Feb 27-Aerial Photo Design

I enjoyed today’s workshop so much more than the one before. I began to feel more comfortable with the kids and I think they felt the same. One of the quietest kids from the day before opened up so much after the first fifteen minutes or so and really had some great ideas that we didn’t think he cared much about the day before. I think that this dramatic difference was because of the increase in time with the kids and also, probably in most part, due to the fact that we had continuity with the students seeing that we worked with the same students that we did the day before. It was like us coming back really meant to the kids that we were serious and that we wanted to help them have an enjoyable experience at Platte. They became more intrigued in the idea of getting to help design the site and maybe in a way from them asking us questions they even became a little more excited about going there next year since most of them hated the idea of it. I am also very excited about this project now after today’s activities. I feel like we really connected with the kids and I feel that I can learn as much if not more that what they will learn from us this semester.
In this session the kids were given printouts of the pictures they took the time before and were asked to write on them about what they liked and didn’t like about the things they took pictures of and with those pictures they glued them on a poster with two topics: Things I like and Things I Don’t Like. Afterwards the kids were given an aerial map of the Platte site to draw where they would want to place the portables and maybe any landscape additions they would also like to add. In terms of the pictures I think it was just really beneficial for us as recorders to listen to what the kids said about the things around the school and not much of a process of dividing them up because most of what the kids took pictures of was of what they liked and left half the poster pretty bare. My favorite part of the day was the aerial maps. The ideas the kids came up with blew my idea because I would never have thought about them even though they weren’t all practical. The first group all had a very cohesive idea of making them in some type of circle because they loved the idea of a Casey Community and facing each other and having this central square in the middle. I think they really were able to bring what Casey means to them to that new site because all they ever talked about was how their uniqueness as a bilingual school gave them their own sense of unity that they didn’t have at other schools and wanted to carry to Platte.

Brittany