Photo Friday!

Photo Friday! Featuring pictures from the Lights On Afterschool celebration at the Mills Elementary School. Students in the Thriving Minds After-School Program shared creative learning activities with their parents and siblings.

Guest Blog - Judy Danielson, Community Site Manager for Mills Elementary

Please welcome Judy Danielson, our Thriving Minds After-School guest blogger! Judy is in her second year as the Community Site Manager for the after-school program at Mills Elementary School in Dallas ISD. We will feature her posts every week or so to keep you apprised of what's going on!

We had another fun week in the Thriving Minds Afterschool program at Mills Elementary. Fourth and Fifth graders talked and wrote about why they love themselves. For some, this task was difficult. We did lots of coaching about positivity and the great assets we all have.

Last week my students finished painting portraits of the person in their lives who makes them laugh. They did some outstanding work. You will be able to see their work displayed in the windows of Barney’s department store at Northpark Mall. The paintings will be on display after Nov. 9. They all worked very hard and I am so proud of them! I got lots of hugs and high fives this week. Also, several new pieces of artwork for my office, magic marker stains on my pants, a shirt damp with tears and runny noses, and one apple. The perks that come with this job are outstanding! And yes, we do use tons of hand sanitizer.

We finally had one sunny afternoon for some of the kids to play outside. Fresh air and outdoor play make all of us – kids and staff – feel so much better. Second and third graders planted some flowers for their room and they will record their growth. They also talked and journaled about ecosystems. Kindergarten and first grade played Alphabet Bingo. It’s a fun sort-of-back-door-way to work on letter recognition and letter sounds. They are happily learning and don’t realize it.

On Thursday night we had a Family Fun Night celebration in recognition of national “Lights On Afterschool” night. Our families had fun eating dinner together and doing some fun art projects. I love the support my parents show me and the thanks I get from them. Many parents know that their children need a safe and nurturing place to go after school. One of my students, Necovia, cried the other day because her mom came to pick her up too early. She wasn’t finished with her painting, was having fun and wasn’t ready to go home yet. Little things like that let me know I’m in the right place.

-Judy Danielson

 Community Site Manager, Mills Elementary

 Thriving Minds After-School Program

Photo Friday!

The October 23rd Photo Friday features pics from the Lights On Afterschool event that happened at Tatum Elementary. The Tatum students studied Hispanic cultures in honor of Hispanic Cultural Heritage Month, and then did a program for the community in which they performed an Aztec story and accompanying dance and did a fashion show full of Hispanic cultural fashions. Check out the slideshow below - and stay tuned for next week's feature on after-school!

Photo Friday!

This week's Photo Friday pics are from the enrichment activities at the Thriving Minds After-School Program at Mills Elementary School in Dallas. The After-School program runs Monday through Friday from 3-6pm, and offers FREE homework help, tutoring and creative learning at 21 elementary and middle school sites across the Dallas ISD.

Dallas ArtsPartners kicks off the 2009-2010 schoolyear with a BANG!

Big Thought has been coordinating curriculum-enhancing programs for Dallas ISD elementary schools every year since 1998 with Dallas ArtsPartners, an innovative partnership including the City of Dallas, Dallas ISD and dozens of arts & cultural organizations all across North Texas. Through Dallas ArtsPartners (AP), we provide training and manage funding for the programs and help link elementary school teachers to more than 60 arts & cultural partners, in order for them to provide their students with educational arts experiences.

To help all those DISD elementary school teachers, we rely on 15 part-time staffers, mostly retired educators - known as the AP Representatives. This year, all 15 are returning veterans with lots of practice running workshops and fielding questions from the teachers at the schools they represent. Those 15 Reps are backed up in the office by our awesome and oh-so-efficient AP team. These capable folks train the AP Representatives and the 156 Site Coordinators; verify the vouchers for funding - over 1500 so far this schoolyear, with more to go; and confirm the programs with the schools and the arts & cultural providers. WOW!

Since September 2, the AP Reps have been out in the field at the schools they represent, doing full-day workshops to help the teachers finalize their programs and create vouchers for funding. 95 workshops have been done as of right now, with the remainder to come before the beginning of November. This has kept the AP team back at the office busy answering questions and troubleshooting issues, since a day could have as many as 10 different workshops happening all at the same time!

This year also marks the 3rd year of a collaboration between Dallas ArtsPartners and the Fine Arts Department of the Dallas ISD to give every single fourth-grader in the DISD a special educational tour of the Dallas Museum of Art. This is an incredible opportunity - and that program kicks off next week with the first fourth-grade tour.

For more on our programs and partnerships, see Our Programs on the Big Thought website.

Photo Friday!

"It's beginning to look a lot like..." Well, not yet, but we're already gearing up for the holidays! Students in the Thriving Minds After-School program are already hard at work on portraits that will be among those displayed in the windows at Barneys New York in Dallas' North Park Center this holiday season!

The pictures below were taken at Mills Elementary on Thursday - stay tuned for more, and check out the finished product in the Barneys windows in December.

Our Theme Song

If you've been to our new website with your speakers turned on, you've probably heard a delightful little ditty that accompanies the flash banner at the top of the page. That music was written for us by one of our AWESOME new Board members, Ross Vick. Ross is a singer/songwriter - here's his MySpace Music page and his website. He tours a lot - catch him at White Rock Coffee on October 28th - but despite that, he found time to write us this special tune!

We've got lots of plans for our new signature music, so make sure you stay tuned to our PSAs, YouTube videos and other media to hear more - and BIG thank you to Ross for creating such an awesome piece of music just for US! Haven't heard it yet? Head over to the Big Thought website to take a listen and learn a bit about what we do!

Photo Friday!

We had an awesome - and busy! - week. Enjoy these photos from our Library Live! Kickoff celebrations at the Bachman Lake, Martin Luther King and Skillman Southwestern Library Branches earlier this week. The children of Dallas enjoyed four extra-special performances, snacks and a bag of books to take home. BIG thanks to Target, generous sponsor of Library Live!