Month: May 2018

Website Development Internship Post #1

May 18

It has been two days since I set up my work studio and started to build the website (http://ssis.org.cn).  Yesterday, Karmen, my mentor, and I decided the website frame based on 7 sections: 1) home page;  2) about the school;  3) academics;  4) students life; 5) admissions; 6) more info (contact us and school calendar); and 7) the link to the school’s original English website (http://springstreet.org).  I finished the most important part of building the website. With the rest of time. I just need to follow the directions to design it.

The homepage of the website.

The notes we took of the 7 sections.

My work studio.

Nathan Li

Architectural Design and Carpentry Internship Post #1

Today, May 16, I went to Fred’s house at 9 am. When I arrived at his house, he started to introduce me to the tools we would be using to build Adirondack chairs: table saw, power planer, chop saw, jig saw, and drill press. Then he taught me how to change a the table saw blade.  Also, I exchanged three new blades for the power planer. When I finished it, I started to make slates for the chair seats by turning 2x4s and 4x4s into 1x4s with the table saw. I then ran these boards through a planer.

River Ye

using the planer

Movie Musical Internship Description

I have been given the incredible opportunity to work hands on with Grace McCune and Jake Perrine in creating a movie on the daily life of students.

Grace McCune is a vocalist and musician who has traveled the country sharing her gifts who now has settled on Orcas Island. She has been my vocal coach since I was eight years old, and I have participated in all of her shows over the years, many of which she collaborated on with Jake Perrine. She has lead me down the path of discovering my voice and life as a performer.

Jake Perrine is a performer and sound engineer on Orcas Island who can tackle anything you throw at him. I first met Jake in a show titled “Enchanted Forest Cabaret; Fly Me To The Moon.” Since then, we have been in many more shows together, whether as fellow actors or with Jake and Grace directing the production. Jake also recorded, mixed, and mastered my first CD that I released in December titled, “Stormy Side Of The Moon.”

In this production, we are working with Orcas Island students ages 6 to 17. The kids are divided into multiple groups, including two choir classes, a theater class (taught by Perrine at the public school), a dance class (taught by Tiffany Loney at Salmonberry School), and a tap class (taught by Katie Zwilling). My role in the process involves assisting Grace and Jake in teaching the choir, handling administrative work, corralling the kids on filming days, and much more. I am learning a great deal about all the work that goes into putting on a show, or in this case, a movie.

The final product of this project will be a 30 to 45 minute long movie, full of singing, dancing, and acting. The movie, currently titleless, will be making its debut on June 3 at the Seaview Theater on Orcas Island, with a herd of young movie stars in tow. I cannot wait to see where this project goes and am so grateful to my lovely mentors for giving me this opportunity. I hope to learn more about all the pieces that go into putting a show like this together, along with how best to teach students music and dance, and I know that with McCune and Perrine, that is in my near future.

Stormy Hildreth

Website Development Internship Description

My Spring Street International School (SSIS) internship will be designing and building a school official website in Chinese (https://ssis.org.cn) with my mentor, Karmen Mallow.  Karmen is the Development Coordinator at SSIS, and one of her jobs in the school is running the website.

Spring Street International School (http://www.springstreet.org) is a non-profit school located on San Juan Island with special international students programs, which is why, as a native of China, I am attending the school.   Some students and their parents who are from China do not know much English, and it is hard to understand the English website.  Therefore, I will build a Chinese website to help Chinese students and their parents know more about the school better before they come.

I am the person who is really interested in science and technology.  I have some coding and design experience, and the internship provides the time to learn how to build a website and gives me the opportunity to improve my coding and designing skills.  It gives me time to prepare and gather all the resources I need.

In my personal opinion, information technology is that one of most important skills people need to grasp in the future.  I hope that I can learn more skills than I already have and enjoy the opportunity of coding that school gives me.

Nathan Li

Elementary School Internship Description

I will do my internship with Darlene Clark, a second-grade teacher in the primary school at Friday Harbor Elementary.  She had been teaching middle school for 11 years and then she became a primary teacher.  Darlene teaches Math, English, Reading, and Writing.  The mission Friday Harbor Elementary School is  to instill a love of learning in all students and to nurture creativity, imagination, and leadership in all children.  I will be Darlene’s classroom helper.

I want to do my internship in teaching because I like children a lot, and my brother is in the first grade in China.  I want to see the differences between Chinese and American schools.  I am excited but also nervous about my internship.  As a English is my second language, I am afraid that I will not be able understand the students.  This will be a good time for me to practice my English skills.

Zoe Zhou

Music Festival Internship Description

For my Spring Street International School internship project this May, I will go through the process from beginning to end from contract to performing at a major music festival. This will start with the negotiation of the contract, including compensation, travel expenses and logistics, and the performances and workshops we will provide. It will culminate in performing at the Ogden Music Festival in Utah.  At the festival I will be playing mandolin with my brother Kaj playing guitar, and Gordon Koenig will join us on bass.

Mr. Koenig will also be my mentor for this internship. He is a multi instrumentalist who has played with numerous bands over the years. I have been rehearsing the set on a continuous basis both with just my brother and all three of us. I took my first mandolin lessons with Mr. Koenig when I was little, and he has been involved in my musical life on the Orcas Island as long as I can remember.

Over this internship I hope to learn more about the process of playing concerts like this and gain more experience. I am very excited about this festival and internship as a whole. Several of my favorite and most influential and inspiring bands will also be featured at this festival.  I will also be teaching a couple of workshops during the festival either on mandolin or about playing and performing with a band as a kid.

Tashi Litch

Architectural Design and Carpentry Internship

David Waldron and Fred Yonkers will be my mentors for my Spring Street International School Internship.  

David attended Willamette University and the University of Washington. He started work as an architect in 1968, and he worked in Seattle until 1978.  In 1979, David started working as a self-employed architect and received his architectural registration in 1980.

Fred , in 1970, he enrolled in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey “Clown College” and spent six years touring with the RBB&B show and smaller circuses.  He came to Spring Street International School after 19 years of teaching and drama coaching at Friday Harbor Middle and High School.  A jack of all trades, Fred is also a carpenter.  I will be helping Fred build a number of Adirondack chairs for the Spring Street campus.

My internship is about building design and carpentry.  I will learn the design process with David and build chairs for SISS with Fred.  I want to do the internship for of three reasons: first, I want to design my own house or my own room in the future; second, I want to learn about my father’s job as he works in building design and construction; lastly, I like to use my hands to build models and other thing because that can make me feel happy. 

River Ye

 

Art Internship Post #1

Last week I sent to my mentor, Paul Chadwick, three artists I like and told him why I like them. Paul wanted me to watch an interview of James Jean, who is my favorite artist, and answer his questions about what I have learned from that. Here is what I learned from the video:

1.  practice daily to make your body mechanical to your emotion (I think he means to learn how to always express your emotions with lots of practice.);
2.  always make the work that I am interested in rather than fulfill other people’s expectations.
He also required me to send him four or five images that I particularly like, and below is one of those images:

 

For James Jean, I appreciate the bizarreness in his artworks, which is the style I want to approach the most. In this image there is some skillful balance of the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.  I like the contrast of dark and light from the relatively dark area of this image (the girl, wolves, and wings) to the bright light yellow background. For some of his works, you can’t tell what he means by drawing some specific things. I suppose there is some unconscious factors going on in his works. Personally, when I am doing my artworks, I will not think too much about why I want to draw this instead if that. The ideas just come up, and I prefer to analysis them by myself after I finish my pieces. Thus, I tend to interpret James’s work in the same way.

Yutong Du

Art Internship Description

My mentor, Paul Chadwick, is a comic book creator who currently lives on San Juan Island. He is best-known for his series Concrete. He graduated from the Art Center College of Design in 1979, majoring in illustration. He started his career creating storyboards for Disney, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm, and other film studios.

I want to work with him because of his strong expertise in illustration, which will benefit me for my art career in terms of illustration.

I will meet Paul at least three days each week. During this time, I’m going to finish one or more artworks with suggestions from him. Additionally, I will be working on my own in the Spring Street International School Studio.  Paul asked me to tell him three artists I like, so we can discover which kind of style I want to approach.

I hope to learn from my internship: art skill development, for example, perspective, which refers to a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface; concepts related to art creation; and some tips about what I can do while I am gathering the ideas for art creation.

For further information about my mentor, see the link below:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Chadwick

Yutong Du

Haiti Construction Internship Planning

I have recently been talking to Rosedanie (my internship mentor) on the phone about Haiti logistics. I am starting to write out a list of the tools I will need to bring down with me and what tools she already has. Some people have donated a few items, such as iPads and a rototiller, that I will bring with me. I am a bit worried I will have too much stuff to travel with, but we will see. When I will be in Haiti, it will be twords the end of the rainy season, so I have to plan for either rain or sun.  All and all I am getting very excited to go on this journey!

Henry Miller