Feb 25 In-Class Snapshot Survey

Today we participated in a snapshot survey, the first activity we have worked with the Casey students. I met with two different 6th grade classes for about a half hour each. I think that the hardest part about working with the kids today was that we has such a short amount of time to work with them. I felt that some of the kids felt a little shy about talking to us and walking us around since we had not had time to spend getting to them and making some type of connection with the kids before we got started. However having three Casey kids to three CU students worked very well because we were able to work more one on one and each CU student was able to really narrow in on one Casey student’s ideas and opinions. I also felt that it was really difficult to get some of the kids really involved in taking the right kind of pictures or in taking the activity seriously. Many of the students only took a few and some to very irrelevant pictures and enjoyed just being out of the class room instead of working with us.
One thing that I thought was the most interesting was that every one of the kids that we worked with hated the idea of going to Platte Middle School. Many didn’t like the idea of going to a school so far away from their homes and one student in particular decided he was going to a different school entirely because he didn’t want to go to Platte. When asked what the loved about Casey most and what they wanted to have at Platte to feel like their old school one of the most frequent responses was that they loved all of the art around the school (individual tiles, murals, and class projects hung on the wall) and how that made them feel more unified as a school. One student even said that he liked having a bilingual school because he felt that it was nice to bring together a mixture of cultures into one school environment.
Some other things that many of the students liked about the site was the climbing rock and the different areas that they could just hang out with friends. Because of this not many said that they wish they had more activities to do on their free time because they just enjoyed being social. However they felt that the site was more visual appealing in terms of landscape with more trees and better up keep of the grass as to keep from the field getting so muddy. Most of what the kids loved about the school was the interior and in my opinion it is because they felt as if they have personalized it by adding their little signs and drawings all over.

Brittany