Managing over thirty girls with the limited technological resources we have for TMS class is difficult. I’ve found that structured group work that allows each group to work with some aspect of the technology (from the digital camera, to the flip cam to the computer) has been the best method for keeping all students engaged and ensuring that all the girls get exposure to these new and exciting devices.

The Railway Times

To get the girls thinking about topics for their final video project they wrote a newspaper article about problems they would like to change in their communities. The girls worked in small groups to type these assignments into a newsletter and format the document in Word. A photography team went out to document the community problems through photographs. The result is The Railway Times.

railwaytimes

Where I’m From Poem

The girls also all wrote poems that describe their identity as it relates to their origins. The inspiration for this lesson was a poem by George Ella Lyons, “Where I’m From.”

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree

— George Ella Lyons

We made a short video with selections from several of the girls reading their poems aloud.

Where I’m From from The Modern Story on Vimeo.