Within the past week, I have begun my internship at ACH Clear Pathways, a non-profit after-school program that focuses on providing creative outlet opportunities to children between the ages of five and thirteen. The program I am participating in is the art program with Mr. John. In my internship, I am primarily responsible for helping and encouraging the children with their art projects, which I do in various ways. One of the most common ways I do this is by participating alongside the children as they create artwork.
For example, this week, the students were working on a parts of speech drawing activity, where they had to choose an adjective, noun, and verb and transform them into a picture. There were so many creative variations of this activity, they drew fancy cats dancing, sweaty toasts running, and even tall mice balling. One way I encouraged the students to participate in this activity was by organizing a competition where me and a couple of the students would each draw our own part of speech pictures, and at the end, whichever drawing made us laugh the hardest would win. Unfortunately, my fancy mushroom walking did not win, but it was okay because the wet rug juggling was way funnier than mine.
Another activity the students completed in the art room was understanding the difference between the hardness and blackness in sketch pencils, which they did by creating a sketch pencil chart. I participated alongside the students in this activity to help them stay focused on their chart and help them review the information that Mr. John had taught them in the earlier lesson.
Although I have only spent six hours at my internship so far this semester, I am already learning so much about the effectiveness of teaching with the students rather than at the students. What I mean by this is, that instead of merely telling the students what to do, I participate alongside them teaching them through my own examples and process.
Building Bridges 