ART . . . for the kids

I can't remember how I started doing this, but I think it happened a few years ago when there was this girl that used to hang out in my room at a school in Los Angeles. Although she had the kind of greaser style going on, and I got my hiphop roots, we used to chat about music. One day her chemistry teacher told me that she was going to fail chem. During this time I was painting some skateboards for myself, so I told her that if she can get her grade up to passing in the last few weeks of school I would paint a board for her. Come September she comes into my room first week and shows me her report card with the passing grade.....and a thing was born. Hers is "Chuca" down below.

Now what I have done every year is that usually I tell students I work with that whoever has the highest GPA at the end of the semester, out of all the kids I work with (that's for resource, highest grade in my class if I'm teaching the class), they will get whatever they want painted onto a skateboard. I like to do this because oftentimes students who do well get a pat on the head and the teacher (or parents or whomever) focus on the squeaky wheels. But in this way I give the students who are already going to do well an incentive to maintain that momentum and to increase it even.