Lead Artist

High school students are issued laptops, but in class they write on paper with pencils (or pens), and there are pencils lying all over the school grounds--and beyond.
I've started to pick them up, and yesterday, walking to the city bus with students on a field trip, I invited them and my coworkers to pick up stray pencils too.

Two students picked one up. (Hmph, no coworkers did.)
Good enough for me to declare it A PROJECT. "When we get enough, we'll glue them into a collage."

Back in our classroom, I labeled a jar to put them in.

The Found Pencil Project
Lead Artist: Francesca
(^ get it?)

At the end of the day, waiting for the school buses, I told other coworkers about it too. One, also fairly new, pulled a handful of pencils out of the pocket of his hoodie. "I've been picking them up too." He gave them to me.

A teacher said, "If it involves glue, the students will love it."

I'm thinking for one of our field trips we could go to the art institute--it's on the same bus line as the school--and look at George Morrison's  work.
Morrison was a Minnesotan Ojibwe painter who also did sculptural wood collage, which he called painting with wood.

Below, right: Red Totem I (1977), George Morrison
Below, left, some of yesterday's pencils

(I like Morrison's weathered found-wood collages better, but ^ this red piece is the one that's currently on display.)

I'm starting to feel at home in this workplace, enough to come up with my first project anyway. Working in this new setting is like a test of what powers I've gained in the past six years.
As long as you keep doing the same thing, it's hard to measure change.
I'm surprised how much confidence and ease I've gained, for working with people. All sorts.

______________________________

I told Abby about the pencil project at dinner last night, and she said, "Can I steal your idea?"
She's a sp'ed assistant at a different school, and there are pencils all over there too.

She gave me news of the thrift store. (She still volunteers 10 hours/week there.)
I won't go into all the details, but it's worse than ever.
Mr Furniture had been out sick on my last day. Turns out he got so sick, he was hospitalized, and no one did anything. Everyone knows Abby and Mr F are good work pals, and she was outraged that no one even let her know.

I said the store was worse, but that negligence is actually par for the course.
Mr F is home now--I will take him a meal this weekend.

Abby said she told him that I love my new job, and he said, "That's good--I love San Francisco."