the power of a thank you

I'm a firm believer in the importance of gratitude and saying "Thank You" when someone does something nice for you. Writing thank you notes after Christmas and birthdays wasn't always my favorite thing when I was little but I'm happy my parents taught me what a good habit this is.

Last week, many of the seniors at Marwen had their last day and are officially off to college. I received a thank you note from a student who I met when she was in 7th grade and had started taking classes at Marwen. I had to scan it in and share it here because there are few things more gratifying as a teacher than a genuine thank you from a student. Granted, this student is exceptional, she's had this wonderful attitude since I first met her so many years ago. This really made my day!

Century of the Child

Artifacts from PeeWee's Playhouse

Century of the Child
Growing by Design 
1900-2000

This is the title of a new exhibition at MOMA. I read this article in the New York Times about it and was intrigued. I wish I could just hop a plane to check it out! Luckily, MOMA has a fantastic interactive website for this exhibition. It features tons of images and information.

 

 

A toy designed by Vit Grus

The exhibition is organized chronologically in the following categories:

New Century, New Child, New Art 1900s-1910s

Avant-Garde Playtime 1910s-1930s

Light, Air, Health 1920s-1930s

Children and the Body Politic 1920s-1940s

Regeneration 1940s-1960s

Power Play 1960s-1990s

Designing Better Worlds 1960s- 2000s

Marwen Lab

It's hard to believe we finished our 4th year of Marwen Lab in May! I'm so happy I've been involved since the beginning with this program. To see it grow, take shape and become much more effective and refined over the years has been extremely gratifying. We had our first student, Emily,  who had taken 3 straight years of Marwen Lab graduate this year. It's always tough and this year we had 18 seniors out of 28 students! I am so proud of all of them and can't wait to see what they accomplish in the years to come. As I start a family this Fall, I'll be quitting my staff position at Marwen and continuing on as a freelance teaching artist. I am so excited to start this new chapter and am happy I can still continue to teach and be a part of the community.
Here are some photos from the exhibition, the top one is during our last class of students doing a post-it note critique. The next three are details of Emily's art work. I find them so beautiful and thought provoking. This is a small sampling of her project but you get the idea.

Calaveras Big Trees

We didn't do much on our trip to California other than lots of lounging outside, walks, and visiting with family, which was just what we needed. We did take one excursion to the Calaveras Big Trees state park though which was AMAZING. I'm a fan of trees and this park has lots of giant redwoods and sequoias which you just have to see in person. We smelled the park before we saw it, the pine and redwood smell was out of this world. I try to breathe it in as much as possible to counterbalance me walking on stinky Western ave so much:) Anyway, here's some photos I took on my phone, still waiting to process the film I shot.

enormous pinecone!

my p's