Journal 2

It has been truly enriching being involved with these young kids. However, I would like to comment on the staff working at this school/boys and girls club. This group of workers and teachers are the most supporting group of people I have ever met in my entire life. Without these teachers, professional and volunteer, these children wouldn’t have a chance at life or an interest in school. The kids after talking to them tell me they like school only because it was FUN. I have never had the opportunity to go to a school that was fun, because my schooling experiences have always been down to business and learning and that was it. I have never looked forward to going to school until I learned how much fun it was to go to this kind of environment. The welcoming and smiling people that surround this building and community are great and some of the most friendly I’ve ever had the opportunity to encounter in my entire life. Unfortunately, I am scared at the same time, not for myself, but for the kids. I am afraid that when they leave and move up in schooling, they won’t have that great support system they are presented with right now.

Journal 1

As this volunteering project goes along, my outlook has changed on how children respect to adults. It was my original thought that children nowadays have become more disrespectful and unresponsive to authority. There are a majority of the kids I work with that I finding out that they just want to have fun, and even though they may get out of control every once in a while, they know that when they ask an adult a question its "teacher", "Mr.", or "Mrs.” That’s a refreshing revelation to know that America's youth, especially America's minority youth, is not as bad as portrayed in the media. It also surprised me that when we were playing flag football outside on Friday’s outdoor time, when I asked the girls if they knew how to play, they all replied they knew how to play. I know that when I was a kid, none of the girls that were in my class in elementary school wanted to play flag football or touch football, but there were 4 or 5 girls out of 11 out there playing with us. I thought it was really nice to see more interest in other sports by girls at a younger age than in years past.

Mulimedia Project Link

Artist Comment-First Project

My experience doing this project was eye-opening for me, the white boy from a suburban township, whose school district wasn’t wealthy, but did alright. I had no idea what issues faced inner city schools that struggle financially. The experience that I received from this project was one of former thoughts being fully proven by the interview of the child I interviewed informally. He didn’t want his name mentioned, and without a parent being present to ask, I couldn’t print his name anyway. When I was talking to him, I asked him what his favorite things to do were. The boy replied that he really liked soccer, baseball, and football. I then was intrigued to ask his favorite things in school, and he replied gym class. I told him there must be some type of subject he likes to do, and he replied that he kind of liked math but he responded that when he grew up, he wanted to be a gym teacher and play sports all the time. Even though this is a stereotypical answer for young boys, however I felt that his disliking of school subjects ran deeper other than a young boys liking of physical activity. This immediately brought my attention toward the building conditions. The jail-like doors, the dim hallways, the general age of the building were all main points that I feel don’t have enough attention drawn to them because of budget constraints. Unfortunately, trying to compete with school choice and other issues driving students away from their schools, Milwaukee Public System has let the condition of their schools go down the drain and affected the student’s attitudes on learning.
Aside from what I learned about the school and the issues I tried to address, I found the camera very helpful to express what I was looking to show when originally looking into this idea as a essay subject. I feel that simply writing about this problem doesn’t address the issue as well as film does, and not only does it not address the issue fully, it doesn’t bring a visual attachment to the problem. The problem today is the question people think, which is “What does this have to do with me?” The answer to this question is shown through film and can connect better with the reader or viewer once a picture shows a point. It’s the most literal cliché, however, is so true when someone says “A picture is worth a thousand words”.


http://film150spr101pm.blogspot.com/