Field notes

What?

Friday, 9am
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It’s been a while since the last set of field notes, and this one’s going to be a bit short because Friday’s visit to the Center was very odd. I walked in, signed in, and looked for the placement coordinator. She wasn’t at her desk, and I couldn’t find anyone in the office. The meeting room where I usually stored my jacket and bag (with my phone, wallet, etc.) was being used, by what appeared to be a staff member and a family. Not wanting to intrude/hear personal things about someone’s disability or medical history, I stuffed my jacket in my bag and took the whole thing downstairs, hoping to find “Clyde”, the sculpture instructor.

1. Today when I walked in, the kids were finishing up lunch. They were really quiet and calm for the first few minutes and I just walked around, observing them clean up.
2. I went into the block room where a couple of the girls were playing with plastic straws. One of the girls exclaimed, "I know you!" and they asked me for my name again. We had a conversation about my name and them they continued to play with their straws
3. One of the boys (Bob) came in with an easter egg hidden in his pocket. He kept taking it out at random points and showing it to his friends and teachers.
4. After a little while of playing indoors, the teachers decided that the weather was good enough to go outdoors.

This past Wednesday at the center, we met in the woodshop to continue our white oak box project. Because it was snacktime when we got there, we headed over to a different part of the center, where we checked out a petri dish paint project some partcipants had been working on (playing on the science/bacteria themes we had begun to explore in the labs at Haverford). Returning to the woodshop, we began by heating a small block of wax, which, once liquified, was collected in small tools we could use to draw on our wood pieces. Carl and I each took two sides of the box and drew wax designs on them. We then brought our pieces over to another part of the room, where we sprayed them first with black tea, and then once that had dried, with some liquid rust.

1. Students playing a lot more than they were last week, there's a lot more running around and stuff 
2. One of the kids latches on to me right away, I'll call him Adam. Adam has a car that he's playing with that he's apparently brought from home.

Notes: Today, I played freeze tag with the kids at recess. Ms. S and Mr. D were playing too, and alternated between participating, running away from the “it” and unfreezing players, and keeping an eye out that the game didn’t get too rowdy and resolving disputes about the rules. Part way through the game, I noticed that Hayley and Jenny, the only two girls in the glass, were some of the only people not playing tag. I went over to talk to them (got frozen on the way and had to get unfrozen by Ms. S) and asked why they weren’t playing. Hayley said that Jenny was feeling sick and didn’t want to run. I asked if they wanted to make sand castles; we made a tower with walls and a moat and a drawbridge.

Work at the center on Wednesday involved a lot of sanding. We got there late, so the artists had already begun their snack break, and those of us from Bryn Mawr and Haverford gathered in the woodshop to talk to the teacher about the next steps of the project. When the artists returned, we got in our pairs, selected the wood that would serve as the sides of our boxes, and began our sanding rotation. We used a number of tools, including hand sanders (attached to gloves that we put on), the sander powered by the stationary bike, and a tool that smoothed the corners of the wood pieces. When we were done with all of these processes, we sat with our partners and worked on drawing bodies and body parts on the outside sides of the wood pieces.

1st Placement 2/29/16

Enrique (international 5 year old visitor)