First day at Casey

Well this wasn't really my first day but it was nice to be back at Casey working with the kids again. For me I already kind of knew how challenging things were going be since the classes were shortened and there wasn't really much time to explain to the Casey students what was going on before we just hand them a camera and off we went. Either way I think that this was a good icebreaker which was fun for the kids and was an easy way to start getting to know the Casey students. In my first group I somehow got one of the students that was a big part of the design team last year’s so this definitely helped out. I knew that this would also be somewhat awkward for the students so I gave him a high-five and asked him how winter break was to get things rolling again. This first group was also all boys and based on past experience this usually worked better. For example if there were all boys or girls including CU students this would work best, then if maybe all the Casey students were the same sex that would usually be OK also, but as soon as you get a mix of students things start to get pretty chaotic. Overall I think that this first group took some good pictures and understood how this applied to the Platte site. Again my second group was all boys and seemed to be pretty good friends so they weren't as interested in the snapshot project as the first group. This is good point when grouping kids together it is better as far as productivity is concerned to have kids who aren't good friends because they tend focus on friend things and get off track. My last group was the most challenging consisting of four girls and two boys including CU students. Maybe it was just the end of the day or one of the girls really wasn't interested either way half of the group was still very productive and got some good pictures. One of the girls was especially smart and had a lot of good things to say about the move to Platte. Overall things went pretty well for the first day and I think that things were fun for the Casey students and a bit hectic for the CU students but you will get used to it so don't get frustrated.

Ben