Going Deep

Peter works at CentroNia, a bilingual charter school in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. (Above is a picture of the school.) He works in a program called Studio R.O.C.K.S. (which stands for Reading, Outdoors, Creativity, Knowledge, and Self-Discovery). Last year he was a teacher in Studio R.O.C.K.S. for second grade. This year he's lead Studio R.O.C.K.S. teacher for grades 4 and 5. It's an extracurricular program where the kids explore music, movement, gardening, technology, and the visual arts during "out-of-school time." (Even though it might take place in the middle of the school day.)  In Peter's case, most of the units he teaches involve either music or sports. (Why he doesn't include gardening in his units is, quite frankly, beyond me.) Peter first worked for CentroNia in his senior year of college, when he tutored there every week. One thing led to another and now he finds himself in his second year at the school. Most of the kids come from a home where Spanish is the first language. So even though English is the language of the school, Peter gets to use his Spanish a lot, especially in interactions with parents. He loves teaching and he loves the kids, and they clearly love him, as we saw when we popped in at the school last winter.