Mr.Brun David
Support ARISE
Save our Post Session!
We invite you to support our teacher-led campaign to fund our annual intersession (now called Post Session). We appreciate your support!
http://igg.me/at/arisehighschool/x/2485898
Post-Session is a milestone of the ARISE High School experience. Students take three-week intensive courses related to arts, creativity, or physical education. As a teacher, it allows me to teach the passions I have beyond the discipline I teach everyday. For students, it allows them to explore beyond the traditional academic disciplines, to get out of the classroom, build community across grade levels, and cultivate new passions. Students who haven’t always done well in Math or English find new confidence and competence when they can explore other strengths like drawing, paiting, dancing, biking, or mountaineering. Post-Session culminates in an exhibition night in which each course presents what they did and learned to the community at large. You are welcome to join us to see the impact of your contributions.
Our course offerings this year are as follows:
ACTIVE RESISTANCE
Journey with us as we will find our Zen, strengthen our core, and learn healing strategies that speak truth to power. Active Resistance will provide you with the tools to endure struggle on all fronts of your life, be it physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Participants will increase their physical strength through traditional Muay Thai Kick Boxing, boxing and yoga, find their center by practicing daily meditation and participating in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony, go on an overnight amongst California’s serene coastline and explore what Hip Hop, health, and higher education have to do with resistance.
We are going to watch films, examine them and then make them. We are going to spend the morning watching and analyzing and then spend the afternoon filming and making film–specifically focusing on female archetypes, gender roles, and feminist critiques in film.
I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE!
We will bike the Bay Trail, the Headlands of Marin, Tennessee Valley, China Camp, and all over the East Bay. Students will learn bicycle safety, maintenance, and repair in addition to biking themselves into great shape. The course will culminate in a three-day overnight stay in the Marin Headlands. Trips for Kids will take us out mountain biking on trails in the surrounding area. Bikes!
HOMIES EMPOWERMENT
Students from the Homies Empowerment “Adelante” Leadership Program will embark on a 3-week journey throughout California learning their history from the change makers themselves. They will spend time in the home of UFW Leaders Cesar and Helen Chavez. Student will travel to Los Angeles to learn from leaders such as Father Gregory Boyle about Homeboy Industries. Students will also spend three days at a sweatlodge ceremony learning from Indigenous elders about healing ceremonies in our community.
URBAN ARTS WITH 1AM GALLERY
In this 3-week artistic journey, students will study, explore, and create a diverse selection of urban arts that include: graffiti, murals, stencils, photography, and mixed media. Students will create beautiful art pieces with the help of various guest urban artists from all over the Bay Area.
ROOTS RISING
Roots Rising is a multi-media Hip Hop Theatre course. In this course we get real with truth. We live as Word Warriors to confront our stories and take them to the stage and movie screen. Using Spoken Word Poetry, Dance, Music production, and video production, we will produce a Hip Hop theatre piece that we will perform during Exhibition night.
OH, THE PLACES WE’LL GO (2 sections)
In Oh, the Places We’ll Go! we will explore attractions throughout the Bay Area, such as Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Exploratorium, and other hidden nature spots right in Oakland. All these exploring skills will be tested on a 3-day backpacking trip to one of the Bay Area’s most scenic spots.
HIPPIE ARTS
We will be making: T-shirts, lotion, jewelry, sculptures, herbal tea, glass bedazzling and MORE! Also learn about hippy culture and history, interpretive dance, hula hooping, tour a local welding and glass-blowing shop, non-violent communication, the Mayan calendar, and drum circles.
ETHNIC DANCE AND DRUMMING
In this post session, students will explore a variety of ethnic dance and drum taught by local professional dancers and dance educators. A preliminary list of dance styles includes: Taiko Drum, West African Dance, Puerto Rican Bomba (dance, drum, and song), Folklorico, Hip Hop, Brazilian,…and more! Students will choreograph and perform their own creative dance piece that is rooted in these learnings!
EXPLORING THE OUTDOORS
Students will condition their minds, bodies and spirits to live, work and play in the natural world. They will learn how to camp safely and responsibly in the woods, how to avoid hazards from plants, animals and the physical environment, how to move and navigate in difficult terrain, how to perform first aid, and how to be present, mindful and connected with nature. The class will culminate in a week-long camping and backpacking trip in Sea Ranch, CA.
What We Need & What You Get
Unfortunately, statewide budget cuts have gutted our funding for Post-Session and left us to raise the funds ourselves. Each course will receive $500, which means we need to raise $5500 to support the 11 course offerings. Each course spends the money a little differently, but it is generally used for transportation, supplies, and guest teachers. For instance, the bicycle course uses the money for bicycle parts, snacks, and lodging for the overnight trip. The film course uses the money for camcorders, props and transportation.
As for perks, you will certainly receive kharmic bonus points, a sense of glory and accomplishment, and…most importantly…a thank you card from our students. If you give more than $100, we will list you on our program at the exhibition night for all the post-sessions.
The Impact
Over the past 6 years Post-Session has been offered, we’ve seen countless students discover their passions. Many students decide what they want to study after high school. And almost all students return to the classroom energized, more confident, and more ready to learn. Students also build relationships across the grade levels, with students who they don’t have in their daily classes. This builds the familial, connected feeling of Arise High School.
Your contribution will help 250 students participate in post-session. It will enable students to receive the requisite Art and PE credit they need to graduate, while also exposing them to new topics, experiences, and modes of learning.
The importance of intersession according to students:
“In Sports Around the Bay we got to go to parks all over the East Bay and play everything from basketball to ultimate frisbee. It allowed me to get out of my head and all the stress of my daily life. When we went camping, we could share with each other and really become friends with students we didn’t know that well,” Jennie.
“Post-session gives you three weeks where you don’t have to stress about academics, but can focus on new experiences and making new friends. I loved spending three days in the Marin Headlands with the other students. We got to bond over some challenging bike rides and at night at the hostel. You just can’t bond like this in the classroom,” Eric.
“I think post-session is great because I can connect with my teachers outside of the classroom. It helps us humanize one another,” Maria.
“At first, I thought Mr. Damon was crazy for making us drink that green sludge (energy shakes). Then I tried one and it wasn’t as disgusting as it looked at it made me feel great. After the class, it was funny to see kids walking down the hallway with those green shakes,” Marco.
“After bicycling, we were able to go the Bikery and earn free bikes. I started biking to school everyday. I think about half the class did too,” -Chris.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you are unable to donate, we get that. We’re broke teachers, after all. You can still help, however, even if you don’t have any funds. Please use the Indiegogo share tools to spread the word. Help us connect with folks who might have money. Also, if you have any of the following to contribute it would be of great help:
Bicycles and Bike parts: if you or someone you know has a bike that’s just collecting dust, you can donate it. If you happen to have spare parts or tools lying around, we’ll take those too.
Art supplies. Of all sorts.
Digital Recording equipment: if you have camcorders, digital cameras, microphones, digital audio recorders, etc. We’d love them.
ARISE High School is the result of the contributions of many different organizations and individuals .
We welcome everyone’s contributions, ideas, resources and time.
Volunteers have served as tutors, mentors, and teachers and have donated their time, skills (like cooking and preparing promotional materials for the school), supplies, and of course, money. All of these efforts are helping ARISE students become the first in their families to graduate from high school and college and become leaders in their communities.
During these tough economic times, your support is invaluable. Thanks to the state of California’s budget crisis, public schools are facing mid-year cuts that will be devastating to the programs we already have in place. Please make your tax-deductible gift now by sending a check to ARISE High School or donating online here:
http://arisegoestocollege.chipin.com/arise-high-school-college-support-program
Your gift supports the following:
$50 = A set of books for one student for the semester. When our first class of juniors took the PSAT last year, 21 of the 38 who took the exam scored under the 10th percentile nationally. Their SAT results were not much better. To help our students become more competitive, we are increasing our focus on reading both in terms of course texts and high-interest student-choice books.
$300 = A full class set of books (see above.)
$500= Transportation and fees for fieldtrips to places as far as the Sierras or Point Reyes for Intersession or as close as San Francisco for the Museum of the African Diaspora or Angel Island.
$1,000= A laptop so that we can maintain our 2:1 ratio of students per laptop. We would like to have one laptop for every student, but we need extra financial support to make this a reality.
We are also launching our new Send a Student to College program, a commitment to help our students with the resources they need to be the first in their families to attend college. Your commitment of $1,000 per year for five years will support all of the above plus SAT prep classes.
As first-generation college-bound students from predominantly low-income families, our kids must navigate many obstacles, financial and otherwise. We have designed our Send a Student to College (SSC) program to offer ongoing support for our new 9th-graders as they set out to follow in our current seniors’ footsteps. Among the resources you’ll be supporting are:
- Laptops for students (only one in 10 ARISE students has a computer at home)
- Cultural immersion trips (such as a month in Nicaragua)
- SAT fees and preparation
Click here to join the cause!
Please contact louise@arisehighschool.org if you have questions or would like to help our school in any way!
