me to we
2024-25 fall newsletter
Dream Blazing Gallery & More....
Want to be inspired by voices for a world without gun violence from fourth graders in Philadelphia, be transported to Tanzania, Haiti, or Macedonia for dreams in action, or be elevated to the peaks of Nepal for a Mountain of Dreams? Then you will want to spend some time in Dreamline’s new galleries of “talking Banners,” photo collections, and video archives. Put aside some time because you may get lost.
But it’s not getting lost if what you come away with is a renewed sense of direction — the direction of Dreamline’s reimagined and redeveloped website where our focus on connecting students to their dreams and their dreams to the world is front and center.
Now it’s straightforward (and free) to engage in either of Dreamline’s school programs — the shorter Hope Rising Banner Project or the longer Dream Path curriculum. This year we’ve added a Collaboration Center for teachers to connect their classes with each other, as well as Annual Program Pages to better serve our Dreamline Teaching Partners.
Diving deeper, you can find a new About page with sections on Purpose, Vision & Values, profiles of our Dreamline Team, Dreamline’s History, and our Organizational Structure.
Start with the videos, then move to the photos, and land in the Banners, but don’t stop there. This is not a time in our world’s history to stop dreaming. We can not let our students do that. You can share the new dreamline.org with a friend this week or introduce a teacher to our tools for infusing purpose, passion, and belonging into our classrooms when all of us are craving just that.
Join us this year to connect students to their dreams and their dreams to the world.
What does that mean? Well the first part of that phrase is simple. All of us have visions of a better tomorrow. Dreamline provides students with scaffolding to help them discover a dream they can believe in. The second part has two meanings. It means helping students to see themselves – and their dreams – with a broad sense of belonging to an interdependent global community (no matter what the adult world is fighting about.) And it also means creating events and exhibitions that get the Dream Banners of our students into public spaces – to show them to the world.
Each of us can help do that by becoming a Dreamline volunteer — and we consider every Dreamline Teaching Partner a volunteer. By completing our ’24-25 Volunteer Registration anyone and everyone can indicate what they’d like to do to help this year. Educators can learn more and sign up to participate with students. (More on both of those below.)
In June this year, we’ll bring everyone together for our Dreamline Philly Festival run by volunteers and engaging our Dreamline students near and far.
Join us as, collectively, we help students form the habits of heart and mind to reflect on what really matters to them, and to act on it in community.
Here’s looking toward an inspiring 2024-25 Dreamline Year with you!
–Jeffrey
PROGRAM UPDATE
2024-25 School Programs
This year we are offering the Hope Rising Banner Project that has engaged more than 1,300 Dreamline Teaching Partners and all of their students since we got started. We are also offering the Dream Path Full Curriculum. Developed two years ago, the program is continuing to create wonderful results in the School District of Philadelphia sites where it has been implemented. If you want to hear first-hand feedback, click the video to see teachers Alyssa Mazza and Hanna O’Sullivan from Jenks Elementary as they talk about their experience. And this year, the digital materials for all of our programs are free.
Register before February 1, 2025 to receive a Dream Box from us — a box with ribbon and signage that you can return to us with your students’ Dream Banners in it, so we can photo and upload them to the Dreamline Gallery. We’ll also include them in the Dreamline Philly Festival in June 2025. And then mail them back!
Dreamline Programs engage students to intentionally examine their values and dreams for change, then create a Dream Banner, an expression in art and words of a dream to share with the world. Creating a Dream Banner is a first action in the direction of a dream.
Hope Rising Banner Project is a 3-5 class period Dreamline experience for all ages that builds community, increases self-awareness, and fosters global connection. Registration is free and provides access to all digital materials.
Dream Path Curriculum is a semester-long program for upper elementary and middle school students. It develops empathy, belonging, agency and prosocial mindset. It integrates Social-Emotional Learning. Registration is free and provides access to all digital content. Print materials and program support services are also available.
2024-25 Volunteer Opportunities
Of course our most important volunteers are all the teachers who choose to devote time in their classrooms to the program.
BUT … without the many donated hours of a small army of other volunteers, we could not run Dreamline programs on an annual basis. This year we are offering a range of volunteer opportunities, from helping us to connect with more teachers and students, to doing online work with student Dream Banners, to showing up on the day of the Dreamline Philly Festival to help make it all happen. We now have a 2024-25 Volunteer Registration Form where you can tell us what you’re intereted in. No specific commitments. That comes later.
FROM THE BOARD
Expansion and Direction in 2024-25
Dreamline’s Board was hard at work over the summer, developing and approving Dreamline’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget. Exciting new projects include:
- Creating a New Website: We were able to fund the development of an all-new Dreamline.org. Its development in September and October has resulted in the release of the new site you are on now. It features many new elements, including gallery, simplified program resource delivery, and an About section. Additional elements are still in development, including translation of all Hope Rising Banner Project materials into Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, and possibly other languages.
- Hiring a Part-Time Dreamline Educator: Recruiting and training this individual will allow Dreamline to expand the number of school sites we can serve in a number of ways, but especially with funded Dream Path SEL programs in the Philadelphia region. (We are now accepting applications from interested individuals in the Philadelphia region. Contact admin@dreamline.org)
- Engaging a Half-time Student Intern: Our new student intern from Drexel University is assisting Dreamline Operations Adminstrator Daniel Arboleda with work on data, web, and program projects.
- Developing Online PD Options: In the past two years Dreamline’s Professional Development for Dream Path SEL Supported programs have all been in-person. While we will continue to provide this as needed for Philadelphia area schools, we are developeing online PD options to serve schools other regions and are focusing on schools in the Washington DC area first, with the intention of adding other regionas as the model develops.
2024 Year-End Giving
While Dreamline programs run on a school year calendar, the IRS does not. If you have not yet given to Dreamline in 2024 you will be hearing from us in the coming months. Our 2024 Annual Campaign is not over until 2024 is over and we still very much welcome and need your contributions. Most of Dreamline’s annual operating expenses for program development, delivery, and outreach are paid for by individual contributors. To make an online or check contribution visit our 2024 Annual Giving Campaign Page.
ON THE HORIZON
In addition to what's listed below, you can veiw more information and deadlines for our 2024-25 school programs on this new page of our website:
Mon. January 16, 2025: Martin Luther King Day
Many groups like to link Dreamline actitivies — either as a start date or workshop activity — with King Day. If this is of interest, make sure you complete your Dreamline 2024-25 Teacher Registration at least two weeks before the 16th, sooner if you can. Also a reminder that you don’t have to be a school teacher to register. You have to be an adult leading a group of participants (of any age) and associated with an organization of some kind.
Sat. February 1, 2025: Deadline & Langston Hughes Birthday
This is the deadline for registration to receive a Dream Box from us — a box with ribbon and signage banners — that you can return with completed Dream Banners. We will photograph them, upload them to the Dreamline Gallery, and include them in the June 2025 Dreamline Philly Festival. (We will mail them back if you wish.) This is also a popular date for starting Dreamline activities as it’s the birthday of the poet Langston Hughes whose poem “Dream Keeper” got the Dreamine project started. (See our Music Video page for recordings of this poem set to music, the Dreamline Theme Song.)
Thurs. May 15, 2025: Deadline Dream Box Return
Return your Dream Box to us by this date for your students’ work to be uploaded and included in the June 2025 Dreamline Philly Festival installation.
This is our scheduled date for the 2025 Dreamline Philly Festival, our year-end event that includes ALL participants, their communities, and the general public. It is a hybrid event, live at Cherry Street Pier in Philadelphia and linked to remote participants and attendees through Zoom and the venue’s 7×11 foot video wall. This is our expected date and will be confirmed in January, 2025.
