James' CE Class - Week 1

Gooooood morning from James' Creative Expression class! First off, it has been a sincere pleasure and honor to work with such talented, creative, and bright students. Because of their thoughtful contributions, we are having a blast every morning learning about how art connects to our own lives and how we can express ourselves through creative writing.

We start every morning off by journaling our thoughts, what we've been doing, and our reactions to the performances we've seen. Some of us are having fun just writing about about all the new friends we're making. Today, I challenged everyone to write about the "risks" they are taking at Arts-x-press. Everyone wrote about how they are taking "risks" by trying a new art form, talking to new people, or even trying new foods at our meals!

Over the past three classes, our activities have ranged from exploring our creative sides with "Life Maps" of where we've been, where we are, and where we're going; to discovering our writing skills with "I Am Like..." poems and Admiration poems. As we're learning, anyone can be a poet or creative writer. All it takes is some brainstorming, self-reflection, and imagination.

Today, we got to have an awesome group discussion and writing activity on how different art forms use "artistic expression." It was a great time for us to collectively pull our brains together and investigate how we can connect to all different types of art. We also got to apply our expression skills on different pieces of street art from the artist Banksy, which allowed us to explore messages and meaning behind art.

Not only are we all learning about art, but we're learning about ourselves in the process. You should all be excited about all the creative expressions these artists will be exploring in the future!