Embedded Files
CAPE After School 2020-2021:
Teacher Name + Teaching Artist Name: Katy Jung and Marc Fischer
Big Idea - Publications By You!
Inquiry Question - How can we draw on our personal and shared experiences to create a printed publication during a global pandemic where we can't meet in person?
Tell us the story of your project.
Our project aimed to create a publication, however the way we did it this year was quite unconventional.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of our instruction during the 2020-21 school year was online and remote. Our group included first year students that have never met their teachers or any of their fellow students in person, as well as a junior and graduating seniors.
We met after school twice a week on Google Meets to draw together. Normally we would be making art in a classroom or going on field trips to cultural spaces and museums. This year we hung out online, mostly drawing with our laptop cameras off until we were ready to share our work. Some days the pressure of pandemic life was too much and we were not in the mood to draw so we played games like Among Us, Scriblio, or the drawing game Gartic Phone as a way to hang out. We started the year making drawings about the COVID-19 pandemic. We made lists of disappointments and things we missed doing because of the pandemic, as well as benefits that came as a result of how our lives had changed. Then we turned to other subject matter.
A lot of us are into cooking so one day we started watching the Mexican version of the baking show Nailed It! in Spanish with English subtitles and decided to draw from that show for a couple weeks. Nailed It! celebrates the pleasure of baking enthusiastically but without skill, much as we were drawing as a way of spending time together without worrying if the drawings were technically proficient or great art. This experience caused a shift in our after-school plan and we began picking other things to watch and draw together. Our booklet compiles examples of drawings that all of us made throughout the year.
Some of the things we watched together: the horror films 1BR and The Doll, Moxie, the comedy Yes Day, Light Up the Sky!, a documentary on the K-Pop band Blackpink, music videos by BTS, Twenty One Pilots and Devo, Crashbox, K-12 (The Film) by Melanie Martinez, the second trial of Donald Trump, the animation series Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, ASMR videos, art restoration videos, The Promised Neverland, coverage of the demonstrations after the Derek Chauvin trial verdict, the YouTuber nariomarudarkside, Midnight Gospel, Bee and Puppycat and videos showing how to make chicken curry and slime.
On June 8, 2021, the last day of our program we met in person at Mozart Park to celebrate the publication, eat food together, and actually see each other in person for the very first time all year.
What was your approach to online teaching?
For the past seven years that we've worked together, we usually like to have students lead the direction of our club as much as possible. When we were in-person, we would ask students about their interests and try to find something related in Chicago where we could go on a field trip. Unfortunately that was not possible this year, so we had to get creative. We still prompted students about their interests, but our shared experiences were more based on some sort of shared artistic expression, as opposed to literally changing our physical space. It was exciting to have the entire internet at our disposal to introduce students to literally anything and everything - but it was also overwhelming to think about how to focus our approach.
During the first few weeks of meeting online in our Google Meets, it was all an experiment. We quickly learned that students did not want to turn on their cameras and unmuted only on rare occasions. Nonetheless, students wanted to be creative! Most students expressed an interest in drawing, so we centered our practice around finding ways to draw as a group, regardless of being remote. Marc purchased some art supplies and sketchbooks and Katy dropped them off at students' houses - our first step towards creating a collaborative virtual space was a success!
With students' new materials, we were able to begin being creative. As an entry point for all students to participate, we took turns picking an image from Google Images or other websites for all of us to draw. It was a great way for everyone to share their ideas without having to come up with something on their own. We quickly segwayed to watching videos, both long and short, and drawing (literally) inspiration from there, as completely explained above.
Tell us about how cultural capital played a part in your class.
By making different selections of things to watch and draw from together each week, we created a structure where students could share their cultural knowledge and expertise with one another as well as with us, the teachers. Our students are fascinated by an international array of music, animation programs, YouTube personalities, and more, and never lacked for things that they wanted us to experience together. We took turns making selections and had long discussions about what to watch together to make sure everyone was open to this. In other cases, the students had only heard of something like a film or TV show, and we would share access to different streaming services in order for everyone to gain the privilege of watching something that they might not normally be able to view.
In previous years, when we were taking a number of field trips, we could sometimes incorporate personal relationships at different institutions and use that cultural capital to enrich the students' experiences. For example, Marc might know the people working at Quimby's Books, or a librarian at Harold Washington Library, and he could extend those relationships to the students to make for a more friendly visit to a foreign place. This year we focused more on exchanges of knowledge, experience, and resources that could be shared digitally since we weren't able to meet in person until our last gathering.
Tell us about your cross-classroom exchanges, if you participated in one.
We were never able to coordinate to participate in one of these exchanges.
Tell us about how family learning played a part in your class.
One of the interesting aspects of our group is that several students have older sisters or an older cousin that also participated in the after-school program in previous years. At times, those students were able to join in briefly and some of these older NGHS graduates attended our last day when we finally met in person. This family connection seemed important to the students and as teachers we have enjoyed maintaining these connections which might not have happened otherwise.
Tell us how you used Academic Standards/SEL Standards.
Illinois SEL Standards
1A: Identify and manage one’s emotions and behavior.
1B: Recognize personal qualities and external supports.
1C: Demonstrate skills related to achieving personal and academic goals.
2A: Recognize the feelings and perspectives of others.
2B: Recognize individual and group similarities and differences.
2C: Use communication and social skills to interact effectively with others.
2D: Demonstrate an ability to prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflicts in constructive ways.
Although not explicitly addressed, we used all of the above SEL standards when working with our group this year. The first three standards were implicit as students learned more about themselves and how to interact with others. Especially for our freshmen, they did not have a traditional social freshmen experience so our after-school space was an important experience for those students. Especially identifying and managing one's emotions and behavior in a social setting, students practiced many social-emotional skills. We hope that these skills carried over into their personal and academic lives.
Furthermore, working in a group, especially virtually, can be challenging, so the standards in the second domain were also of extreme import. Students did not get a chance to interact much during school, so our club helped students meet new people and explore new dynamics. Students really worked on recognizing the feelings and perspectives of others, especially when sharing drawings or ideas for videos to watch as a group. Communication was both written (in the Google Meet chat) and oral, so students got to practice multiple modalities. And of course, it is inevitable that there was some conflict, so we worked through different ways of dealing with disagreements and difference of opinion.
Despite being online this year, students were able to have a sense of belonging through our group, and develop both their personal sense of self and identity as a creative artist, as well as their capacity to work with others who are both similar and different from themselves.
Images of our group's work throughout the year
We started the year by talking about our experiences of the pandemic and made drawings and lists about that.
Screenshots of the baking show Nailed It! and some of the drawings we made while we were watching. This show helped kick off our interest in watching and drawing together and then sharing what we made just like the contestants do.
One of the online drawing games we played was Skribbl.io, which is like an online Pictionary. When students had trouble guessing the word, the drawer would often help by spelling it out, showcasing the kindness of the group.
While watching films students often used the chat function to comment on what they were seeing. These are some screengrabs from when we were watching the horror film 1BR.
A snapshot of how our sharing went - everyone was very supportive of each other and complimentary to each other's art!
Another drawing game we played was Gartic Phone, a game similar to "telephone" where we all came up with an idea for a drawing, randomly had to draw someone else's idea, and then your drawing gets passed to someone else to guess what it is - resulting in hilarious miscommunication.
Political discussions were inevitable as the election happened, as well as during Trump's second impeachment trial. Maria made a series of drawings of Trump and his supporters. We watching some of the trial together live on YouTube as it was taking place.
A lot of drawings were inspired by music videos and documentaries, as well as international anime that a number of the students are very passionate about. We watched several K-Pop videos and documentaries. Mariana cultivated an interesting drawing style that omits the facial features of the people she draws, emphasizing their hair, clothes, and other details.
The students often recommended films that we were not familiar with, or things that they had heard about but had not seen yet. We'd have long discussions about what to watch, whether the selections were appropriate for all ages in the group, or subjects that people felt comfortable with. These images are drawings inspired by the Indonesian horror film The Doll.
A popular film we all enjoyed was Moxie, about a girl who anonymously publishes a feminist fanzine and distributes it around her high school, causing strong reactions from students and teachers.
All of our work together was gradually building toward one complicated group project: a publication.
Everyone that attended the program has at least one drawing in this booklet and some have dozens of examples of their work throughout the year.
The convoluted process we used was that each student would take cell phone photos of their drawings after sharing them during our meetings. They would then email them to Ms. Jung who would share them with Marc. Then Marc would transform them in Photoshop in order to turn these often dark and murky images captured in bedroom lighting into clear line drawings that would print on a RISO duplicator.
We looked at the progress of the layout for weeks, discussed the title and back cover text, and then Marc began printing the RISO pages and sent the color center pages to be printed by a company called Mixam. After that, everything had to be assembled by hand.
The below PDF shows the booklet layout that was used for printing. The finished booklet has red ink on the cover and blue ink on the inside.
2021 Covid Zine CAPE_small.pdfBelow are photos of the finished publication after it was printed.
We finally met in-person at Mozart Park! :D
Most of the students had not met in person at all, all year, and as teachers we had never met any of the first year students.
Some of the students have older siblings that have been part of this CAPE program in the past and have since graduated from North Grand. Our meeting at Mozart Park included three graduates and one first year student Jared brought his six year old sister. The students also arranged transportation amongst themselves and every participant in the program was able to attend. We ate Mexican food and cookies and had an amazing celebration of our creative work together during our strange pandemic school year.
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