Today I received an eamil from a teacher in Mississippi who would like to join the Eleanor Rigby Project. I was very moved by his letter. I can't wait to share it with the students. I am sure they will be very excited about corresponding with students in Mississippi. Here is the email:


Brenda: 10/30/03

I received a message from our state rcu center telling us about The Eleanor Rigby Project and giving us the web site address. I went to the site and navagated the site. I found the site and project to be very interesting and started to wonder if a section of my eight grade Computer Discovery students would like to particpate in the project. I told them about the project and they became interested in particpating as they navagated their way through the site in an effort to see what was required of them. I am e-mailing you to let you know of our desire to particpate in the project. Am I correct in thinking that our next step is to start working on the projects and to share with you and your students our experiences? I am making plans to spend time each week on the projects during class and after class for those willing to go the extra mile.

We are a small rural school located in Southwest Central Mississippi in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. The school is in Inverness and our school has an enrollment of 181 students in grades K-8. We are in a proverty area and the vast majority of our students fall below the federal and state proverty guidelines. The tax base in our area is small and does not generate enough income to fully support the schools. The prospects for generating a larger more profitable tax base are almost non-existent inspite of the efforts of local, federal and state programs to increase it. We are a farming area and always will be. Our county according to the latest census is classified as being almost 75% minority (black). Our school has two students who are not classified as minority students. Money we receive from the state is lower than that for other well to do areas and the teacher pay is lower. Our students need to have the world opened to them through postive experiences that will increase their learning and knowledge.

Our students definition of a homeless person at this time more than likely would be, a person who sleeps on the streets in a large city. They probably do not believe we have any homeless people around us. To say we do have homeless people in our area you would have to redefine the definition of homeless. I am looking forward to observing our students reactions as they participate in the project. It is always good to take your eyes off of your self and see others.

Besides learning about the homeless people across this land of ours maybe our students can learn about the differences in the areas that we live. I hope that through this project my students can come to learn to more about life in Alberta Canada and that your students can come to learn about life here in the Mississippi Delta. I would like for our students to share stories about the areas in which they live.

I am looking forward to working on the project and staying in touch with you and your students.

Bland Campbell
Computer Discovery Teacher

Last day the students took part in a silent discussion, using an article called "To Be Young and Homeless". They read key parts of the article and responded in writing by walking around the room and writing their comments on chart paper. I asked them to respond to eachother's comments, not just the article - in a bounce catch-bouce fashion. It was quite neat to watch this silent discussion take place. Great thoughts appeared on the chart paper. I participated too.

Today they put feet to their thoughts and feelings from yesterday by becoming an "Advocacy Group" for the homeless. Small groups of students will create a community campaign using three media forms of their choice through which they will inform their peers of issues surrounding homelessness in their community, province or country.

Students were very excited about this assignment. We talked about the various media forms they could use (letters to the public, posters, magazine or newspaper advertisements, billboards, PowerPoint presentations and three-dimensional displays in public areas). In their Blogs they aswered the follow questions:

- Will your campaign focus on issues of homelessness on a community, state or national level?
--On what specific issue or issues related to homelessness do you wish to focus your campaign?
--What statistics are offered in your group's article excerpt that you can incorporate into your campaign? What other statistics should you locate in order to give your campaign factual support?
--This campaign's audience is an audience of your peers. How can your message be reflected in a voice to which your peers can relate?
--Look at the list on the board of possible media for your campaign. Which three methods do you think would be most effective to send your message to this audience, and why?
--What images and words do you want to incorporate into each of these three campaign pieces to best send your message?

I told them they may wish to investigate what some organizations are already doing about homelessness and other social issues before creating their campaigns. Suggested sites include http://www.worldadvocacy.com/human_rights.html, http://www.actupny.org. In addition, students might get ideas from advertisements that are anti-drug, anti-smoking or pro-communication between children and parents.

Students will have this week to work on the Advocacy Campaign and the classes of November 4- 14th. They will present their campaign in class November 19th and 21st. They can't wait to get strated!

Today we began work on the "I Am" assignment

("http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/Homeless/Poetry/index.html"),

a poetry assignment where students will put themselves in the shoes of a homeless person and write a format-specific poem. I handed out the assignment sheet and rubric. They were encouraged to use a thesaurus to locate words that had "punch". The assignment is due Friday, October 17.
Students immediately got to work on the computers. I directed them to an online Thesaurus site that few had used before. ( www.dictionary.com)

Megan pointed out that a synonym for "lonely" is "homeless". Isn't that interesting!
As they wrote, the students and I discussed possible words and phrases that would communicate the "I Am" statements as effectively as possible. These students came up with some wonderful suggestions. Some examples were:

- I feel 1000 different wounds
- I am pointless and of no use
- I wonder if I will ever find a purpose in life
- I cry when I think about peoples thoughts about me
I anticipate some powerful poems from these students.

Yesterday I created an "Eleanor Rigby Project" bulletin board out in the middle school hall. Here we will post student work. At the top of the bulletin board I hung a worn pair of shoes that were peeking out of the bottom of a pink, tattered balanket. By the shoes there was a sign scribble don paper towle: "Homeless and Hungry. Please Help". A plastic bag of lose change hung by the shoes and sign. There was no face at the top of the blanketed figure, almost like the faceless people who stand on street corners asking for our help.

I went on Amazon.com and did a search on books that have been written on the homeless. As titles came up I copy/pasted pictures of the book covers into a Word document to print and use as a border for the bulletin board.

I read many very interesting tiiles...titles that really made me think. The one that grabbed my attention the most was:

"The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context"

by Stanley Suanders and Charles Campbell.

What a heady thought...taking the scriptures and giving them feet in everyday life. on the following link to this book (on Amazon) there are 13 samples pages. I want to order this book to find out more. What an incredible assignment this could make. Perhaps we could call it "The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures With the Homeless".

http://tinyurl.com/6ws6x

I used the book jackets as a border aorund the bulletin board. Next week we will sit as a class around this bulletin board and discuss what these books might talk about as well as the effectivness of choosing titles that capture your attention and imagination. I hung the students "homeless" mindmaps under the bulletin board.

This week the students read a document called "Who is the Homeless? . This is a fairly complex professional article from the National coalition of the Homeless. Students were asked to locate specific demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity, veterans, mental illness)about those who live on the street. The purpose of reading this article was to give students insights into the homeless persona. I want them to learn that there are a variety of reasons people become homeless (mental illness, veterans etc). I was impressed at how well these Grade 7 students waded through this wordy document and how easily they dissected the answers to my questions.

"Blogs provide... the potential to reinvent how we work with journals in classrooms, challenging teachers and students to think about writing in authentic ways." ~ from "Writing With Web Logs by Glen and Gina Bull"

Today I set up a Blog for each student. I would like to them to debrief our class sessions using this interactive online tool. I will be able to go into their Blog and respond to their thoughts. I am excited experimenting with this emerging communciation tool with my students. As fellow bloggers, we will update our sites frequently and take our writing in a direction that matters to us. I plan to post questions but I will encourage students to explore their own questions about the cundrums surrounding the homeless.

"As bloggers, we're in the middle of, and enjoying, an evolution of communication." ~ Meg Harris, from "What we Are Doing When We Blog"