An Exhilarating Second Week at Camp: Documented by Kyle Garvey

The second week of Al-Bustan camp was very action-packed, filled with great guest speakers/instructors, unpleasant humidity, and daunting power-outrages. Despite the poor weather, everyone had a splendid time, including myself. Below are some edited vignettes that I would love to share of week 2...


This first video features the musical side of the camp. Mr. Hafez acutely instructs the campers in his master craft of percussion using a few different instruments and the different parts of rhythmic musical notation. He also lets them have a lot of fun with the popular Arabic dance styles. And, Ms. Gaida's amazing voice and singing styles truly inspire the campers in their singing class.


In this next video, a few very interesting instructional moments are highlighted. The first is the demonstration on Manakish made the traditional way by Mr. Khalil. This made me very interested in the inexpensive method of cooking, using wood and pebbles. Also, Ms. Hazami introduces the teenage campers to the famous Lebanese picture-book author Nadine Touma, because of their exceptional artistic skills relative to her work. Also, Ms. Mary introduces the very fun process of soap-making to Group B. Some very cool soap-sculptures came from this and I hope you all had a chance to view them when they were on display on the evening of the performances!


This video features one of the high points of the camp: a conversation with Nadine Touma via Skype. I found her to be a very delightful woman (as you will notice in the video) and also quite humorous. In addition to Nadine's input on Lebanon, this video shows Amer and Mariam, two campers from Beirut and their imagery of Lebanon, interviewed by Mr. Musa. Also, the Arabic class learns about the ingredients and preparation of the Arabic salad Tabbouleh.


In this video, Mr. Justin and Ms. Suzy explain their excellent teaching methods in the Drama and Video Production classes. With drama, Mr. Justin's very creative method of letting the campers form their own stories around a Nadine Touma story whilst incorporating Lebanese culture is a very fun way for everyone. And, the end result of these Drama courses was one very original and entertaining collaborative play. With myself being an avid enthusiast of production, Ms. Suzy, with the video course, absolutely taught the teens a lot of valuable information in the process of putting together a story and a crew to develop a phenomenal short film that spoke to everyone who viewed it on the night of the performances.

Thanks for viewing my edited pieces, and I hope to have a few more for you very soon!
Yours truly,
Kyle

A Sensory Tour of Lebanon

Last Thursday night a culminating exhibit of the campers’ experience in Art, Poetry, and Science classes transported families and community members from the auditorium in Springside School to Lebanon, the focus of Camp this summer. The campers’ creations in these classes filled the walls of the auditorium, demonstrating their creativity and the rich cultural heritage of this small but diverse country.

As the books of Dar Onboz and the geography of Lebanon informed the trajectory of Art Class this summer, a display of books from this Lebanese publishing house was available for browsing. The books are very visually stimulating—communicating the story line not just through text but also through images, including many collages. Campers made their own materials for collage making while exploring of the six elements of drawing: line, texture, space, value, shape, and color. With these materials they created individual collages while also working on a collaborative collage project depicting the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet.

The varied geography of Lebanon also served as an inspiration for projects in Art Class. Groups Alif and Ba’ used drawing, printmaking, and tissue paper to depict the Lebanon’s mountains, iconic cedar trees, and Mediterranean coastline. This same landscape informed the many poems that campers wrote in Poetry Class.

Groups Alif, Ba’, and Ta’ wrote poems in response to both texts from Dar Onboz and what they learned about the Lebanese agricultural economy and the Civil War, which poetry teacher, Eric Hitchner then assembled in an anthology. Integrating what they learned in Poetry and Art Classes, campers filled 10 feet long scrolls, which hung around the auditorium, with their poems and Arabic letters cut from the materials that they made in Art Class.

Not only did the campers' work stimulate the visual senses but the scent of orange blossom water and lavender floated through the auditorium. Following the technique practiced in Lebanon of making soap from the country’s abundance of olives, campers made orange blossom and lavender scented soap with science teacher Mary Walsh.

The campers beautifully captured the varied landscape of this country in their art and poetry and their soap serves as a tangible reminder of one of the country’s traditions. The campers’ art, poetry, and soap will act as souvenirs from their cultural visit to Lebanon during this year’s camp.

Teen Animation

This animation is about a boy in geography class, and he is falling asleep because it doesn't entertain him. He starts to fantasize about all the places he wants to be in Lebanon. -Tyleem Gray

Good evening everyone. I am fresh, well a week fresh, back from my writing journey in Italy. The picture here is from when I was granted an opportunity to work the garden on my final evening in San Marco. I have never had better tomatoes AND I picked them! I also got to come back and start making homemade pizza for all the people I was staying with.

As you can tell, I was excited and feeling very blessed to have the opportunity to visit this beautiful country. However, what I was more excited about was to come back and work with some amazing teens.

It has been a very hot and SHORT week and a half with them. We have two teens who have returned from last year and are used to my craziness, three new teens, and finally, two beautiful young ladies that I have worked with before at NE High School in Philadelphia.

The ranges of writing experience are vast and to be honest, too academic. As a teacher, I find myself giggling at this, but it's true. This translates into the teens wondering if their poetry is good, or if it makes sense, or should it rhyme. It also translates into absolutely no writing getting done.

So, I had to change up my approach with them in many ways. The first is, the art teacher asked if we could add words to their beautiful works of art about rebuilding. Done. The second was to get inside of what their art said and why they chose the theme, the colors, the textures, the shapes, the amount of "slides" used in their pieces, and of course, what does it say about them.

From here we passed their works around and each teen spent some time free-writing about what their peer's work meant to them. They had to use dialogue, point-of-view, and prose to flesh out those works deeper. We also discussed the term rebuilding. The teens shared some similar ideas about rebuilding, such as happiness. A term that was brought up a lot. So, we then examined what it means to be happy and what if your happiness if different than someone else's happiness. What does that mean? And of course, we wrote about it and then each day, everyone read aloud and shared what they wrote that day, even if it was "bad" or didn't "rhyme".

The next step was to have each teen tell the journey of their own piece in their own words. I had them write an obituary about their piece as a way to practice writing about death and then a life. Translation - if you read an obituary, you will find that a good one will have celebrated the person's life. Just as in the theme rebuilding, we have the teens celebrating their pieces.

I can't tell if they are excited, nervous, or just plain old tired from a long emotional week and for the performance tomorrow. We had a lot of them today asking if they had to read their piece and what it meant if they did or didn't. I really didn't give them a choice, they have to read. They have to read because the small things they say in both their art and their poems are worth hearing about.

Any person, any country, any family, any community, any religion experiences conflict and rebuilding... and so have these teens. I tell you all, you have to come out and experience what the very near future holds and be witness to the creative ways in which these awesome teens are opening our eyes to what they value.

Thanks for your time and see you all tomorrow!

Peace-

Ellie

Teen experience at Al-Bustan camp

This year Al-Bustan camp was a very fun and interesting experience. We got to meet new people. We even had the chance to email teens from Lebanon and create friendships while learning about their culture. In film class we are working on a great video about stereotypes and discrimination. In these three weeks we have learned a lot of Arabic, probably a years worth. In art class we created an art piece based on change over time. In poetry class we got to go inside our artwork and find the emotion and the story that we created in Tremaine’s art class. During video class, we traveled to Center City and interviewed people about their thoughts on stereotypes and discrimination. It’s very interesting to hear how different people feel about real world situations. In video class we also had the opportunity to create our own plays, and act in them. I think kids who will attend Al-Bustan Camp in the future will benefit from this learning experience. Al-Bustan staff members motivate you to do better, and have fun while learning.

Post by Tyleem, Khalida and Amira

Creative Chaos...Afterall, it is Drama!

Theatre presents a way for students to engage with ideas in a high kinesthetic manner. It is another avenue for students to tackle complex issues and to work through them in group contexts as they develop stories based on the experiences of themselves and others. At Al-Bustan, I cherish the role that I have as the facilitator of such explorations.

My approach differs from that of a teacher in a more traditional sense. Indeed my highly collaborative methods mean that each year at Al-Bustan is different than the one before it, not merely because each year brings a new theme, but also because each year brings a new group of students and a new classroom dynamic. The students bring their unique approach to the material. They tell me what interests them about the topics that they study in other classes such as Arabic, art, poetry, and science. I record their ideas, place them into an outline format, read the outline back to the students and have them add flesh to the bones of the outline through improvisational exercises. This process requires a healthy amount of creative chaos, which may seem odd to the outside observer, but which always proves to be highly effective. Ideas flood the room, and the student’s unfiltered comments give way to open debates and further queries. The process is partially controlled thanks to a primary rule, which I heavily enforce, that all ideas must be treated with respect and must be considered fully before they can be dismissed.

This year at camp the middle school students decided to craft a play about the lives of kids who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War and who, despite suffering great adversity, persevered and demonstrated their remarkable resilience and ultimate love for life. Thus far, the students and I have staged the first scene, and our process has conformed largely to the method that I described above.

In many plays the first scene establishes the time, place, major characters, and circumstances of the play. The students themselves came up with the idea to have a scene inside the home of a traditional Lebanese family. In this scene an elder brother attempts to read a book as his two young, rambunctious siblings pester him with questions. Although their questions initially seem inconsequential, silly even, they dovetailed into a series of more weighted remarks about the nature of the Lebanese Civil War and concerns for the family’s ongoing safety. The seriousness of the conversation causes the older brother to change tactics and adopt the calming voice of authority, telling his siblings not to worry, but to be strong in the face of such adversity. The dialogue itself is determined by the students who play the roles on stage. The onstage actors are given further guidance by the students who sit on the sidelines awaiting their turns in the spotlight. If one of these students in the audience has an idea of what a given character should say, he/she raises his/her hand in order to offer a suggestion. Those on stage consider the suggestion and embody it. In this way, each student has the opportunity to add his/her insights, becoming playwrights themselves. This process will continue until Thursday when we treat our friends and family members to the culmination of our efforts, a fully-staged performance about Lebanon!

Baskot wa raha

On Friday camper Amer introduced the rest of Camp to baskot wa raha, or "biscuit with Turkish delight" in Arabic. This Lebanese treat is made by spreading raha (turkish delight) in between two lemony lucky 555 Gandour cookies. Gandour is a confectionary company that was established in Lebanon in 1857. Initially they began as a sweets manufacturer producing raha, a gummy sweet often rose scented or studded with nuts. In 1936 Gandour started selling biscuits and the baskot wa raha was born. Thanks to Amer for introducing us to this delicious and classic combination. Sahtain!