Extra-curriculars
Lately, at 10:55 three days a week I leave my desk at work and walk with anticipation through the sunshine to a small building two blocks away. It is here that an hour passes in the blink of an eye, where I am transformed into a kid, and where we play games like the human knot.
For the last two years I have worked in the neighborhood surrounding where I go to school. I have volunteered with Somali women in an exercise class. I have also done a lot of research here for the thesis that I am now writing. But this is the first time that I have been able to work directly with some of the kids of the neighborhood. It is a blast.
It all started when I attended a meeting of all the youth workers in the neighborhood this spring. The topic was about summer programming and what each program was doing for the tremendous number of youth in the neighborhood. It was at the meeting I brought up the idea of using a program that Center came up with. (It is a educational program that helps youth decide what public work they want to do in their neighborhood. And then they do it.) The leader of a newly developing program was interested.
After many meetings and with a great stroke of fate I found a university student who still needed a field experience for his undergraduate degree. He was willing to co-lead the program with me. I was asked to be his teacher-mentor, and to monitor his learning for the university program. Meanwhile, I get to spend an hour a day with kids working to do neat things in the neighborhood, in the summer. Fun.
The kids, who range in age from 10-14, have decided that they want to do a mural on a business wall in the neighborhood that gets "tagged" often. They want to dedicate it to some of the recent victims of killings in the neighborhood.
So today, I spent an hour visiting a community center in another part of the city to see a mural program that they run with kids. I made it back to the university in time to meet with the U student before the kids came (they had decided they wanted to hold meetings in one of our conference rooms- there is nothing cuter than when they are running a meeting at tables where they are like miniature men and women). I strategized with "B" about how he was going to coach the kids through some challenging work, and then the kids arrived.
After the kids came, I coached a girl through calling a community organizer for information on how to do a mural. She was so nervous she spent 10 minutes first writing out everything she was going to say and still insisted I sit next to her the whole time while she made the phone call. She was so cute on the phone and only once covered the mouth piece and said, "what should I say?". After she finished the call, I told her how well she did. She smiled and said, "This is fun. I guess I am good at this." I only said, "I couldn't agree more."
I am so proud of the work the kids are doing, I am proud of how well the U student is doing in working with the kids, and on top of it I am having a blast. I am literally on cloud nine when I leave the community center and walk back to work everyday. This is what I would like to do full-time: work with university kids to help them run community programs or participate in meaningful service learning projects where they develop a greater understanding of themselves while they also make great difference to the kids they work with.
So, now about that mural...I am on it.
For the last two years I have worked in the neighborhood surrounding where I go to school. I have volunteered with Somali women in an exercise class. I have also done a lot of research here for the thesis that I am now writing. But this is the first time that I have been able to work directly with some of the kids of the neighborhood. It is a blast.
It all started when I attended a meeting of all the youth workers in the neighborhood this spring. The topic was about summer programming and what each program was doing for the tremendous number of youth in the neighborhood. It was at the meeting I brought up the idea of using a program that Center came up with. (It is a educational program that helps youth decide what public work they want to do in their neighborhood. And then they do it.) The leader of a newly developing program was interested.
After many meetings and with a great stroke of fate I found a university student who still needed a field experience for his undergraduate degree. He was willing to co-lead the program with me. I was asked to be his teacher-mentor, and to monitor his learning for the university program. Meanwhile, I get to spend an hour a day with kids working to do neat things in the neighborhood, in the summer. Fun.
The kids, who range in age from 10-14, have decided that they want to do a mural on a business wall in the neighborhood that gets "tagged" often. They want to dedicate it to some of the recent victims of killings in the neighborhood.
So today, I spent an hour visiting a community center in another part of the city to see a mural program that they run with kids. I made it back to the university in time to meet with the U student before the kids came (they had decided they wanted to hold meetings in one of our conference rooms- there is nothing cuter than when they are running a meeting at tables where they are like miniature men and women). I strategized with "B" about how he was going to coach the kids through some challenging work, and then the kids arrived.
After the kids came, I coached a girl through calling a community organizer for information on how to do a mural. She was so nervous she spent 10 minutes first writing out everything she was going to say and still insisted I sit next to her the whole time while she made the phone call. She was so cute on the phone and only once covered the mouth piece and said, "what should I say?". After she finished the call, I told her how well she did. She smiled and said, "This is fun. I guess I am good at this." I only said, "I couldn't agree more."
I am so proud of the work the kids are doing, I am proud of how well the U student is doing in working with the kids, and on top of it I am having a blast. I am literally on cloud nine when I leave the community center and walk back to work everyday. This is what I would like to do full-time: work with university kids to help them run community programs or participate in meaningful service learning projects where they develop a greater understanding of themselves while they also make great difference to the kids they work with.
So, now about that mural...I am on it.
posted by KLOU | 7:00 PM
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