I AM....Powerful

I was lucky enough to attend Kevin Carroll's keynote at the ISTE conference this summer and hear his powerful story about how play impacted his life trajectory.  Then I was fortunate to attend his inspiring Chicago event, #CHITALK in which he worked with athletes and other's who had a Chicago connection and had inspiring successes to share with Chicago's youth.   Angela Davis was one of the first speakers and she talked about affirmations and having the kids state who they are, who they want to be seen as, and who they want to grow to become, all powerful stuff.  She had them complete it with simply stating, "I AM..." and then the word or phrase.

Angela Davis at #CHITALK inspiring students.

Angela and the entire team at #CHITALK inspired all day.  This inspiration paired with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the murder of Mike Brown made me realize that students in my class needed to examine the way they are viewed by others and self, and how they wanted to be viewed.  We discussed the terms and ideas that they have heard about them and other young people and in my students' case other young black people.  We came up with terms both positive and negative about young people.  Then we took on the task of creating a bank of words about how my students wanted to be viewed, what words represented who they wanted to become and what they wanted the world to know about them as individuals.

We did the activity first with students taking each other's pictures, using the PicART app and placing the I am words over the photo.  

These turned out well, but I wanted to make this into a more powerful piece that included the connection to Chicago, my kids and their powerful affirmations.  Our class set of iPad 2's do not have the best camera, so I simply used my iPhone to take each students picture again, all with the green background.  I then stopped on my way home from work and took a shot of the city skyline.  I then used Keynote to create a more dynamic font for the I AM statements.  I built the font over the photo then add the student photo via green screen to iMovie.  From here I found the inspirational song from American Authors. 

The best part is my students LOVED IT.  And Angela Davis was kind enough to tweet them about how inspired she was by them.   Their first step into becoming who they say they are and seeing other's value their vision.