Seattle Schools Community Forum

Wow, not one but two new playgrounds in our fair city.  One is at Maple Leaf, complete with zipline, and one is at Volunteer Park on Capital Hill.   In the world of film, the Seattle International Film Festival is underway.  As usual, they have Films4Families with a great selection for all.   Moon Man (German), Safety Last! (with Harold Lloyd from 1923) and Wolf Children (Japanese) all look like good picks.  Also, if you are planning your summer, TheFilmSchool , has some great offerings for adults and students.  Through a grant, the school has secured a number of large scholarships for HS Teachers to attend the upcoming summer session.  This is a great opportunity for any teachers interested in screenwriting and taking lessons learned back to their classrooms.  Details here:  http://thefilmschool.com/special-offer-for-washington-state-high-school-teacher/ Also… the school has a special summer camp for youth writers and ...

The Children's Film Festival Seattle starts this Thursday, Jan. 24th and continues through Feb. 3. Overview of Festival.  This includes a pajama party with Caspar Babypants one night, a pancake breakfast and short films the next morning, and a 1924 film version of Captain January. Info for teachers/educators.  We have added three extra weeks of weekday morning screenings for groups – so tell a teacher or childcare provider! From the Times, a story about College Bound, the state program that help pay for college for low-income students, which is a great success story.  In its first year of paying for college, the program, called College Bound, did much better than expected. In fact, so many low-income students were admitted to four-year schools through the program that it will soon be out of money, using up in one year the $12 million lawmakers set aside for it in 2007 — a sum that was supposed to last two years. Now, 118,000 low-income students acros...

There will be a special free screening of a recently released documentary on teaching in the U.S. American Teacher on December 12 at 6:00 PM at Town Hall Seattle . Admission is free and open to the public, but seats are limited, and registration is required. Following the film Warren Etheredge, The Warren Report and the host of The High Bar , will facilitate a discussion with the filmmaker, Nínive Calegari, and an internationally-recognized teacher from Tacoma, Colin Horak. Doors open at 6:00pm and the film starts promptly at 6:30pm. Blurb provided by Microsoft Partners in Learning : Weaving interviews of policy experts and startling facts with the lives and careers of four teachers, American Teacher tells the collective story by and about those closest to the issues in our educational system—the 3.2 million teachers who spend every day in classrooms across the country. American Teacher shines a bright light on a real and imminent crisis in our educational system—how little...

It's that time of year again - the Seattle International Film Festival .  I always like to give it a shout-out because they feature films for families as well as for teens. For teens there are the Adobe Youth Voices where youth from 32 countries created short films to communicate about their lives.  As well there is FutureWave with films about teens with FutureWave Shorts with filmmaking by youth under 19.  My favorites in this category are Detention ( Mix Donnie Darko, The Breakfast Club and Heathers - it's not the end of the world, it's just high school ),  Finding Kind , a documentary about girl bullying, and Hooked , a Russian film about 6 college students who suddenly find they have the powers they use when they play video games. Then there is Films4Families each weekend.   This year's films include a look behind the scenes at Elmo from Sesame Street and behind the scenes at a youth circus, an animated French film about a cat and a cat burg...