Casey: Day 1

 For being a "first day scenario", today's experience at Casey went over startlingly well! After working with the two groups of sixth graders, I had the chance to reflect during my drive home, over my cup of tea, during my Spanish class, and throughout the entire day. It consumed my thoughts. My reflection process ambled its way over to what the kids' perception of today was, rather than my own for the majority of the time. Being taken out of their normal day and asked to run around and take pictures with a bunch of college kids must have seemed like a great way to spend geography class! I found that the girls I worked with understood why they were taking pictures and made a great attempt to really point out what was important, while the boys I worked with just wanted to take pictures of each other rolling down the sledding hill. These are definitely two different ways of expressing importance, however. Even if the boys didn't realize that they were actually using the exercise in the way we hoed, the pictures they took show just how much fun they have with certain elements of Casey. Rather than just showing what they like, they show why they like it.

I was thinking of how important it is to relate, and how these kids made it so easy to do so just by thief enthusiasm to get out of the classroom and do something new. Relating to my first group was very simple due to the group being made up of two girls: one outgoing, energetic and one shyer and amazingly sweet. Both girls honed in on the artistic elements that Casey has to offer. While this was a great thing to lean, what was more interesting were their expressions of the fears developing over moving to Platt that they divulged once comfortable with us. My first revelation was that they were sharing these fears so readily when, as a society, we are taught to hide our fears away. Then I remembered back to being a sixth grader and how every time I got the opportunity to interact with a girl of college stature, I wanted to share as much about myself to them in order to feel a greater sense of connection with this older person. I was not surprised to hear that these girls are NOT excited at all about the upcoming move. Understandably so, they are at the age when social groups are forming, best friends are becoming more important than anything, and everyone outside of your social group seems slightly alien. They both expressed the sense that they expect this to be a problem next year, although one of them vocalized it with more angst by calling the Platt kids "haters".

While the boys didn't vocalize deep fears and uncertainties with going to Platt, they did give some thought to the matter. At the start of working with them, all I saw was a noisy blur running across the schoolyard, leaping over fences. I realized I had to quickly find a new completely different approach than the one I had used with the girls. One of the boys stopped to look at something away from the group so I started talking to him. He seemed to take a liking to me because he suddenly went from loud and inattentive to helping me rally his friends to answer my (slightly modified) questions about... everything. The general consensus for moving to Platt for most of them was excitement because it was closer to one thing or another, be it a parent or a cool path they heard of. They weren't expressing social fears as the girls had, which points out the age gap between sixth grade boys and sixth grade girls. They were really excited to talk, however, when it came to the story about how Mr. Casey had died in the gym. It was four boys all yelling at me with fifty different explanations of how he died each, none of which seemed all that likely. It was a vastly different experience than that I had had earlier in the day, resulting in a completely different variety of information that was definitely of equal value of importance in our exploration.

I learned a lot more today than I thought I would. I learned not to expect the same results from any two groups of kids and that with this process, we're all going to have to be on our toes one hundred percent of the time. I learned that these kids are so easily excited to be with us and that that excitement is contagious and fun and that we should use it to our benefit. These kids are awesome and the connections that have already been made in only half an hour of skewed conversation prove to me that once we have a steady group of kids, what we can accomplish will be great.

Chelsea 

25 February 2008