SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Its been a whilee!

At first I would like to say when we had all of the kids from CLCS and the Edgerly School playing for each other it was AMAZING! At first it was a little hectic getting all the students from both schools to sit down in the Edgerly school’s gym and to keep them quiet. At least they were anxious and excited to play for each other. First, the Somerville kids played “The Open String Blues”. Then the CLCS kids played a different arrangement of “Ode to Joy” then they played “Dragon hunter” (or slayer  don’t remember). Everyone in the gym had their jaws on the floor when they heard the CLCS kids play. Yes, they were that amazing.  Afterwords we told the kids to get some pizza and sit down next to a person that does not go to their school. Me and Karol pulled a few kids aside from the school school and asked them a couple of questions. One of them saw the CLCS kids as professional musicians, another one said  how much music meant to her “When I’m mad, sad, or happy I play my instrument!” she was so cute. We explained that the CLCS kids practice for 2-3 hours everyday for the whole week, and if we had a program like that we would be as good. They seemed really exited after we told them that. I’ll try to put up some of the videos.

As for my summer, I’ve been playing a lot of Xbox -Call Of Duty is were it’s AT! (Level 50 prestige!! get at me homie)- Grooversity, and alot of music has also been a great part of my summer.

 

 

GEEKSystem

I dont know but I just feel like posting this here…

I love you all guys and I just want to let you all know..

Edalina, you are my favorite chinese -_-

Elizabeth, you are my favorite nerd *-*

Grazi, I dont really like you. You are a lil animal.

and Brian, you are my favorite mentor. ( He’s the only one =)

see you guys Thursday… =D

 

Maya’s and Nashon’s Ideas

Just like Edelina just said, we miss you so much Elizabeth!!

A couple weeks ago we were given the opportunity to sit down with our two students at CLCS and tell them what we are trying to do between Somerville and CLCS . They were really excited! Afterwards, we asked them if there are anything they would like to know about the Somerville Schools music program, and also what they would like the Somerville students to know bout them. I filled them both in on how the music program worked so they hag something to work with while asking the questions, Maya thought that it was sad that they only had one 30 minute lesson a week. They were both surprised that kids started music only in 4th grade (orchestra) and 5th grade (band).  Nashon asked questions like “What kind of instruments do they have access to?” and wanted to let the Somerville kids that they had 2-3 periods of music everyday on the week. And how the El Systema program wored.

They also told me that they would really like to play “Dragon Slayer” or “Dragon Hunter” (I might be WAYY off too. haha) for the visit to Somerville on the 23rd.

Alphie and Kelly’s Ideas

Hey guys, long time no post 😉 anyways, first off I’d just like to say how much we miss Elizabeth at every GEEKSystem Meeting. It’s not the same without you 😦 After all, without you we’d only be GEKSystem!

Anyways, I’m here to talk a bit about some of the ideas Alphie and Kelly had about the Somerville-CLCS Pen-pal idea. When I had asked Kelly about the idea, she seemed quite enthusiastic about it and even came up with an idea of a flip-book. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s one of those books you flip through quickly and it looks kind of like a movie. I wasn’t sure how realistic this idea would be for incorporating facts about the program, but Kelly said she thought it would be a good fun thing to add on to maybe a slideshow or powerpoint. She wanted to make the flip-book show a bunch of different facial expressions to express the different feelings of all the students at CLCS. Alphie let me know that he wanted to know a bit more about the music program at Somerville and let them know more about the music program at CLCS. For example, he said he wanted to ask about how much they practice and what kinds of instruments they play! I thought Alphie and Kelly had some great ideas and am looking forward to possibly putting them into action!

GEEKSystem

I miss you guys a ton. Just thought I’d let you know.

Love,

Elizabeth

Julia & Jarel

hellooooo pepss!!! so you are probably asking yourself who are Julia and Jarel?

They are two students from CLCS/El Sistema that I am having the pleasure to interview. For the two past month, we have been talking about our life. But last week we just start talking about Somerville. What we want to know about them and what we want to bring to them.

What Jarel wants to know about them are:

How often do they have music lessons? What kind of instruments do they have there? What they expect from El Sistema? Also Jarel mention three things that he wants to bring to Somerville, this things are:

His photo camera, because he wants to have memories from them. His violin because he wants to perform for them, and his musics because he wants to share his feelings with them.

Julia told me that she wants to bring her violin, because she wants to perform. Her camera because she wants to have memories, and the news paper that shows how important is being part of El Sistema/CLCS.

Also, she is wondering about like:

Do they have music classes and how often they have it? What kind music do they play, and how often do they perform? what is their favorite animal? lol

The experience of getting to know them is so awesome because I learn a lot from them. I learned that you do not need to be mature to feel the music, and that music is more important for people than we imagined.

 

ps: I miss Elizabeth so much.. please come back soon ”nerd”… lol I love you ❤

 

coming together…

So we recently confirmed with Somerville that we’ll get Conservatory Lab students and Somerville students together on June 23 from 10-11:30am. The plan for the time is to give the students a chance to perform for one another and to give them an opportunity to meet one another. Since one of the biggest goals of our project is to help build a relationship between Somerville and Conservatory Lab students, this is really exciting. After months of work putting a plan together and becoming a part of our host site, it is so great to be taking a new significant step. There’s so much to do between now and June 23. We have to decide how best to structure that hour and a half. How long will the students perform? What are the specific performance logistics? How do we want to structure the social time between the students? Will there be food? Of course! But what? I’m really looking forward to working with Karolina, Grazi, Elizabeth and Edalina to plan this first meeting.

MOTHER’S DAY

Mother’s day was on May 8. But it also was the day the CDAL’s meeting. Anyways, all the arts leader were meeting up at City Year from 4pm-8pm. Unfortunately, I could not get there on time or even stayed until the end, but I had the chance to met all of the artifacts box.  So when I got there I helped out my team to set up our artifacts box. OMG!! I love my team, they made everything so much easier. FTT’s staff decide to split up all of the groups differently. On my group was Eric ( one of the mentors) and two art leaders. we had the chance to travel to all of the stations and see all of the artifacts box. I thought that it was really interesting to see how all of the groups are putting their project in action. All of the videos were very helpful to understand what is going on. I think that Hope lodge was very interesting. I understood that their team is actually giving something that can motivate the residents. Motivation trough music. I think thats wonderful because when you have something special that kind like stop you a little bit with your routine, it sucks. People forget about them. It is amazing to see how FTT/CDAL are giving those citizens a motivation to keep going and fight against their hardship.

Karolina

CDAL Full Group Meeting

Last week we had another large CDAL group meeting! I always love seeing everyone and getting to know people even more!

The object of this meeting was “Telling Our Story.” In order to do this, we all created an artifact box filled with things (both symbolic and literal) that would help us tell each team’s story. We then went around to each team station and tried to figure out what the team had accomplished and how their project had developed. I loved doing this because I finally was able to understand what each team was doing in the community. Some of my favorite artifacts were the videos with music. Videos/slideshows seemed to be the best way to communicate about the project, without being able to talk.

We also learned about documentation from one of the FTT staff members and had team meetings where GEEKSystem discussed what the next steps were in our project.

John closed the night with some great songs and guitar playing!

Elizabeth

New Week

So, last week it was Brian, Johanna, Edelina, and I at CLCS.  (sorry if I misspelled anyone’s name)

We talked about how it is important to capture the “precious” moments because when we do tell our story it will be easier to look back and pick out important events.  Johanna also sat in my interview with Maya, and Edelina’s interview. From what she told me she really enjoyed it.

After school we had a meeting with David and Rebecca where we talked about our connection with Somerville, what and when we would send them something and if we were expecting something back.