BAYAC/OASES AmeriCorps

A brief life update from me: I just accepted a position in Oakland Chinatown as a BAYAC AmeriCorps member with OASES, and I’ll be working with the QUEST After School Program. Not enough acronyms? The short story is that I will be working at the Oakland Asian Students Educational Services helping to run an after…

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Karla

Karla was one of our eighth grade students this year at United for Success. Back in May, by the light of the campfire on the last day of our school camping trip, Karla performed this poem. I was absolutely wowed, impressed, proud, inspired… The next week, back at school, I videotaped Karla doing her poem…

Rachael

So much of our relationships depends upon context. I’m reminded of  that moment in grade school when I first saw a teacher at the mall and was stunned to realize teachers went shopping just like normal people. Or this year, when we (as teachers) brought our 8th graders into the woods for a 3-day camping trip and we got…

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Oakland Science Fair

Last night was an interesting experiment in convergences of threads of my life: photography meets teaching meets Duke meets TAF. A couple weeks ago, I brought some of my students to a Dinner with Scientists event hosted by our Oakland Unified School District science department. Of course, while we were there, I was snapping away…

In My Own Backyard

San Francisco Bay Area. I am still endlessly amazed that I actually live here. Within the last week, several different friends have come and gone on their various Bay Area visits, and it’s been a great excuse for me to rediscover the sights that surround me. Berkeley. The view from Ho Chie’s roof deck at…

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Adam Wang

Adam Wang is an actor based in Los Angeles. In fact, he’s the killer that James Van Der Beek is chasing down he whole time in Formosa Betrayed. And he delivers some great lines in flawless Mandarin at the end. While he was up here visiting the Bay Area, Adam wanted to do dramatic artsy…

Glamour Overload

as i mentioned in the previous post, TAFers converged on the bay area last weekend, and we had a rather ridiculous photo shoot, inspired by jon and howard’s taiwan glamour shots from five years ago. for those of you who have never experienced asian glamour shots, it basically goes like this: they dress you up,…

Tilt Shift

at the end of january, our school had a professional development day up at the oakland zoo. it had nothing to do with the zoo– we just used a lodge building that was on the zoo property. but the off-campus outing was quite nice. it’s refreshing to get some perspective with a healthy dose of…

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8th Grade

it’s the end of the semester, and for me, the end of my 8th grade math class! from here on out, i will be pulling kids out of 7th grade math instead of having my own class. for an overwhelmed first-year teacher, this is an extremely rare gift. don’t get me wrong– i love these…

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Time Lapse

yet another reason why macs are great: with this nifty little application called gawker, you can do a time lapse straight from the computer. just leave it there, tell it to capture every 15 seconds or so, and voila! a time lapse video. so i decided to time lapse the view from our apartment on…

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Henry

police officer, gang member, hip college student, slacker, intern… i can’t guarantee any of the photos will be usable headshots as intended. but it was a really fun 3 hours! there were close to 400 images, so these are just some of my initial picks: Check him out at www.henrymchu.com