Upon arriving at the detention center, it was a bit of a different experience than I was expecting. Part of what was additionally shocking to me was the subtle reminders of where they were, such as the barbed wires in the yards. It brings to reality that although this place is a school, it is also a much darker place than that. I love the murals within the location, but at the same time, it’s not particularly easy to overlook them in the face of the rest of the details, like their rather limited rooms.
My group was a certainly interesting batch. Two of them, J and K (I don’t exactly know how to spell it) seemed to be the jokesters of the group, and although things were tense at times with the teachers, they seemed friendly enough. The others in the group such as the pair of Jhs were a bit quieter but they seemed to interact alright with one another. They were generally dismissive of the project rather than open to it, and maybe part of it was that I had not adequately prepared, as I was not expecting 5 students at once.
Interestingly enough, one of the other teachers in the room seemingly had experience with the book-making project before and produced a past copy that she distributed for them to read. They did not exactly take it seriously, but they seemed to still be having fun. I think their age group is around 17, maybe a year younger. They seem like bright kids, but part of their attitudes shows that they really aren’t taking the project seriously, so hopefully I can change their minds about that.
Theresa Dolson
Nick,
I took out the names and replaced them with initials. We have to be careful not to put their names in this blog because it is semi-public.
It is interesting to note their reactions to the idea of storytelling. Because you were dropped into the group alone, and the vagueness of their request that we “get oriented” and orient their students, it seems like they got to hear about stories but not EXPERIENCE storytelling. I think that contributed to their reluctance to the idea. It will be interesting to see how that changes next week as you get to lead them through some story creation and story sharing.