Observation #4

I have been observing and working with kids in an after school program at the Pillsbury House in south Minneapolis. I do more interacting with the children than just sitting back and observing; which is something I am encouraged - and I actually prefer - to do.

I spend my time with them doing a variety of different activities, such as reading, drawing, doing art projects, dancing, and playing games. There has also been a couple of times when I sat with children during the time designated for working on school work; the kids usually already understood what they needed to do to complete the work, so I would not say that I helped them, but just monitored them to make sure they stayed on task. I have observed for approximately 20 hours so far.

So far, I have not noticed any specific lessons or any other signs of the staff looking for opportunities to talk with the children about race, class, sexuality, or gender. I believe the focus is more on occupying the children's time than creating learning opportunities, which is understandable since it is an after school program; but that is not to say that there are not opportunities to engage the children in conversations about those topics.

As I mentioned, the majority of the time the kids are participating in some type of reading, art related, or interactive play activity. Sometimes during these activities, an opportune moment when a situation touches on one or more of the topics presents itself, but no attempts are made to encourage the children to talk about them. To be fair, though the racial/cultural makeup of kids who attend the after school program on the days I am there is pretty diverse, the children do not seem to have any underlying issues, at least in regards to race, and they all play and get along with each other pretty well; the only bias they exhibit when interacting with each other is in their preferred activity and styles of play.

From what I have observed, I have not been able to distinguish any specific educational philosophy being followed by the staff. There seems to be a heavy focus on exposing the children to the arts and being creative, but I have not witnessed any moments where the activities offered to the children were intended to create a teachable moment beyond the actions related to the activity itself, or engage the children in conversation.