Querencia Clipboard

The title of your first post should be "Querencia Clipboard". Your post should include a picture of your clipboard and the body of text that you mounted on the back of your clipboard to describe your querencia using sensory details. Click on the link below to access on online photo gallery of your Querencia Clipboards from which you can download your picture and post it on your blog.

http://staff.htmma.hightechhigh.org/~cstaff/projectslideshows/clipboards/index.htm

Example:
Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. My black turtle neck and pants blended with the blackness of the sheet draped over my head and shoulders down to the ground. There was dancing and singing all around me. My arms began to shake under the weight of the tree. I was the island in “Once On This Island”, a UCSD college production. Originally, the island was just a mound on wheels with a tree on it that I pushed across the stage during the storm scene. My friend Jen and River held the long blue sheets on each side of the stage and moved them up and down to create the illusion of ocean waves. After the tree repeatedly tipped over during rehearsal, as the smallest member of the stage crew, I was recruited to sit on a wheely cart, hold the tree, and become the island. Another member of the stage crew took my task of pushing the island across the stage, and instead, pushed me across the stage during the storm. Oh, and what a storm it was! It was my on-stage debut in college theater. My friends from the dorm cheered wildly during the storm. It was supposed to be a solemn scene, but they knew I was the island and wanted to cheer me on in my moments of glory.

Those moments were the only ones I had semi-visibly on stage. It was never the stage that attracted me. I’ve always felt most at home behind the curtain. Yet, that minute of glory as the island gave me a preview of that sense of power and joy that I would find in teaching. Even though I was by no means the focus of the scene, my role as the island was important to the advancement of the story. Nothing made sense without the island, and if I weren’t under that sheet, the tree would have fallen down on the dancing actresses, as it had in rehearsals. Most of the time, I was just behind the scenes, but like a teacher on Exhibition Night at HTMMA, when I rolled out as that island, I got to be on the stage with all of the performers I had been working so hard with and was so proud of.

My querencia, the place I feel most powerful, is in my classroom, on my island, with amazing performers and students, who I feel honored to share a stage with. I’d roll across a stage for my students in a raging storm, making sure no trees fell on them, in order to make sure their moments of glory and brilliance are the best they can be. I feel safe and powerful when I am behind the scenes, helping others feel safe and powerful.