A quick summary...

      I have a few odds and ends to report from my WISE journey this week. I found Ms Gergly on Tuesday and gave her the flyer I made that advertises Marigold the Clown (I still can't figure out how to show you all but it still looks awesome) She is planning on scanning it and sending it to her friends with small children. She also asked me if I would clown at her daughters birthday party but unfortunately its the same night as senior prom and I had to say no, I was so disappointed! Hopefully, thanks to Ms. Gergly's generous publicity efforts I will have more opportunities to clown around town at another time.
    Also, I have been working on my juggling. Looking back to March when I set my project outline I have to laugh. I thought by April I would be doing four and five ball juggling! No one told me at the time that that goal was very ambitious. This week I've continued to practice my two ball in one hand juggling in an attempt to start four balls, but I've also been working on an outside cascade with three balls. I will post a video to show you what that looks like soon, but basically its an inside out version of your classic three ball cascade or weave. Instead of coming under, the balls go over each other. I've been hitting balls together a lot but its amazing how naturally this new trick is improving!

Carrie's Sample Presentation

     At my mentor meeting last week (oops, haven't blogged about that yet but better late than never), Mr. Holl and I discussed what a WISE presentation should be like, or maybe I shouldn't say should, but what my presentation could be like. Since he has mentored two people in the past Mr. Holl has some experience in the area of presentations. We discussed powerpoints and what your presentation should be communicating. I decided after hearing examples of past presentations that I wanted a slide show of pictures running in the background of my presentation, but other than that I just want to be talking to my audience about my experiences. Of course I will also be doing my presentation in my clown costume.
    While Mr Holl and I made some great progress the other week on what I envisioned my project presentation to be, attending Carrie Haas' sample presentation was the most helpful of all. First of all, her presentation was very moving. I have never seen someone that confident about sharing their emotions with a crowd of people and her passion for her project was amazingly visible and uplifting. While I don't know Carrie very well, I was so proud of her and what the WISE program teaches kids who really take advantage of it.
     Her presentation made me think about what I learned about myself in my project and what skills I would like to share with my evaluators. I really enjoyed how she actually shared her poetry with us, it was a true testament to her projects journey. I want to be able to show my evaluators what I've learned as well, in both the physical tricks as well as the mental discoveries. I made a list of the core things I want to communicate that I learned during my presentation while I was listening to Carrie's.
1. I learned to be okay with being goofy.
2. I found a way to connect with kids that I really enjoy, I've never really liked them before now.
3. As a professional stresser, my WISE project and my whole clowning mindset has given me an outlet to step back and take a chill pill every once and a while.
      Also listening to her evaluators talk about the other parts of her project like the research commentary and the narrative I realized that I need to get my butt in gear because all of my materials are due on June 7th and I have a lot of work to do before then.

Clowning for Mrs. Case

Mrs. Case, a teacher at my old elementary school, called me back about clowning in her classroom this past Friday. She said she would love to have me but didn't think she had any kids who would fit the specifications I was looking for and offered to have me come and do a birthday party for the summer birthdays in her class or as the special treat the kids usually get after completing their "good job chart." I gathered up a few dates and she told me which worked best for her. We've finally decided on Tuesday June 7th at 1:15 and I am coming as a special treat for their good behavior. Basically it will still be a birthday party because I'll use all the supplies from my basket and make cupcakes so I can use my clown cupcake toppers but it won't be celebrating any ones birthday. I'm really excited to be going back to the same classroom I was in when I was for and making kids laugh there!

What's next?

This week I've been working on a different angles of my project. The first being that I tracked down Ms. Gergly in the hallway and explained my whole problem about not being able to attach and send the flyer I made for advertising. She came about with the fantastic idea of scanning! She suggested printing out the flyer at home, bring it into her and she would scan it for me so she could send out to her friends with kids. Wow, I never thought of that! So I just printed my flyer (its still looks awesome) and am ready to bring it to her tomorrow.
 The second thing I've been working on is another opportunity to clown. This past Saturday night my parents went to my elementary school's annual auction and my dad brought home a "Circus Party Basket" for me.
The basket has all the fixings for a clown themed birthday party! It includes:
1 Ringmaster giant party banner
1 Circus photo opportunity banner
1 Happy Birthday circus train banner
1 Circus train centerpiece
1 Circus tablecloth
24 big top dinner plates
32 big top circus dinner napkins
24 clown dessert plates
32 clown beverage napkins
24 clown loot bags
24 clown cupcake toppers
I called an old teacher of mine at the school and left her a voicemail today explaining about my wise project and I asked if there were any kids in the school from any of the younger classes that had a birthday around this time and wouldn't normally be having a birthday party thrown by their family. I would come into school and throw them a birthday party with my kit, Marigold the Clown being the entertainment for the day. I am still waiting to hear back from her but hopefully she will have some helpful suggestions.

Unicycling

My first attempts at unicycling!!
I'll be very honest with all of you. I most likely won't be the world's best unicyclist. In fact I'm kind of terrified of the whole idea, but on Saturday afternoon I asked my dad to help me fish out the family unicycle from the garage and teach me how to ride it. My dad has been able to ride a unicycle for years and is still pretty good at it. I've done some preliminary research on the basic skills needed, like getting on and balancing but putting them into practice is easier said than done. Thankfully we have a long fence at my house next to a flat sidewalk, so I am able to cling to that as I slowly get used to the feeling of balancing on one wheel. This first day I spent about half an hour practicing getting on the unicycle (next time I will be wearing shin guards because the pedals come up and smack my shins) and figuring out how to balance. Most of my sources suggest holding on to something and rocking slowly back and forth to find your center of balance and get used to the motion of your body and the unicycle together. After I gained some confidence I slowly rolled my way down our sidewalk, still clutching at our fence for dear life. Falling off isn't as bad as it would seem because the unicycle simply slides out forward or backwards and you land on your feet, but I will admit screaming a few times. Hopefully in the next week I'll find some days when it isn't pouring rain to keep up my practice!

Clowning at CHES 5/13

Friday morning I packed up all my clown stuff into my car and headed off to school. My mom had written me a note that allowed me to leave school for an important meeting regarding my WISE project. Little did the women in the attendance office know that this meeting involved juggling and balloon animals instead of me being in gym class, but what they don't know can't hurt them right?

   I changed into my clown costume in the locker room and then drove up the hill to Cayuga Heights Elementary School (I put my shoes on when I got there, it’s sort of hard to drive in clown shoes). I was clowning for my lacrosse coach's special education classroom. Of course as I walked into the school I received the usual laughter and giggles from adults I passed. I'm starting to get used to the reactions people give me when I walk by in a clown suit, at first I never knew what to say because I looked so ridiculous. Now I have learned to completely ignore any laughter and saw something like, "what a beautiful day!" or "can you show me to Heather Murphy's classroom?" I never make any reference to being dressed like a clown, instead I pretend it’s totally normal.

    I signed in at the main office and then someone showed me up Murph's classroom. Of course her room was at the farthest end of a very long hallway so I had a lot of attention all the way down. Kids would shyly wave if they were out in the hallway or shout if they saw me from their rooms. When I finally got down to the end, no one was in the classroom! One of the other aids in her room explained the group was doing an activity in another classroom and would be about ten minutes late. Since I was about ten minutes early this gave me twenty minutes to just hangout in an empty kindergarten classroom. Suddenly another teacher popped her head in the door and introduced herself as one of the Pre-K teachers.

      She asked if I had some extra time that day to come in and clown for her classroom too! She had seen me walking by on my way to Murph's room and thought I looked awesome. Since I had twenty extra minutes before Murph's class would be back I clomped down to her classroom and went right in. She had 3 and 4 year olds, about 12 of them and much like the Tots ans Teens kids, they immediately swarmed me. They touched my nose and I made sounds for them, and then I started touching their noses' and they would make their own sounds too. I juggled for them and they really liked that, especially when I dropped balls. 

     The one mistake I made was trying to make them balloon animals. I should have kept up the talking to them and saying silly things because I didn't have enough time to make them all an animal. So the teacher had to suggest they share the animals with the whole class and I could tell they were disappointed and I felt bad about that. However, I did say I would love to come back and see them and their teacher said she would love to have me back. I believe her name was Ms. Hubbard but I can't quite remember.

      After I had spent twenty minutes there I headed back down the hallway to Murph's room a few moments before all of the kids came back from their other classrooms. My coach was in a meeting during this time so she wasn't there to introduce me but one of the aids did an excellent drum roll and introduced me as Ms. Heather's special surprise! Apparently all week I had been used as motivation for the kids to be on their best behavior. These children have a lot of behavioral problems that come along with their disabilities and part of what they learn in Heather's classroom is how to behave properly and interact peacefully with other students and teachers. My coach has been telling us stories for years about their crazy behavior so I was a bit nervous that I would rile them up, just like I had with all of the other kids I clown for. 

    These kids were the most well behaved group I had clowned for thus far, and probably ever. I had nothing to worry about! They were so excited to see me and didn't want to get in trouble and not be allowed in the room so they sat in rows next to their friends with their hands in their laps. There were about 15 kids there, ages 5-8, boys and girls; some were bigger than I am, some about the size of a three year old. Because they weren't crowding around me and jumping all over me I had more time to think about things i could say to them and how to fill the time. This caught me a little off guard at first because I've never really stood up in front of a crowd and entertained them before. I started off by saying hello and then juggling for a bit and then I started asking them questions, like if they wanted to touch my nose like most kids always want to. They were a little bit hesitant but a few finally did and were delighted. Once the first brave ones started talking to me the rest of the kids loosened up a bit.

    I told them a lot of stories about clowns. Why our feet were so big, where we got our shoes, what our favorite animals were (giraffes because they have big necks just like our big feet), all the people we like to fit in our cars, what they teach us in clown school...among many other things. I also started making balloon animals for all of them which I think they loved. They weren't really sure what to think about me at first, whether they should laugh or not, but after the balloon animals they looked they were having a great time. Most of these kids have a lot of trouble recognizing humor in social situations. They will laugh if someone else laughs, but because they think they're supposed to not because something is truly funny. 

    I made a lot of giraffes at first, and then kids started asking for snakes which was awesome because snakes are super easy to make. I made a few poodles, a deer, a lion and one caterpillar. These kids were really patient and asked politely and always said thank you to me. Really I was blown away at how well behaved they were for me. I only had to remake one balloon that Ryan unfolded and he said please and thank you and sorry about popping his first one.

     A few of them had speech impediments so it was difficult to understand what they were saying, like their own names for example but I've learned to say more generic things in those situations like "ohh cool what an awesome name!" When I had made everyone a balloon animal, my coach asked me to juggle one more time for the group, which I did, and then they all said thank you to me at once and i waved my way out of the room. I was clowning for them for about half an hour and then they had to go to lunch.

    After school that day my coach told me that her kids loved me! They brought their balloon animals around all day and told everyone that they had a clown in their room that day. Except instead of saying clown they say "they had a down in their room" because of their speech problems. I really enjoyed spending time with all of the kids on Friday. I loved seeing how much they love my coach "Miss Heather", they always want to tell her everything that they're doing and sit in her lap. It was a different type of performance for me and I enjoyed having the chance to make up goofy stories about clowns and tell kids what we're all about...making them happy.

    Heather, the Pre-K teacher and a kindergarten teacher Margret Philipson (my mom’s best friend) have all asked me to come back and clown for all of their kids one day later this year. I would definitely go back but I would have to figure out how to handle the 50 kids that would all be there at once. My mom proposed making balloon animals in advance and handing them out and then making some but I'd have to think that show through very carefully. Hopefully I'll have enough time to do it!

    My biggest regret of this show was that I forgot to bring my camera and I don't have any pictures of the event. I feel really bad about that but if I go back again there is no way I'll forget my camera.

This weeks successes and hold ups

Monday evening I spent quite some time playing around with Microsoft Word and all of the cool templates they have so I could create a flyer that advertises my clowning skills to all potential birthday party holders. Let me tell you how good this flyer looks. It's probably the best thing to come out of the Microsoft program. To bad I can't share it with you because my computer won't let me email it or upload it to my blog and I am about to go CRAZY. Usually I don't get mad at my electronics but after trying endlessly to share it with someone, anyone, I am ready to throw my laptop out my window. After a few deep breaths, I have decided to take my computer into school either tomorrow or Friday and see if someone in the library can help me.

On a more positive note: I am clowning for the special education class at Cayuga Heights on Friday! I will be with them from 10 until 10:30. I took a trip around town today trying to find more balloons I can twist so I wouldn't run out on Friday and found some awesome ones at Maines. I got 144 for about $11 which was a bit pricier than what I paid online at La Rock's Fun and Magic but these balloons are great colors, easily twistable and make really big animals. I am quite pleased with my find and there's definitely something to be said for being able to go out and just buy the thing you need, instead of ordering and then waiting and especially worrying about whether it would get here on time. Now I have everything I need and ready to go!

This weeks summary

     The AP season has hit my life with full force, but amidst the testing chaos this week I did manage to have a few conversations about clowning opportunities around town. Ms. Lord had mentioned a that the Youth Bureau had a Tots Spot on Saturday mornings during which I could clown. On Thursday morning I visited the Youth Bureau to inquire into this opportunity only to be told that the Tots Spot had ended for the school year and would start back up in October. That's a bummer, but Janet Olsen, the very nice lady at the entrance of the Youth Bureau, gave me some helpful suggestions about other places I would be able to clown. She suggested GIAC, IC3 and then gave me the name of the theater coordinator at IYB, along with all of the contact information. I was very thankful and more than a little pumped up that someone was so interested to help me out with my project!
    I also talked to Ms. Gergly this week and she explained that she had a young daughter with a birthday in June and that she knew of a lot of other parents with kids who had birthdays this time of the year. She suggested that I make an advertising flyer for myself and she would pass it along to her friends. Not only is this a great opportunity for a clowning experience at a birthday party, but it added another layer of my project: advertising myself! I have to let people know who I am before they can ask me to clown for them. I've thought up some ideas for the flyer and I am hoping to have it done this week.
     Lastly, I spoke with my lacrosse coach this weekend and we have a tentative date scheduled for me to clown for her special education classroom. Hopefully this Friday, May 13th from 10-10:30 I will be able to come and play with them. If not this Friday then next Friday because we have a very full week of games this week and my coach thinks I will probably be exhausted by Friday. When she said this however, I realized that clowning wouldn't be that stressful for me on the last day of a busy week, but more of a stress reliever!
      Mr. Holl and I also had a mentor meeting on Friday and reviewed my progress on my project this year and things are looking pretty good! We talked about possible dates for my presentation, taking into account both of our busy schedules and also how I wanted to present my project. I don't have all of my ideas nailed down yet but I definitely have a vision of how I would like my final presentation to flow.

Tots and Teens Clowning Video

Clown Video Coming Soon

So this week I've been working on the footage of my clowning excursion with the Tots and Teens group. Mr. Heurich in the library has been a tremendous help. He uploaded all the clips and has been walking me through iMovie and teaching me how to put everything together and I appreciate the time he has taken so much. I am not familiar with making movies at all so he's had his work cut out for him but has been incredibly patient. We spent seventh period on Friday working on the movie and 7th and 8th period on Monday will be dedicated to finishing it up. In the end I hope to have a short collection (maybe 3 minutes) of clips that highlights some fun parts of my clowning adventures. The footage was great from what I've seen so far; one clip even caught a kid pulling off my nose and my reaction to it! I will post it on my blog so that you all can enjoy it.

I've also been getting some great suggestions about places to clown at in the month of May to finish out my project. Ms. Lord suggested the Tot Spot at the Youth Bureau, and I am planning on either calling or visiting the youth bureau this week to see if I would be able to come and clown there. (2738364) Also this week I am going to finalize the date with my lacrosse coach, for when I can come and clown for her classroom at Cayuga Heights. She is a K-2 special education teacher and I am really excited to finally meet the children I've been hearing about for years.