Summer part 2...3 days in
I need to go back to all those summers spent as a camp counselor at Sandy Hill (20 kids per class and 10 girls in my cabin with 2 other counselors) and the one summer at South Run (30 kids per class and 2 other counselors) and figure out exactly how I dealt with the chaos, questions, and obnoxious ADHD, because at the moment I have 4 (I'm alone) and I'm trying as hard as I can to not go bananas.
Summer 2009 must've been especially bad - those were my South Run days - but aside from a few memorable instances, I'm drawing a major blank of the entire summer. There was the time that we made up a game just to tire the kids out (we had them all run in this giant circle in the gym and whenever someone stopped running they had to come in the middle and dance...sounds so cruel but man it worked so well), the time we witnessed this tiny little 6 year old go flying through the air and skid along the ground cheeks first when she got pegged in dodgeball, and the time I thought a girl was a boy and called her a boy publicly*, I have no real memories of it. Maybe I dealt with it 9-5 then didn't think of it at all afterwards. Who knows.
The real difference is that through all of that, I wasn't teaching them anything important. At Fun Camp (the real, true title of the camp in 09. You can imagine the kind of kids that are enrolled in Fun Camp...seriously FUN CAMP WTF!) we basically threw popsicle sticks at them and told them to make a picture frame. Then we forced them to run circles in a gym. Everything was to kid friendly top 40 hits, though, so it at least it sounded super fun.
At DMA, these kids are enrolled here to actually learn a thing or two or three thousand. I have a set curriculum and each day we go through a certain routine. They learn about a famous artist (so far we've been through Klee, Monet and Picasso), paint/draw a piece that imitates that artist, then we go to town in Photoshop. The first day I took some liberties with the sched and we flew through layers and masks and selection tools. Well, I went through it all about 8 times, then had to go through it again 843943 times as they started on their own projects.
These EIGHT YEAR OLDS (put your kid in ferking SOCCER CAMP like normal 8 year olds! These kids have so much energy, and these are just the girls. Any class with boys in it is doomed) might never remember how to unselect with Command + D or that [ / ] makes your brush bigger and smaller, no matter how many times I tell them, and that's okay. I'm not expecting much here. They're far more interested in llamas and telling me stories that go nowhere and singing. They sit at their little desks and sing as loud as they can. I take all requests from them, and their taste is remarkably old for girls who are so young. I have a list taped to the wall that they add to about every 13 minutes: 30 Seconds to Mars, Duran Duran, Earth Wind and Fire, and the Beatles are currently their favorites...they all know Help by the Beatles weirdly well and randomly burst into song when they walk around campus. All that being said, I just had to draw the line at Jack Johnson...no one is singing about bubbly toes as long as I'm in charge.
(I told one of the girls about my lack of appreciation for Jack Johnson and she goes "BUT...HE DID CURIOUS GEORGE!" and I had to hand it to her. She knows her soundtracks. #epicsoundtracks)
However, its still a constant struggle. One of the only things getting me through the day is thinking over and over again: "how would I feel if I was 8 and trying to mask out pictures of puppies in the ocean and I just didn't understand?" I'm kind of amazed no one has cried yet out of sheer frustration. Wait till we get to Illustrator.
Its a huge departure from ob9...found myself really missing that today...yet there are some striking similarities. At one point today, everyone was diligently working and we had Pandora on. It was precious.
Summer 2009 must've been especially bad - those were my South Run days - but aside from a few memorable instances, I'm drawing a major blank of the entire summer. There was the time that we made up a game just to tire the kids out (we had them all run in this giant circle in the gym and whenever someone stopped running they had to come in the middle and dance...sounds so cruel but man it worked so well), the time we witnessed this tiny little 6 year old go flying through the air and skid along the ground cheeks first when she got pegged in dodgeball, and the time I thought a girl was a boy and called her a boy publicly*, I have no real memories of it. Maybe I dealt with it 9-5 then didn't think of it at all afterwards. Who knows.
The real difference is that through all of that, I wasn't teaching them anything important. At Fun Camp (the real, true title of the camp in 09. You can imagine the kind of kids that are enrolled in Fun Camp...seriously FUN CAMP WTF!) we basically threw popsicle sticks at them and told them to make a picture frame. Then we forced them to run circles in a gym. Everything was to kid friendly top 40 hits, though, so it at least it sounded super fun.
At DMA, these kids are enrolled here to actually learn a thing or two or three thousand. I have a set curriculum and each day we go through a certain routine. They learn about a famous artist (so far we've been through Klee, Monet and Picasso), paint/draw a piece that imitates that artist, then we go to town in Photoshop. The first day I took some liberties with the sched and we flew through layers and masks and selection tools. Well, I went through it all about 8 times, then had to go through it again 843943 times as they started on their own projects.
These EIGHT YEAR OLDS (put your kid in ferking SOCCER CAMP like normal 8 year olds! These kids have so much energy, and these are just the girls. Any class with boys in it is doomed) might never remember how to unselect with Command + D or that [ / ] makes your brush bigger and smaller, no matter how many times I tell them, and that's okay. I'm not expecting much here. They're far more interested in llamas and telling me stories that go nowhere and singing. They sit at their little desks and sing as loud as they can. I take all requests from them, and their taste is remarkably old for girls who are so young. I have a list taped to the wall that they add to about every 13 minutes: 30 Seconds to Mars, Duran Duran, Earth Wind and Fire, and the Beatles are currently their favorites...they all know Help by the Beatles weirdly well and randomly burst into song when they walk around campus. All that being said, I just had to draw the line at Jack Johnson...no one is singing about bubbly toes as long as I'm in charge.
(I told one of the girls about my lack of appreciation for Jack Johnson and she goes "BUT...HE DID CURIOUS GEORGE!" and I had to hand it to her. She knows her soundtracks. #epicsoundtracks)
However, its still a constant struggle. One of the only things getting me through the day is thinking over and over again: "how would I feel if I was 8 and trying to mask out pictures of puppies in the ocean and I just didn't understand?" I'm kind of amazed no one has cried yet out of sheer frustration. Wait till we get to Illustrator.
Its a huge departure from ob9...found myself really missing that today...yet there are some striking similarities. At one point today, everyone was diligently working and we had Pandora on. It was precious.
my little basement dungeon
LOL i told them all "keep it simple stupid" and they all gasped...they're not allowed to say stupid :(
painting in the impressionist style
I put this on Facebook, and well twitter too, but its still kind of funny to me and here's the whole story. One of the kids finished early and I told her to try and make a magazine cover about DMA (the camp). She told me she wanted me on the cover, I said sure, so we got a picture from Photobooth. I then left her alone for about 30 min. I come back and this is what I find - basically a single's ad. All my best qualities are displayed on it, so I think she did a great job. This was before I turned down Jack Johnson though...
*This is an awful story. There was a camper in a different camp (probably Not Fun Camp...) that was probably 10, very heavy set with short short (boys length) red hair and always wore a rash guard shirt outside. This particular day was field day and all the campers were mingling by the water balloon tub, camper in question was wearing a light purple rash guard. I'm wandering around when this little child ran up to me and pointed at a kid in Fun Camp who happened to be autistic. "HE'S MAKING FUN OF ME AND CALLING ME A GIRL!" the kid said to me, very hurt and sad. Thinking quick, I answer "Oh don't you worry, everyone knows you're a boy." The kid looks horrified and says back "But...I'M A GIRL!!!!!"
And with that, I looked at them both, inched away slowly super fast, and fled the scene.
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