My #SUSI Second Week: Part II

This blog post is dedicated to the wonderful meetings I had during my second week in New York, to a theater play we attended in Broadway and to a revelation I had regarding the lyrics of a famous song from West Side Story.

Two years ago I was emailing back and forth with Jessica Milestone, working back then at Cooney Center , an amazing research hub on digital media and gaming as a learning tool. Jessica had developed a research on how teachers use gaming in their classrooms and what I did was to translate and disseminate this research to the Greek audience. Unfortunately, the results were never published (might do that some day in the future) but it really helped me understand better how the greek educational system stands towards gaming and digital literacy. Now Jessica works for a fabulous company, called BrainPop . Remember me talking about science communication? Well, BrainPop produces audiovisual educational material, plus games in order to help educators and students understand better and interact more creatively with a variety of topics. Jessica was kind enough to give me a tour guide in BrainPop and to discuss with me possible ventures and collaborations. So, stay tuned because something might be on the way!

My week continued with meeting another super creative person, Cassandra Pelham, Senior Editor at Graphix Books, an imprint of Scholastic Press (special thanks to Jeff Smith and Kathleen Glosan for making this happen). Graphix Books is one of the top publishing houses for young audiences, and a model for me regarding the educational use of comic books. You can check their great books here. So, I enter Scholastic and guess who welcomes me...

Yes, it's Harry Potter!

So, Cassandra and I had a really nice chat on how she works with different creators, what fascinates and what challenges her most in her job. Being an editor is a very tough, but rewarding task, especially because you are able to see all the progress and the development of an idea to an actual book.

And now, let's move to Broadway. As I mentioned earlier, we had the opportunity to attend a play. When someone thinks of Broadway, musicals are the first thing to come in mind. But the play we attended was unexpected.  Hand to God, a new American play, as characterised, "it's a dark comedy that explores the startlingly fragile nature of faith, morality and the ties that bind us". Provocative and with brilliant acting "it makes you laugh, and laugh and laugh. And then makes you think".

Some of my new great friends posing in front of the theater.  

Staying in Broadway, later on this week we had an interesting panel on poverty in America where one of the panelists talked about the lyrics of the famous West Side Story song "Gee Officer Krupke" and how by analysing it one can understands how social identities were constructed and stereotyped with a special focus on juvenile delinquency. Listen again to the lyrics:

and then read this enlightening analysis. Any thoughts?