Previous Experences

I worked at the Sunnyside Center for 15 months. For the first 13 months I was their Art teacher then I was moved to six year old counselor. I have to say, this is probably when I felt like an outcast the most. One of the children of a minority race in the program this summer addressed a caucasian girl as "little white girl". I was shocked for a moment as where my co-workers because we wern't exactly sure how to aproach race diffrences assuming most of the students had grown in a culturally diverse population. I think we came to the conclusion of pointing out that we (my co-workers and I) where white and that he wouldn't like it if we called him "little black boy". We also pointed out to another girl that a tee-shirt someone was wearing was white and compared to our skin, we wern't white. We expalainted the same for "black" people.

I've done 20 hours of observation so far at the Ark Community Charter School and I was very optomistic leaving the class. I think that it was a much better place to learn and more inviting then where the Sunnyside Center worked out of durring the school year (PS 2).

I always wanted to work in a small school where I could get children to love art, where I could work with a mixture of anywhere from small children to graduating seniors but now I'm begining to see that I would be more likely to get more children that are intrested in art in a larger school as the ratios are that much higher. I'm still not sure where I'll end up after I earn my MAT from Sage Graduate School but I'm optimistic that I can ignite a passion no matter where I end up.