2nd Week @ SAIL

Another fun filled day at SAIL. I am going to go with my original thoughts on this class from my first visit and say that the first visit last week was not an isolated case where the kids were just a little rowdy. This seems to be an ongoing behavior in the class. 

Once again we were invited to interact with the kids and participate with them in the art making. This was the 2nd and last week they had to work on their landscape collages. It became apparent in their art making that the intro given to the activity a couple weeks ago, was not sufficient. The kids did not seem to fully understand what a "landscape" was (or cityscape, or seascape), or very few children did. Nor did they understand what it was to make a collage. The children repeatedly came up to Mrs. Dorothy to show her their finish products at which point in 90% of the cases the children were sent back to work because "all the yellow space was not covered" (the paper given to work on was yellow). 

I thought it might have been helpful if the children had a little bit more of an explanation of what these collages and landscapes were, maybe be shown some examples from real life artists. It almost seemed like it was a task given that just had to be seen to completion. 

Another thing I found odd was at least 2-3 times I saw Mrs. Dorothy explaining to the kids how to use Modge Podge. Why did her explanation not work before? It had already been 1 week since they started the project. Not that she didn't explain it the first time but apparently it did not sink in to some of the students because they were using the modge podge as regular glue. They probably didn't understand it because the class was being rowdy when it was explained. 

Also at the table I was sitting at I had to tell the kids (at least once each and a couple of them I had to tell more than once) that they were not to swing their hands around in animated gestures while holding scissors or run/walk around the classroom with their scissors pointed out. Granted the scissors were kid's scissors and pretty dull. I just would think that when you have a group of young kids (even old kids) that you would stress in the beginning that the scissors are to be handled in a specific way. This was not mentioned once to the class as a whole.

I know I sound very critical of this classroom and the instructor and I am not trying to be that way but these are just my observations. I will say that this week was a little less rowdy and loud than last week. Amanda suggested to Mrs. Dorothy (after the first class and before the second) that instead of having all the materials out on the floor for the kids to come after that the materials be passed out by the teachers instead so the kids never got up from their seats. This seemed to work well. Such a simple idea that nobody had thought of before  I guess and with three adults in the room (not including Ingrid, Hernan, and I) this was not a hard task. 

One last but important thing happened at the beginning of the second class. Two of the kids were fighting for a seat, eventually the seat was taken away and both children were told to find a new seat. So one of the boys goes for one seat and the other goes for the one across the table but then last second decides he wants the same seat the other kid chose (odd?). And they fight again.  One of the children starts to act up slamming his body against a wall and saying things about the other boy. The other boy gave up his seat without being told to and went to another chair (yes, there were a lot of empty chairs). But by this time the other boy was already being very disruptive and probably didn't even notice that his friend had given up the seat to him. 

Basically, Mrs. Dorothy told the class to ignore him, he began to play with the flashlights he had found at which point Mrs. Dorothy called his main teacher down to come and get him. In the mean time Mrs. Dorothy and everyone else ignored the boy. Another teacher came to get him, of course he didn't want to go and the teacher grabbed him by his upper arm and pulled him out of the room. He got out of her grip and I saw him run up the stairs and away from her as she ran after him.

It was an unsettling experience for me. I am not sure how I would have handled such a difficult situation but I am pretty sure I didn't like the way it was handled. At the same time I can't offer an alternative option. I wonder what I would have done had I been in Mrs. Dorothy's situation. You can't let the boy go on disturbing the class and ruin the experience of the other kids. But at the same time I wouldn't want to take away art making time away from the boy either. Obviously this kid is a troubled kid who probably has had discipline problems before. I think next week I will ask more about how they handle things like that and kids like that, both in the classroom and in the art room. 

EDIT @ 11:30 p.m.

To go back and try to  make this sound a little less critical as all the above I will say that Mrs. Dorothy does have amazing patience with the level of noise and commotion in the room. I would probably break down and cry.  And to go back and comment on what I wrote above, I did read Michelle's past reflection on her first day at SAIL during the last rotation and learned that Mrs. Dorothy has in fact presented some artists who work in collage prior to the students beginning their own. Just goes to show me I don't always know the full story!