Hello Friends of Walgrove!

My name is Jennifer Racusin and I’m the new STEAM Studio Teacher for the upper grade students. I am an arts, literacy and STEM educator as well as a performing arts artist. My work with my friends at One Grain of Sand Puppet Theater has been featured in venues such as The Music Center, LACMA, the Bowers Museum, the Skirball Center, the South Coast Repertory Theater, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and REDCAT. You can see a couple images of my art on my website, www.jenniferracusin.com.

The kids and I are currently exploring symbolism and personal identity. We have created symbols to represent ourselves through imagery and are building flags full of colors that are personally meaningful. The flags are going to live in my room for the year so that I will have little bits of your kids with me in the space all the time. I hope it helps them feel at home when they are learning with me.

Looking forward, I am certified by NASA to bring moon rock sample disks into classrooms and the 4th/5th grade team are planning to take advantage of this later in the year. We are also throwing around ideas to do a giant puppet parade around May which will be a fantastic engineering and collaborative creativity challenge for the kids. I’ve also been asked to lead a campus beautification project and would love to hear suggestions for places on the campus that you think could use improvement.

I am loving teaching the magic of creativity and the beauty of scientific thinking to your children. Thank you so much for your kind welcome to your school!

Thank you,
Jennifer Racusin