The first day of interaction with the Casey Middle School students was filled with excitement, apprehension, and finally relief after all had gone surprisingly smooth with the snapshot survery. Considering the amount of time we had to prepare for the first activity I thought that the overall process went as smooth as it could have. When I first entered Casey I tried to remember what it was like to be in 6th grade and how I would react to college students coming to work with me on a design project. Walking into the 6th grade classroom I felt that there was a good amount of energy and enthusiasm from the students with a bit of nervousness mixed in. My first group seemed to very interested in helping us understand what they liked the most or least about their school. They initiated conversations about why they liked or disliked something and were always ready to show us a new place of interest. The three students had similar thoughts of what they would like to see in their new school with their favorite areas being places of social interaction and play. One of the students, who attempted to be in every photo, explained that what was most important to him to bring over to Platt were the teachers and friends he had here at Casey. This brought to mind the concern many of the students might have in moving over to a new middle school and the apprehension behind this big change. This made it seem all the more important to incorporate as much of the students input as possible to make the transition a bit more bearable and exciting.
The second group of students were not as talkative as the first but were still interested in relaying to us what they thought were the best parts of Casey. I felt that they did not have a full understanding of why we were doing these activities and were a bit shy in discussing in great detail their feelings about the move to a new school. Overall, I feel that the first activity was a success and positively encouraged the students to become involved more in the process of creating their new middle school. For next time it might be beneficial to describe, once again, why and how we are doing this process and in what ways their voices will be included into the final project.
Stevi Bratschie
1 comment:
My first experience at Casey Middle School wasn't too far from my expectations, yet I was taken aback by the range of personalities and levels of participation that each small group brought to the table. The first class that I had an experience with, period three, was truncated because of an assembly. Not surprisingly, the kids were full of energy upon getting out and eager to run around. While they were responsive to the mission that we gave them. They led us around to their special places enthusiastically to take pictures of places that they liked about their school. They had fun experimenting with taking pictures, showing us different sites on school, while using their middle school jargon. While they were certaintly more enthusiastic about taking photos, I learned more from the second group about the way they really felt about their middle school
The period four kids were much more subdued and instead of sprinting from place to place we walked and had a very mellow conversation. The kids had a hard time finding things to take pictures of, but they revealed to us the trends of recess, and what they desired to see at their new school. The period four group told us that somethings that were really lacking at Casey included functioning sports equipment. They also let us know that a lot of them were transferring or considering transferring to a different school district completely.
The levels of participation from one group of sixth graders to another varied, to my surprise. We got a lot more visual feedback from the first group, although the second group communicated what they werent satisfied with at Casey Middle school. I look forward to seeing to what extent the groups will participate on Wednesday.
-kate
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