Look! Look at me, y'all, I'm posting. I just posted yesterday and I'm posting again today! I'm the awesome. So, today was the first day of Art Reach, which was pretty cool. I had a fun time working with all the little kids, both the small ones and the youth sized ones (it's pretty funny b/c sometimes I can't tell which is which). I was helping out in the art room today, which was unbelievably hectic. We were trying to get the kids to do prints made out of foam. They would carve an image into the foam and we would roll paint onto it. The idea was that the places that they carved should have stayed white, but the foam was so thin that the paint got everywhere and most of the prints were just blobs of color. Some of the kids apparently got upset about this lack of success, but in my room I think there was too much chaos for the kids to really internalize what was going on enough to react. And when I say chaos I mean 30 small children, paint and sharp sticks kind of chaos. It was wild, but I really don't mind that kind of madness, I can usually keep my head pretty well even when a lot of different things are happening at once. We had props workshop in the afternoon with a lot of highly technical Crayola marker field and had a great time regaling some kids with the wisdom that I've gained in my 56 years of life, much of it lived before the invention of telephones. Really guys, there was so much crazy noise and motion and thinking ahead and thinking on your feet and I was busy constantly, but it was great and vibrant and I loved hanging out with the kids and teasing them and playing duck-duck goose and enjoying hearing about their schools and lives. They are very funny and...bold. They don't seem to be afraid of anything. I have lots of theories about kids (as I'm sure Heather will tell you, she's a guide this week, so she's hearing a lot of them) but one of the things that I don't understand is why we make these blunt categorical distinctions between children and adults. Adults are not the only ones with thoughts or the only ones with knowledge to impart. I swear I learn as much, and with such freshness, from hanging out with kids as I do when I'm at school, it's just a different kind of learning and a different kind of knowledge. I have much more that I could say about the things that I have been thinking about children and adults, and will probably come up with even more in my current practicum, but for now it's getting late and I have to get up rather early tomorrow to continue spreading joy and goodness throughout the earth. Btw, I had a call from the library, and I hope and pray that it is about my wallet. Please God, let them have found it...
Goodnight all,
S.
2 comments:
I have often myself thought that this adult/child boundary was foolish and a nuisance. Children are almost treated as non-persons often. The sentiment that children teach us is widely acknowledged amongst teachers, but I don't think that even many of them see kids as actually the same type of creature. We change so much from childhood to adulthood and our whole brain structure and development and shtuff is different, but really we are the same things only a bit more full of confusion I think as we get older and awe when we are younger. Something like that. Anyways... just glad to hear youre doing well. Much loves and missings, Hope
Ho there, and welcome back, blog postings. I called you today! Check out your home answering machine.
ps, I think my housemate's cat had an accident outside my door: all appears clean, but there is a stank. I'm afraid to ask. Or, now that I've taken off my shoes, to leave my room.
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