Last Thursday

Last Thursday I completed 20 hours at my service learning site.  I guess that I am now officially done with this assignment.  I have plans however, to return for another Saturday to help Brad out with a workshop entitled Turkey Madness.  Until then I will work on completing the demo for this project.  My service learning experience has been positive.  Brad and I have plans to work together in the future to develop a program through the museum to take art to seniors in nursing homes in the Jackson area.  I am currently writing a paper on art therapy with geriatric populations that I think will be useful in further developing our plans.  

Ella Sharp Experience and Photo Collage

This is a collage of some of the pictures that I took last week.  I finally remembered to take my camera with me.  Last Saturday my son and I participated in the Creepy Crawlers Saturday workshop with Brad, and the children and their parents/grandparents who dropped in.  There were approximately 20 participants, I think we had a pretty good turn out considering it was the first gathering.  

Day 3

Last Thursday October 20, I visited my service learning site.  I finally remembered to take my camera with me and took pictures around the gallery, classrooms, and museum.

Brad asked me to attempt to make contact with the nursing homes/rehabilitation centers that I compiled a list of last week.  He is interested in taking art to seniors and in discovering if the nursing homes in the area would be interested in making art activities available to their residents.  I left messages with five homes.  After talking to Brad concerning these details; he thinks that we may need to reconsider our approach; possibly developing a presentation and initially focusing in on one large area home.

Brad surprised me today by offering me the opportunity to teach one of the art classes he is currently teaching at the beginning of the year.  The class is for preschool students and their parents.  I taught a class like this previously at the Jackson School of the Arts.  I am really pleased with the offer, but my life is so busy right now; I never imagined that twelve credit hours at the graduate level would be so overwhelming, but now I know.  I won't make this mistake again.  I'll start collecting project ideas for children between the ages of two and four and hopefully I will get on top of my responsibilities before the position begins.  I love the idea of teaching this class, although it's just one hour a week it is a start in the right direction.     

Saturday Tutorial Project: Creepy Crawler

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Here is the Creepy Crawlers demo that I mentioned making in my previous post.  We will be sharing this project this weekend at the museum art tutorial.  I think the kids will have fun making it.  It is suspended by yarn on a stick so that it can be operated somewhat like a marionette.

My Service Learning Experience - Day 2

This week when I arrived at my service learning site Brad wanted me to get started by creating a file on the computer where I could save my documents.  He told me that he really liked the spider that I created for the Creepy Crawlers project that we will be sharing next Saturday with kids and their parents who attend the Community Arts Tutorial.  He posted a picture of it and an announcement on the Ella Sharp Museum website (www.ellasharp.org).  I would like to post a picture on my blog, but I can't seem to copy it from the website,  I need to take my camera in with me next week and take a picture of it.

I did a demo of our next project, Turkey Madness, but Brad had to step out so I did not get his reaction yet.  I'll post a picture of it next week if we use it.

I typed up a list of the nursing homes in the area, which Brad asked me to research, and made it available to him.  He is interested in taking art to seniors.  I shared with him that I am interested in geriatric art therapy; we may be able to work together on this.   

Things seem to be going fine; this Saturday me and my son will attend the Creepy Crawlers tutorial to man the hot glue gun stations. 

Kemara

My Service Learning Experience - Day 1

Yesterday, Thursday October 6th, I met Brad Zenz, the Director of Education in the lobby at the Ella Sharp Museum of Art and History at 3225 Fourth St., Jackson, MI .  This is where I will be completing my service learning assignment.  Brad led me back to his office, which is a large room consisting of three desks/divided work areas surrounded by bookshelves filled with books, wall racks with large hanging portfolios, and works of art that are either going to be displayed in the gallery or have recently been taken off display, (I think).

Brad got me logged in on a computer first thing, then discussed with me some of his up coming projects.  Brad teaches community art classes, and has received a grant to offer Saturday art classes once a month to children who are within the preschool to 6th grade age range and their parents.  He is planning the next five activities that will allow participants to create projects that coincide with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines Day, and the season of Spring.  He has tentatively planned projects for these occasions, but has not actually created the projects to plan for instruction and materials.  He also advertises in the Jackson Citizen Patriot, the local newspaper and the Salesman an advertisement publication.  He asked me to prepare press releases for these events, based on previous press releases that he had on file in the computer, and to create the "demo" of the Halloween project "Creepy Crawlers".

Brad and I walked over to the art classroom and looked through the art supplies to find items suitable for constructing the demo.  After pulling out several bins filled with different items like foam cut outs, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and pom-poms, we came up with a concept and I offered to create it so Brad could get back to his office and take care of his other responsibilities.  He agreed but first went outside to spray paint a foam ball for the body of our creepy crawler, and I proceeded to gather the supplies needed to make a spider marionette. 

I completed the project, straightened up the room and returned to the office area.  Brad was very pleased with the spider mock-up and we discussed minor changes to simplify the process.   I went back to the computer and worked on finishing the press releases advertising the Saturday art classes and Brad stepped out to attend a couple of meetings. 

I spent four hours there on my first day, and I'm rather pleased with the work I completed.  I think this will prove to be a valuable experience.  Brad mentioned some ideas he has for sharing art with seniors in the retirement facilities in the community and I'm very interested in assisting him in anyway that I can with this endeavor; seniors are one of the populations I am interested in working with in my future counseling and art therapy practice.