Kids Larry Clark

Keeping your kids on the learning path

“The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck” by Ron Clark (Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc., 352 pgs., $23)

ATLANTA — Since beginning his teaching career in 1995, Ron Clark has been on a mission to take educating children into his own hands.

In recent years, Clark has gotten public attention with appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and his life being made into a TV movie. But most of all, Clark has stayed true to his passion for keeping kids excited about learning at the Ron Clark Academy in southwest Atlanta. (Winfrey has been impressed enough to make major donations to the school and appear at last year’s graduation.)

With last week’s release of his new book, “The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck,” which outlines 101 strategies for teachers and parents to better educate children, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with Clark.

Q: If you could pick one out of the 101 strategies that is most effective, what would it be?

A: Live with no fear. If we can teach kids to speak with confidence, to know how to work a room, and to enjoy sharing their thoughts and opinions, then we have profoundly changed their lives. We don’t want our students to go through life afraid to take chances and unsure of their talents and abilities.

Q: You and your staff make it a point to make Ron Clark Academy feel like a family. How does having a school act as a family help and hinder students and parents?

A: Issues do arise when people assume that being a family means that everyone gets along all the time. That isn’t reality, and I don’t know of any family where things are perfect all the time.

Being a family means that we have a strong bond and that we will work together to get through any problems. When you have teachers and parents both working equally hard to educate their children, academic success becomes the norm.

Q: How do you and your staff go about updating your teaching methods?

A: We are constantly pushing ourselves to be different and to come up with innovative, effective methods that teachers and parents have never tried. We want to stay on the cutting edge to keep kids’ attention. We offer training seminars throughout the year for teachers from all over the country.

Q: In your new book, you talk about making classrooms a magical learning experience. How can parents help their children enjoy learning outside the classroom?

Levis's Film WorkShop

During a visit to the final weekend of the Los Angeles MOCA exhibition, “ART IN THE STREETS,” I stumbled upon a virtual “candyland” for filmmakers called THE LEVI’S FILM WORKSHOP . Temporarily housed at Geffen Contemporary Museum, the FILM WORKSHOP is heaven for the independent filmmaker—an incredible environment devoted to providing resources, education and creative collaboration in support of the art of filmmaking.  My jaw dropped when I entered the seductively darkened room — numerous Final Cut Pro editing stations, a green screen area, shelves of equipment rentals with an array of film and digital video cameras and grip and lighting equipment, and if you are interested in “old school” technology, a 16mm Moviola and even a do-it-yourself super 8 transfer station that records home movies directly to your laptop.  The best part is that all of these amazing resources are available for free! (When I discovered the super8 machine, I literally almost ran home to grab a shoebox filled with reels I’ve been aching to transfer but haven’t been able to afford.) The room was buzzing with young kids and folks of all ages immersed in learning film technology, an incredible sight coming from the professional world of Hollywood where such tools are generally unavailable to the amateur filmmaker. But at the FILM WORKSHOP, powerful imaging tools are available to anyone—all you need to do is ask.  With an artistic environment like this, who needs film school? The LEVIS WORKSHOPS are a series of venues dedicated to creative production and collaboration.  Like the exhibition it is housed in, the FILM WORKSHOP champions the variety of styles and techniques reflected in “ART IN THE STREETS,” from super8mm to 3D, from home movies to avant garde, from amateur to professional.  Spike Jonez skateboard home movies, Larry Clark’s photography of Los Angeles skate culture shot at the time he was filming “Kids,” documentaries of the emergence of graffiti art, and Banksy’s, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” are just a few examples from “ART IN THE STREETS” that inspire the sensibility of the FILM WORKSHOP.  Celebrating “homegrown” films and one’s own artistic vision, not driven by the business and commerce of Hollywood, is the philosophy here.

Kids, a film by Larry Clark

Kids

Encyclopedia of 20th century photography

New York Magazine

Where the boys are, cinemas of masculinity and youth