Amos, Blake
Blake Amos
Parent Coordinator
Parent Room
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Where he lives: Bedford Stuyvesant
At P.S.8 since 2008
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"I enjoy working with kids," says Blake Amos, "they are so honest and that's refreshing! As educators, we have the opportunity to give children the guidance and direction they need -- it's so rewarding to contribute to a kid's growth." The father of a 16 year old, Blake's enthusiasm for his work and his warmth are palpable. He feels that the rewards of being a Parent Coordinator are many, including solving problems, answering questions, mediating when necessary and bringing people together to a shared understanding.
Blake Amos hails from New Orleans, where he studied culture and anthropology at the University of New Orleans. A trained musician and arts educator, he has been passionate about percussion and guitar since his high school days, especially Brazilian samba and bossa nova. At 20, he took his first trip to Brazil and stayed for a year and became fluent in Portuguese.
Blake was able to draw from his passion for music and his first career as a performing musician and bandleader to launch his second career -- arts education. He developed a music and movement program for preschoolers that incorporated musical instruments such as the Brazilian berimbau and cuica and the Bolivian charango. Next at the Orff Center of New Orleans and The University of North Texas, Mr. Amos studied the Orff Method, an experiential method that uses body percussion, xylophones, circle games, and songs to introduce children to music.
Mr. Amos' travels also took him to Thailand, where he worked in a refugee camp helping Cambodian refugees. Here he taught music, movement, and ESL to toddlers who were relocating to the United States. Enchanted with Thailand's musical instruments, Blake added to his collection and brought back an instrument called the kahn, which looks like a huge pan pipe but sounds like a harmonica. Unfortunately, the kahn was lost in one of the many floods that have plagued New Orleans over the years.
As a performance artist, Blake was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to return to Brazil to study Brazilian history and folklore and create a performance for New Orleans public school students. His resulting performance, "SalvadOrleans" illustrates a cultural parallel between New Orleans and Salvador, Bahia (Brazil's first capital) as two port cities whose colonial foundations produced two vastly influential cities of the African Diaspora. As a result he was invited to teach arts electives at the New Orleans Charter Middle School. For four years, Mr. Amos taught courses that included songwriting and production and he also created a samba drum and dance group that performed in the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Blake's journey brought him to New York City in 2002 where he continued working as an arts educator at several public schools and after school programs, when he took on his first job as parent coordinator in 2006. Before coming to P.S. 8, Mr. Amos was parent coordinator at M.S. 158 in the Bronx and M.S. 301 in Bedford Stuyvesant. On Blake's first visit to P.S.8, he immediately noticed the friendly and welcoming atmosphere at the school. He says: "I am excited about being needed at P.S.8, and I hope to become an effective and useful liaison between P.S. 8 parents, teachers and Principal Phillips."
Stop by and welcome Blake to P.S. 8! His office is at the back of the Parent Room on the first floor and his email is bamos@schools.nyc.gov. You can also get a glimpse of his "other" career as a songwriter and musician here.
Posted on: September 7, 2008
