Monday April 17, Expo Elementary, Comics and Cubism-lesson 10-11am, 1 hour
Thursday April 20, Spectrum Artworks, Open studio hours, 1-4pm, 3 hours
Friday April 21, Shadowing Melodee Strong, Sunset Hill Elementary School, 7.30-11.15am, 3.75 hours
Friday April 21, Spectrum Artworks, Open studio hours and collective studio hours, 11.30am-2.15, 2.75 hours
Friday April 21, Shadowing Melodee Strong, MIA-brainstorming session, 4.30-6.00pm, 1.5 hours
Total hours: 11.5
As you can tell just from looking at the amount of hours and places I went to only teaching/shadowing-wise, this week has been even busier than normally. This however doesn't mean that I didn't have fun, I met so many cool people and got to know a few people who I had met before even better. I also discovered that I am a surprisingly social person, I loved making all these connections and talking to these people. I also learned a lot, about various things regarding to teaching.
So the beginning of the week started with me teaching at Expo Elementary. It was my first time teaching a class of such young children alone, and I was a bit nervous. More than I was nervous though, I was really excited to meet that wonderful group of kids and Ulla Tervo-Desnick again. I didn't really sleep the night before. For some reason i never sleep before something like that. In the morning I forgot to eat breakfast, and drank a whole energy drink instead, in order to stay awake. This was definitely a mistake, and made me feel sick the whole rest of the morning, but at least I was awake.
Lynda came with me to Expo to film the lesson and to evaluate it. She also found some nice paper from the teaching artist closet for me to use, since I didn't have the money to buy fancier paper myself. I was really thankful for this, because it made the students' final product feel more professionally done.
When we arrived the kids and Ulla were already waiting for us, and as we walked in they all welcomed us with smiling faces. I felt really glad to be back. I had missed them all so much. Sadly there was no time to say more than a few brief words of introduction, because we had to start preparing the lesson. We spread out the pens, panel templates and papers on the desks, and Ulla read a book to the kids while they waited.
When we were done preparing, I started off the class with a brief presentation that consisted mostly of who I was, what my art was like, what cubism was and how we were going to make cubist comics together. The energy drink kicked in a bit too much and I awkwardly stumbled with some of my words, but luckily the kids didn't seem to care and listened with focused expressions on their faces. Their excitement and obvious respect towards me gave me confidence to continue and not care about small mistakes. Despite this, there were a few times when both Ulla and Lynda had to help me a bit. I was so lucky not to be doing this alone, but having two "assistants" there to support me.
After the presentation, it was time for the students to start working on their comics. First they thought of a short story, then they chose two to five colorful pre-cut shapes to use as comic panels, and then glued them onto a white piece of paper. After that they got to draw out their story with pencil and then ink it. If the kids still had time after this, they got to decorate the edges of the paper and/or color everything. The theme was "My Dream Job", and all the comics had to have at least two words of text. I was incredibly impressed by the creative ideas that kids had, there was such a variety of approaches and different dream jobs; many pokemon trainers, superheroes, mermaids and someone even wanted to be a frozen yogurt when she grew up. It was great seeing that the kids weren't ashamed of having these wonderful dreams, even if some of them might have been a bit difficult to reach in real life.
At the end of the class, it was time for everyone to share their work. I asked everyone to lay out their work on the carpet in front of the class, and then sit next to them. This I could have probably organized slightly better, but with Ulla's help we made it work. After we had gotten everyone to sit down, I asked students to volunteer to share their work in front of the class. This went well, and I was impressed by the kids' ability to speak about their own comic.
A comic from my class at Expo! This student really liked her cat, so it appears in all the panels :D
Another comic from my class at Expo! This student wanted to be a mermaid, and beautifully decorated the gutters with waves :)
Me and Lynda ended up staying slightly over time, since at the end I remembered that I had made stickers to give to the students, and everyone took their sweet time choosing them. Before leaving, I once again talked to Ulla about coming back some time and she said that I would be welcome to do that. I really want to go there at least once before the semester ends. I want to say good bye to that particular class, because if I went back next Fall, Ulla would have a different class.
This journal entry is becoming really long, and congrats to anyone who has read it this far :D However I'm probably only half way done, since I did so many other things besides teaching at Expo. Anyways, on Thursday I went to Spectrum again and that day it was Iris' turn to teach a lesson there. Their lesson was going to be about the basics of Adobe Photoshop, and I was really excited to be able to observe it. Iris felt slightly nervous before it, so I tried to help them as much as I could by doing some small preparatory tasks and talking about random things.
Iris all prepared for teaching! The class was wonderful and I learned a lot.
When it was time for Iris to teach, we came across a problem: there was no extension cord for the projector. I ran around the building trying to find one, and eventually it wasn't even me who found a suitable one. At least I tried to help.
Iris' class was spectacular! They taught in a way that was very easy for everyone to understand, even though the subject was fairly complicated. Both me and Lynda learned something new as well. At the end of the class, everyone seemed really happy and excited about their new Photoshop-knowledge. When it was time to leave, Lynda was able to give us a ride back to school again, which was very much appreciated.
Friday was an extremely long day for me, long but fun. I woke up really early in the morning, and went to wait for Melodee, who was going to pick up me and another interning student , Tre'on Bell, at 7.30 am to go and work on a mural at Sunset Hill Elementary School. She was late by about 20 minutes, which got me slightly worried, but luckily she arrived in one piece. The traffic was horrible, but we were able to get to the school a bit after 8 am. Melodee and Tre had been there before, so they just signed in, but since it was my first time I had to register with an ID before I could go in as well.
The process of painting the mural was already really far along, because this was Melodee's fourth day painting it, and she had many little helpers. Actually I was very surprised when Melodee told me that she intended to have all the kids at the school to help her. That way everyone would get the opportunity to say they contributed to the mural. I thought that this idea was just wonderful, because the mural was all about the diversity of the student body as well as friendships between students.
Melodee Strong instructing the kids as they paint the mural.
Me, Melodee, a random kid and Tre'on decided to take a selfie :D
The students came to help in groups of 6-8 kids, and each group got to paint for about 15 minutes before a new group came. Almost everyone had a lot of fun painting, and there was only one case I witnessed when a kid refused to paint, but even then he seemed to enjoy "supervising" his classmates.
I tried my best to be as helpful as I could, but I ended up mostly just smoothing some globs of paint that were too big, that the students left as they painted. I also went around praising the students work as, and encouraging them when needed. Besides this, there were some times when my help was not needed, and I just spent that free time observing the space. I noticed a couple of birds that had a nest in a pipe that was coming off a wall located in a garden outside. I took a few cute pictures of them.
These cute, tiny birds had a nest in a pipe outside the window near the mural. They kept bringing food to the babies inside it.
Another exciting thing that happened during this visit, was a lock-up drill. I had never participated in one before, and didn't even know what exactly they were before this. It turned out that they are drills to practice intruder-situations at school, because of all the school shootings that had happened in the past years. When the drill started, we weren't entirely sure where we should hide, so we hid in a bathroom (I think there was about eight or nine of us). I have to say that it was my first time in a bathroom with so many people.
Hiding in the bathroom together was a strange experience :D
After the mural painting session at the school ended, Melodee was able to drop me off to Spectrum, where I was going to do a few hours that day as well. It was very quiet there, with only a few artists there along with me and Jes. I spent my time having conversations with and critiquing the people's work who were present. I also found out that the upcoming week was going to be a volunteer appreciation week, so Jes gave me a cute plant as a gift.
After I left Spectrum at about 2.15 pm, I headed straight home and took a little break before I had to leave for another shadowing session at 4.15pm. This time, Kate Mohn (who works at MCAD as a person who helps arranging internships and grant-writing) was able to give me and two other interns, Nathan and Patricia, a ride to the community center where one of Melodee's many mural brainstorming sessions was going to be held.
We arrived before Melodee, and it turned out that she was stuck in traffic and was going to be late because of that, so we had to start the brainstorming session instead of her. It went smoothly and the kids were excited to start drawing. The theme was: what do you like about your neighborhood?
Later, when Melodee arrived, she did a short presentation and took charge of the brainstorming session. A few of the kids had to leave early, and in the end only four of them were left, but they seemed to have a lot of fun. When the session ended, everyone also got a donut, which of course made everything even more fun.
This was such a long journal entry... Probably the longest one so far, and despite that I feel like I was able to only give a tiny glimpse of what my week was really like... Anyways, next week's entry probably won't be as long, as I will be only going to Franklin Middle School to shadow Melodee. Then again, it will be my first time there, and many interesting things will probably happen... Still the entry won't be as long, I promise! Thanks for reading, and until next time my readers!