Observation #3

So far, I have spent about 10 hours volunteering/observing youth in an after school program at the Pillsbury House in south Minneapolis. I believe there are four full-time staffers that work with the children in the program; during the days that I have volunteered, there were always one or two artists of various disciplines, and a number of college students volunteering, on site working with the youth as well. Out of the staff, two of them are African American, and the other two are white, and they are all women. The artists working with the children that I have come in contact with was an Asian male, an African American male, an Indian (or possibly Arabic) woman, and a white woman. All of the volunteers that I seen were young white women. The administration that I have met consisted of a white woman (the volunteer coordinator) and a Hispanic woman (front desk receptionist). The students in the program seem to be of various races and cultures. During the days that I volunteer there is usually around 40-50 kids in the program, and there are usually a few more girls than boys. The kids in the program are in the age range of first through sixth grade; they all seem to get along with each other for the most part, and there is no division amongst them in terms of race or gender, but they do sometimes tend to group together based on their age groups.

Since it is an afterschool program and not specifically a learning institution, I do not think that too many of Delpit’s principles applies to what the program does. There is time set aside for the children to do their homework, but there are no instructors, and they do not communicate with their teachers to know what the children are supposed to do for their homework. However, there are some principles I think that the staff does address on some level, including:

CREATE A SENSE OF FAMILY AND CARING IN THE SERVICE OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

The staff does seem to communicate with the parents or other family members that pick up the children, talking to them about their day, regardless if the child had a rough (or good) day.

HONOR AND RESPECT THE CHILDREN’S HOME CULTURE

The children in the program represent a diverse number of cultures, and the staff seems to respect that; the most telling examples of this is when they talk with the parents, often times speaking with them in their native language.

There is a lot of arts related programming, such as music, dancing, painting, drawing, crafts, writing stories, reading, and acting, but the projects that I have seen the kids take part in were not specific to any certain culture.