What I learned at the Greater Denton Arts Council

When I began my internship in August of 2018,  I was a little apprehensive and envisioned that the internship would help me to improve my communication skills. In many ways, my time at the Greater Denton Arts Council did. I find myself considerably more comfortable lecturing or speaking to a large group of people. Although, I believe the most important lesson I took away from the experience is how to interact with children and handle situations where a student is upset or discouraged. In the first few weeks of the internship, I was rather standoffish and unsure of how I should speak to the kids. Slowly I became more comfortable and learned to sort embrace how my students saw the world. I really tried to follow their chain of thought or discuss any subject that they brought up. That included trying understand their viewpoints on the art we discussed in class and even introducing myself to a host of  stuff animals. Many of which got their own chair and pencils for class.

It really took several moths for me to learn how to handle it when one of the students started crying. Usually one student per class, would get really upset because they were not happy with what they made, they missed their parents, or they had a bad day at school. At first I did not really know how to deal with it. I was rather awkward and my supervisor would have to step in. Eventually I learned that taking the students mind off of it was a good way of getting them to calm down. Last week, I had a student that was really upset that he got paper mache paste on his face and hair during at an activity. The poor guy had tried to put the newspaper strip into the paste too forcefully and it ended up splashing back at him. When he realized that he was covered in paste, he started crying and hid under the water fountain. His father came around at this time and started trying to coax him out from under the fountain. I ended up telling him that paper mache paste is made of flour so if he sat in a warm place he would turn into a loaf of bread. I also told him that if I turned into to bread I would eat myself with jelly and started to pretend to eat my hand. He started laughing and actually came out. When all else fails be ridiculous and distract them.

I also found that it helps to have the students try to list the things that are going well when they get upset. For example, if they unhappy with their artwork I try to have them list what they like about it or I will list what I like about it. It took me a few months to start having them do that. There is one thing that I which I got to learn more about--classroom management. I really struggled with keeping the students on task and I hoping that with my next internship I could learn how to do it effectively.