Final Week 8 by: Kali

LAST WEEK our team accomplished the following

• We typed our poems up.
• Then Lead Artist Dan Vaughn went over them with us.
• We fixed our mistakes.
• Then last we prepared to make our beautiful shirts.

THIS WEEK our team is going to accomplish the following

• We will put our poems on the shirts & bags in creative ways.
• We will prepare for our UNVEILING EVENT on Saturday, April 9th, 2-4pm @ ArtWorks
• Come out to support us! Light refreshments will be served and many of our shirts will be available for sale to the public -- Cash, Checks & Credit Cards (MC/VISA) accepted
  
• We will finish the art work for our beautiful shirts.

MY PERSONAL FEEDBACK

• What i think of the program is it is a great way for our young people to get a head start on what the real world looks like.
• The easiest thing for me was getting along with the people, ArtWorks is a great environment!
• The most difficult thing was writing a poem that Mr. Dan approved of.
• Most of all it was a great learning experience

Week 6 & 7: By Kim Rodriguez

Last week our team accomplished the following tasks:

• We saw our career coaches for the last time at Artworks.
• We typed and printed seven poems.
• We started to create our shirts.

Job Skills we learned/practices last week:

• We discussed how to market our final product.
• We continued working on designs of tee shirts and bags
• We practiced the following creative 21st Century skills:
• Communication & Collaboration
• Giving & Receiving Feedback
• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
• We presented progress on our pieces so far, and gave and received feedback to guide each other in our process.

In Week 7 we will:

• Work on building initiative & self-direction skills.  
• We will continue to work on our pieces
• We will incorporate feedback from critiques.

We finally have some pictures to share! ENJOY!

 Intern Kali executes her first designed t-shirt.

 Intern Shawn smiles while he produces is first shirt.

 Intern TJ shows off his artistic stylings

 Interns Kali and Shantillie concentrate on the details

 Interns teach one another about assigned poetry concepts

Practice takes patience!

Week 4 &5 : By Shantillie Moore

Last Week:
We completed the following tasks~

• We had our first formal performance evaluations, and found out if our performance earned us a raise.
• We completed our poems so we could get ready for designing our shirts.
• We met with our career coaches to cover our second topic.
• We opened up to each other and discussed/critiqued our poems.

We practiced the following 21st Century Skills~

• Demonstrating a positive work ethic- Lead Artist and ArtWorks leadership will meet with each intern for formal performance evaluation.
• Communication and Collaboration- Lead Artist and Artworks leadership will meet with each Intern for a formal performance evaluation.
• Initiative and Self-Direction -- Working on our shirt designs
• Listening and Understanding- Interns will listen to presentation, take notes, and complete exercises.
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving- Interns will use the information from all presentations to write new poems from the topics list.
• Creativity and Innovation- Interns will design ideas of how they plan to complete their products.
• Initiative and Self-Direction- Interns will determine which poems they will use.

This Week We Will:

• Meet with our coaches to cover our third topic.
• Start practicing writing on clothing and designing our shirts.
• Review the performance goals we set for ourselves on the first day, and do an exercise with the team to measure our progress in meeting our goals.

Week 3: By Rasheem & TJ

 Last week: Our team accomplished the following:

1. We did research on our group words/vocabulary for better poems
2. We went to Manpower to meet our Career Coaches
3. We did a presentation to the team on our poems
4. We also listened to feedback and revised our poems 

There are pictures from our kick-off session at Manpower on 2/21/11. Follow this link!
Career Coaching Pictures

The job skills that we worked on included:

1. Communicating & collaborating with each other
2. Dividing up tasks amongst team members
3. Problem solving
4. Technical writing skills
5. Being prepared to work with our Career Coaches
6. Professionalism
7. Giving & Receiving feedback

Next week, our team is going to:

1. Think about marketing: How will we advertise and sell the stuff we create?
2. Open studio: Keep working on our poems and start practicing working with fabric and markers
3. Critical thinking & problem solving
4. The important one that our team needs to do is communicating better - with more respect

Intern thoughts about the program:
On Monday we met up with our career coaches again to cover the first topic we picked.We were glad to meet our coaches so we can learn more about real jobs -- they can help us become better people and workers.

Week 2: Kali & Shawn

Here's what happened last week:

• We worked on the 'Out of our Window' exercise.
• We also did other great writing-improvement exercises.
• We learned how to cash our checks, open a banking account, and what to do with our pay stubs.  This was a very valuable lesson to learn!
• We also did individual poems called, "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words"
• Last thing we did was learn how to do blogs........ which are going great!

The 21st century skills we used were:

• Creativity & Innovation- "Out of Our Window Exercises", discussed perspective and its importance.  We also practiced creativity through our writing exercises.
• Communication & Collaboration- Our lead artist spoke to us individually for approximately 5 minutes to provide him/her with feedback about their job performance.
• Initiative & Self Direction- We will use photos for prompts and write from personal perspective.
• Creativity & Innovation- Each group will receive 30 minutes to research and prepare a presentation for the team.
• Payroll & Process- We reviewed how to process a paycheck.

What are we doing next???

• Working with our career coaches on developing different areas of job ready skills.
• Reviewing and providing feedback on our poems.
• Finally, we will be presenting our research to our group of interns and lead artist.

See the Creative Process...

During Week 2 of the Wearable Words Program Interns have been brainstorming and creating poetry.

Danielle and Kim 

Shantille and Deontrae

Rasheem and Tarek

Week 1: By Danielle & Kim

Last week our team accomplished the following tasks:

• At Fundamentals Day we helped each other learn more about the things we are good at and the things that we are not as good at. We also turned in paperwork and created goals about what we are going to accomplish in 8 weeks.  These tasks helped us practice our initiative and self-direction skills.
• We learned how to express ourselves through writing poetry, which allowed us to practice our creativity and innovation skills.
• We interviewed each other about ourselves which allowed us to practice social & cross-cultural skills by talking with different people we didn't know.  
• We learned how to be a follower and to be a leader in order you to be a leader you will have to be a follower first.
• We learned how to write "I Am, I Dream, I Wish"  poems which allowed us to practice critical thinking & problem solving through brainstorming.
• We researched the words "Sonnet," "Acrostic," and "Imaget" in preparation for a presentation we will give about these words. 

This week we are going to accomplish the following:

• We are going to enter highlights of our work from the week into ArtWorks blog.
• We are going to present our research
• Discuss our first pay check
• Also we are going to do a writing exercise called, "a picture is worth a thousand words"

Reflections from the Interns:

• One of the things we are looking forward to doing is our 'Out of My Window' writing exercise
• One of the great things that this program is teaching us for future employability is great communication.
• So far we think this program is pretty good.

Congratulations to the Wearable Words Interns!

Kali D,
Tarek L,
Shantillie M,
Danielle B,
Kimberly R,
Deontrae R,
Rasheem J,
and LeShawn W.

Over 60 applications were received for these 8 positions. We can't wait to get to work!