tour a college campus to get exposure to a goal that many of our students share. We are working on science fair projects that had to do with some studies at Caltech. We also did some labs and the students asked if people do this kind of stuff on a regular basis so I showed then that ya, people do this on a regular basis.

The purpose of the trip was to help students develop some perspective on college. We wanted them to see college is challenging, fun and an experience to remember. 

- Reflection provided by Jessica Evangelista

World Affairs Council with President Clinton

REFLECTION PROVIDED BY AVESON SENIOR, JAKE FERNANDEZ

Aveson Global Leadership Academy, among other high schools, attended a lunch at the Beverly Hotel to hear our 42nd President Bill Clinton answer questions and engage in a variety discussions. We were situated pretty far back so we watched a TV in order to enhance our view of the proceedings. The way the lunch was set up was not what I expected. Instead of just Bill Clinton delivering a speech or answering questions straight to the audience, he was joined on the stage by another gentlemen who would ask him his opinions and stance on certain political agendas. It all felt more natural and intimate than just listening to someone speak for an hour. As soon as he started talking, I was overwhelmed with how well-spoken and intelligent he was. He delivered every answer with resounding confidence and credibility that not only answered the question at hand, but transitioned into new areas of discussion. He was a very humble man that’s easy to listen to and enjoy. It was a very rewarding experience and I’m glad my fellow classmates and I got to attend.

Visit Los Angeles World Affairs Council Website to learn more

Project Based Learning Looks at Symbols, Landmarks and Art

Why do symbols, landmarks, and art within a community represent and reflect a community’s beliefs?

Ms Jennee's Independent Study Program, a class of 1st and 2nd graders, is drilling deeply into this driving question. To break down this concept, the students first asked themselves: What is a symbol? Working with a map of the United States blanketing their class wall, students explored individual states and defined symbols that represent history, architecture, art, anything iconic that immediately conjures up each state. Their definition of symbol evolved into: something that can hold powerful meanings within communities of people.

Next, Ms. Jennee began an exploration of symbols within our own community and led discussions on their significance to us as community members. The children helped deepen the exploration. They wondered why these symbols meant so much to people. They asked themselves what symbols represented them, their passions and goals.

To personalize the project, Ms. Jennee helped guide the students towards a person, place, animal or landmark they felt passionate about. Next up, they begin their investigation and discovery. Some of the student choices included Jackie Robinson, Grizzly Bears, the Seattle Space Needle, Fenway Park in Boston, and many more.

Ms. Jennee has enhanced the project by engaging the students with both fiction and non-fiction books that illustrate each state. From P is for Potato: an Idaho Alphabet to South Dakota's Who Carved the Mountain? The Story of Mount Rushmore. The selected literature helps students make connections with each state and its identity.

Another way Ms. Jennee has enhanced the project is ensuring students experience these landmarks themselves, online and in person. One way they are doing that is a field trip to the Watts Tower in Los Angeles. 

"We will learn about the towers and take a tour of the towers to learn how they were created," explains Ms. Jennee. "We will use the towers as a way of discussing and connecting symbols and public art to values and beliefs within a community.The visit to the towers will culminate in creating our own prototype installations and deciding what they would mean to the community where it would be installed." The field trip is scheduled for early November.

And as if that wasn't enough, every student has mailed a Flat Stanley all over the United States. His journey to relatives and friends of the students will be documented in pictures showing Flat Stanley against a recognizable symbol from the state he's visiting. He is returned to Aveson with notes and often such as banners from local teams or stickers for each student. Stanley has been to over 15 states so far, and his journey should continue throughout the semester.

Ms. Jennee's US Map continues to grow as the students develop their prototypes and informational writing pieces. Their independent projects are investigations that envelop traditional lessons in US History, Geography, Art, Social Studies, and Literacy. These projects do so in a deep and meaningful way.  It's what Aveson's Personalized Mastery Learning is about.

Take a peek in any of our classrooms and you will find exciting teaching and learning like this, happening each and every day!