Accident, Failure, & Addiction

Two years ago, I had little to no understanding of what being a refugee meant. Even less so – I had no idea of what being a refugee in Baltimore meant. A museum staff member who volunteered with the Refugee Youth Project spoke up about the work she was involved with, saw an opportunity for both organizations, and created a bridge. Within three months time, a small grant was written, buses were organized, museum staff volunteered to teach, and I scrambled to write the first lesson plans. With the crucial help of the Refugee Youth Project, museum staff underwent a couple of training sessions on working with refugees, ESOL teaching techniques, and flexing of their best educator skills. We didn’t really know what we were in for.
Throughout the next eight months, museum staff experienced a roller coaster of emotions regarding their work with the children. In general, there were perhaps more feelings of defeat than success. The language barrier was in many ways the least of our problems – instead we found ourselves unprepared for the intense energy of the children, their lack of experience with structured environments, and behavior issues that often scared us regarding their own safety. All that said, we were all addicted to what we were learning from these children – or perhaps more adequately, what these children were giving us.

Each time I wrote a lesson plan, I struggled with the five bullet points I wanted to fill with goals and objectives. I could only focus on one – that the children walked away excited about the art experience they had encountered that day. However, in order to reach that goal – many things had to happen. How could they be excited if all we were doing was trying to get them to stay in a line? How could they participate in the activities if they didn’t understand why or what they were doing? How could they be excited if they didn’t have anything to relate to in the artwork? How could they focus and grow if they were arguing among themselves? How could I quantify these things so that I could take them back to the lab and create the magic solution? How could I simultaneously prove to the institution that this was a worthy endeavor and that we were doing incredible work?

I quickly found out that I was not doing enough. We did not know enough about their backgrounds, and we did not have close enough relationships to gain their full trust and respect. I was so frustrated that I had not given the kids more of my time, and I feared that the pattern would repeat itself the following year. The Refugee Youth Project and the Walters both found themselves in need of more help in order to make this cultural experience more meaningful, and therefore we embarked on acquiring a Community Art Corp (Americorp) member.

We are now more than halfway through the year with our Community Art Corp member, and we have found ourselves united as partners, more educated, and more addicted than ever to the involvement with this audience. This second year has brought back some of the same challenges along with some new ones, but I'll save that for another post and end on this happy note.