Jillian Keyes

Week 1

 

October 16, 2014

 

Field Notes:

 

            The first visit at the Boys and Girls Club started off very chaotic and hectic. There were about fifteen to eighteen of the children, but I never got an actual count because they were all over the place and didn’t all stay for the whole activity. We got off to a very late start because two of our partners came twenty minutes late and they had all of the supplies for the activity. Our activity was held in the big community room right when you walk into the building, so there were many distractions coming in and out of the area. Luckily for our late partners, the students were not gathered as promptly as we expected. We ended up just giving them sketchbooks to put their names on while we waited for the other two partners. This unfortunately made us look very unprofessional and next time we will distribute the materials evenly so that we all have something to give them if our partners come late or don’t show up.

 

The first activity we chose was for them to make a watercolor landscape painting of anywhere they could be in the world. Most of them did what we asked them to do, in some way or another, but some got off track a lot. About ten percent of them sat quietly painting their picture, while the rest were yelling and screaming and running around. Some of them refused to paint, but wanted to draw in their sketchbooks. One boy, who was the only one not talking, drew a landscape with crayons instead of the watercolor. Other than him, they all argued with each other a lot, but it was usually very short lasting or jokingly. It seemed like all the girls were friends because they were all joking around with each other the whole time. This was definitely a rowdy but entertaining bunch.

 

Tre told the girls they were “being feisty today” and the girls responded with:

“Today? We born feisty!”

 

One girl exclaimed, “HEY, I need QUIET when I paint!”

This was ironic because she wasn’t even painting.

 

Tre told one of the boys that his artwork looked good and the girls were screaming, “Oooh, you lied to him!”

 

The girls kept calling each other “burnt chocolate” which I was a little concerned with until they were all laughing about it.

 

One boy drew a “dead man,” which was a big smiley face with Xs over the eyes and the tongue hanging out. He wanted to finish early so he could leave and go play in the gym.

 

One girl chose Disney World as her place she would like to be in the world, so she wanted to draw Mickey Mouse. This struck up so much commotion that I never expected. All of a sudden, about six other girls wanted to trash their painting and draw Mickey Mouse too. The first girl wanted one of us to draw it for her, so the rest wanted that too. I tried to explain how to draw it without actually drawing it, but they didn’t want that. When I said no to drawing it for them, they went to my other partners and got one of them to draw it for them. I don’t think she should have done this, because the girl just took her drawing and said she was done. That completely defeated the purpose of the children’s art making. The cleverest thing I saw with this was that one of the girls took one of the empty cups and used the circles as templates for drawing the face and ears of Mickey Mouse. She was so proud of coming up with this, but then the rest of the girls copied her and all did the same thing in their sketchbooks.

 

Towards the end, when they were finishing up, one of the girls handed her artwork to Tre and said, “Happy? Satisfied? Deal with it.” They were all so sassy like this.

 

A lot of the children did not follow the directions fully, but most of them liked painting. This activity got very messy very quickly, but thankfully they all helped clean up when it was time to go. For future activities, I think we should incorporate their sketchbooks because they really liked having their own sketchbook with their name on it.

 

 

Reflections:

 

Gender Stereotypes:

• The girls used a lot of different colors and filled up most of their page

• The boys used 2-3 colors on their paintings

• The girls’ paintings were fairly symmetrical, while the boys’ were not

• The boys drew sports-like things

• The girls drew perfume bottles and incorporated pop culture

• One boy drew just the words “Foot Locker” at the top of his page, but later added a shoe and a basketball after we asked him to.

• The girls were more focused on chatting, while the boys just wanted to finish and get into the gym.

• The girls wanted approval of their drawing, and the boys didn’t care

• The boys seemed more focused than the girls

• The girls who were focused drew houses with yards and flowers

 

Peer Influence:

• All of the girls copied each other with everything

• One of the girls took a second piece of paper, so they all wanted a second piece.

• The girl who drew Mickey Mouse started a huge commotion over drawing Mickey Mouse

• Once one of them got off topic, they all got off topic

• The boys separated themselves from the girls, so they were more focused and got their paintings done faster than the girls because they weren’t worried about what everyone else was doing.

 

Pop Culture:

• All the girls drew Mickey Mouse

• The one boy drew Foot Locker

• One girl drew a perfume bottle with some kind of logo on it which she told me she saw on a commercial

• One boy drew Lego on his page

• Another boy drew a football field with his favorite team

 

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