Letters and Art for Africa

West Auburn High School

Collaboration between Thomas Parsons, Global Issues teacher and

Nancy Olsten, Language Arts teacher funded by a grant from the NEA

SA 25-19

For Language Arts, students read “A Long Way

Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” by Ishmael Beah.

The book parallels the stories of students we would be writing to in

Africa.

Students chose quotes and symbols to illustrate meaningful events in the

book and we posted a “Graffiti Wall” in the hallway.

With help from the art teacher, we built drums out of PVC pipe and deer hide.

Seattle Art Museum – West African Jewelry Making

West African Bling comes to West

Auburn

Seattle Art Museum Field Trip to tour the African Art Exhibit

In October, the Global Issues class and the Writing

Lab class wrote 22 letters to African students in

Uganda.

In November, we received 126 back.

Students started a

campaign to involve more students in writing.

The Pen Pal Project

One of the students decided to title it

“Make a new homie” and the signs went up around school.

Writing Lab Students made persuasive posters to urge other students to

participate

African students sent back artwork with their letters in the spring

John Hayden of JAMTOWN came to our school and held a rhythm event to

teach students how

to play their drums.

Africa visits Auburn

After hearing Calvin speak, ten students signed up to share ideas on what they can do to help the students in Uganda

with the goal of taking the project

into the next school year.

We took the letter writing project into

all classrooms by the end of the year.

Students decided to sign one of the drums they made, and send it back to their friends in Africa with Calvin.

Feedback Hi, I want to confess that I was reluctant to start the letter project. Nothing specific except maybe how much I'd have to sell it to my kids. Right now every student (8) is writing a letter and it is silent. The video was excellent, but the letters from Ugandan students sold it to my homeroom. Thank you for this gift. Sincerely, Larry Laush West Auburn High School 253-931-4990 Dear Nancy; Greetings to you and trust you are well; Just wanted to say thank you for what you doing for Pilgrim and inviting me to speak in your class; that was wonderful and I very much enjoyed it; We are all very grateful and appreciate you very much and look forwards to working more with you. Bless you and thanks again. -- Calvin Echodu.|The Executive. Pilgrim Africa. 4401 2nd Ave. NE, Suite 204 Seattle, WA 98105. [p] 206.706.0350 | www.pilgrimafrica.org| -a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. - Erin Majors.