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Four students from CIS 339, a Bronx middle school known for creatively integrating technology into its classes, spent Thursday night live-blogging the school’s Parent Expo. At the Expo, classes shared their work with their parents through slide shows, displays, iMovies, and more. Here are some excerpts from their on-the-scene reports, and here’s the full story.

Eighth grader Aurelie set the scene:

All classes are empty right now. Teachers are a little bit tense and hope that parents and students will all be there for the rendezvous. Some students are preparing some of the speeches they will present in front of the class when parents arrive. The entrance of the school is crowded by people signing in. Balloons and some small tables are placed just where people walk by the principal’s hallway.

Fellow eighth grader Osafo learned from younger students:

In Ms. Marmora’s English Language Arts class the children made a video to explain the books they have been reading in class. The difference between the video these kids made and videos from other classes was that they recommended the books. After watching the videos, I felt like going to get a copy of each of their books.

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Sad Franklin graduated? CIS 339 Principal Jason Levy just wrote to let me know about this year’s cafeteria critic, Kevasha. From one of her recent posts:

I have A LOT to say about the lunchroom
1. The only thing that is actually sort of good are the chicken, plantains, rice, mozzarella sticks.
2. Let’s not talk about the dry sandwiches and the nasty pizzas and that nasty dirty brown meat that they think is a Salisbury steak. Also, they are supposed to give us nutrition stuff but they think greasy chicken and plantains are healthy.
3. The only thing that I can consider healthy is their fruit.

There’s more, including an educational comment from Dean of Instruction David Prinstein.

Also, quick correction: Franklin is 14 and wrote his blog when he was 13, so he is not technically a pre-teen.

Last week’s “Big City” column in the New York Times tells the story of a 12-year-old aspiring food critic who adorably took himself out to dinner one night, alone, and then later wrote up a Zagat’s-style review in a private leather-bound journal. (“As I left,” the Upper West Side boy wrote, “I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip’ places in the city.”)

The story reminds me of another aspiring food critic of about the same age: Franklin, a Bronx pre-teen who last year became the official food writer at his middle school, CIS 339. His column, called “Franklin on Food,” ran as part of the school’s online newspaper, the 339 Hardline. He reviewed the cafeteria food, which ran the gamut, from the baguette pizza (loved) to the pollo (not a fan) to the coleslaw:

Shout out to the garbage for eating all the coleslaw.

Franklin never offered ratings. (“Thank you for cooking today, dining staff. If I was going to rate you, you would have gotten a 9 out of 10. But I’m not a rater,” he wrote one day.) But he did occasionally poll his fellow students. (“I know that I have no power, so I’m just writing this to make a point and let the people’s voice be heard. 144 people didn’t like the lunch and only 6 people liked it.”)

Franklin graduated CIS 339 last year and is now in high school. But the school saved his columns, which you can read here.

(Postscript: Why are these kids writing blogs? Reminders here and here.)

Last week, we got a glimpse of Harlem students’ reactions to Barack Obama’s election, courtesy of a staffer at the school who dutifully wrote down what they said. Today, we can look inside a Bronx middle school, CIS 339, where 98% of students are black or Latino and 83% qualify for free and reduced lunch, via the students’ own blogs. (Why do they have blogs? Read my Village Voice article on the school.)

The students appear to have been asked to say which issue they hope Obama will focus on as president. Many answer education:

“I think that he should really change the educations and schools of the kids and work really on making us wanna go to college,” Carlos wrote.

“Obama election means to me that he will build better school for us and put better teachers to teach us well,” Alexis wrote, adding: “The issues i care about is education because i want a good education and i want a better job and a better collage.”

More excerpts from their blogs are after the jump. You can read their principal Jason Levy’s description of post-election day at the school here. (more…)