This week during the Youth Imagine Project, a few students picked dates for their projects or for personal meetings to discuss their projects further. We also focused some more attention on job applications, and a few of our students even applied for the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine’s Youth Ranger position! As our students begin preparing for summer, many of them have more and more questions regarding college as many of them will start the college application process when they return to school in the fall. To help our Youth Imagine volunteers, we have reached out to our friends at the University of New England, who will be sending an admissions official to discuss the application process with our students. More updates on that later!

This week, Jamie and I are also starting work on making the Youth Imagine Project a sustainable program. Thus, these next few weeks are going to dedicated to creating policies and procedures for future Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine staff. It’s a great time for Jamie and I to sit down and think about what worked about the Youth Imagine Project, and what still needs to be changed a little bit. We’ll be covering everything from recruiting and applications to the actual workshops volunteers participated in. We can’t wait to go over every detail!

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks! It’s SAT weekend for high school juniors (good luck to all you wonderful high schoolers who are taking them!) and it’s finals week at USM. Needless to say, both the Youth Imagine volunteers and I have been extremely busy!  Despite our hectic schedules, we had a successful meeting at Portland High School this week. Here are some things are wonderful Youth Imagine volunteers are doing:

• Elfriede is about to start work on her painting. It will detail all of the different vegetables and fruits in our greenhouse. Isn’t that awesome?
• Munira and Hindia are going to work together to do a theatre/storytime program about bullying and culture – more updates later on!
• Samia is going to help out with some tea programs that we have at the Museum. She knows how to make Sudanese and Egyptian tea. Make sure to come in this summer when she is doing these tasty programs!
• Alias is going to help in the putting together of our new greenhouse.
• Suzan wants to do a language program about Arabic. We are thinking she might write a visitor’s name on a piece of paper for them in Arabic, which they can then decorate.

This last week the Youth Imagine volunteers have been participating in a professional development workshop about job applications and resumes. It’s the time of the year when high school students are looking for part-time and summer employment. Do you remember what it was like to get your first job? Wasn’t it exciting? Sometimes the process of finding a good job in high school can be confusing. How can you tell what an employer is looking for? How can you market yourself when you don’t have any job experience? These are some questions we tried to answer on Tuesday.  We cruised around some online job listings, and discussed what types of jobs were appropriate for high school students, and what types of companies hire seasonal employment. Next week, we will be focusing on resume writing. Some of our kids have already gotten a head start on their resumes, which is awesome! We hope that these types of workshops will help our kids enter the job market. It’s a tough thing to get started in for a lot of high school students! 

I also hope that next week we can start picking dates for our students to come in and do their programs with our visitors, or work on the projects that will be displayed in the Museum. I can’t wait to see how all of their projects turn out!

An aspect of the Youth Imagine Project is giving students professional skills that will help them achieve success, no matter what path they may choose to take in life. This Tuesday, Rahma and I drafted a rough draft of a lesson plan for her Where Does Your Food Come From? program. A lesson plan details the objective of your program, the materials needed and the script for the program that tells the reader things that they can say and do with the visitors. Basically, a lesson plan is a description of your project that can be used by others who want to do your program themselves.

Lesson plans are usually used by educators, and some of the things you learn by writing one, such as the format and content needed, are specific to the task.  However, some of the skills that come with learning how to write one can be used in almost any discipline. Writing a lesson plan means learning how to write clearly and concisely, which is valued in any discipline that requires communication.  Writing clearly is one of those things that appear easy, but once you start doing it you learn it is harder than it sounds. Clear writing includes correct spelling, grammar, and appropriate vocabulary. Can you think of a time someone didn’t communicate clearly? Wasn’t it confusing?

Next week, Rahma and I will work together to edit her lesson plan so that it is as clear as possible. In general, writing is a process, and creating a lesson plan is no different. Check in next week for more exciting updates!

Rahma and I get our hands dirty preparing soil blocks.

It seems like everywhere we look, someone new wants to help with our new greenhouse! Alias, one of our Youth Imagine volunteers, has decided that he wants to help with the construction of the greenhouse – from helping plant the seedlings to constructing the raised beds that they will be planted in. On Tuesday, Alias, Rahma, Jamie and I made soil blocks to plant the seeds in. These small soil blocks will be placed in larger ones once they have grown a bit, and then will eventually be moved into the greenhouse. We are just waiting until it gets a little bit warmer! We had a lot of fun getting our hands dirty!

Last Wednesday, Rahma was able to do her education program with our visitors! She taught them about the different parts of a plant. She used a carrot and a strawberry as examples, and while she was teaching them, the kids got to snack on baby carrots! Yum! Rahma was very excited about how well her program went, and remarked that all of the kids were so smart! Both Rahma and Alias have stated that they would like to continue volunteering with us after their Youth Imagine Project term is over. We are very excited to add them to our list of volunteers! Stay tuned for more news next week!

This Thursday I got the chance to meet with Elfriede, one of the Youth Imagine students I have mentioned in prior blogs. She brought in a sketch of the painting she is going to make for us, which details the different types of plants that you can find in our brand new greenhouse! It looked really awesome, and we are working out the details as to how large it can be, as well as what painting supplies we would be able to give her. Soon, she will be coming in to work on it, and it will turn from a pencil sketch to a permanent piece of artwork.

Like Elfriede’s plans for her painting, the Youth Imagine Project is still in the sketching stage. It’s a pilot program, which means certain plans will have to be erased and replaced with more manageable and relevant ideas. This does not mean that the project is doing poorly. On the contrary, alterations are merely an indication that this program could become permanent once it is perfected. Much the same as any piece of art, perfection takes a lot of eraser marks. I guess what I am trying to say is that you don’t fix something just to throw it out! You want to keep it around!

The biggest change we have made to the Youth Imagine Project over the past few weeks is the scheduling. We’ve found that our students have taken on a great amount of responsibility, and have many interests that manifest in other settings than the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine. For example, many of our students are participating in Portland High School’s International Show.  While this is a very exciting opportunity for our students to share their culture with the community, their practices were at the same time as the Youth Imagine Project! We are flexible though, and decided that this was the perfect opportunity to change how we structure the meetings with our students. We’ve found that one-on-one time is most beneficial for both the students and the people who are working with them. This is hard to do when you have 10-12 amazing students in one room. We’ve decided to change the scheduling of the program from one 2 hour group session, to multiple small group or individual meetings that are scheduled in different time slots during the week. We hope that this will make our program more convenient for our busy students, but if not, we will just alter it one more time!

We can’t wait until this volunteer program is perfected, but until then, we will slave over the sketches and make changes until our figurative erasers are merely nubs that we hold between our nails as we scratch the paper trying to make a change. We want to make sure that this program is a perfect fit for the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine, but also a perfect fit for the youth that participate in it. Stay tuned for next week for new and exciting updates!

Have you peeked out into our backyard lately? Have you noticed a new addition? We have a greenhouse now! Isn’t that exciting? We have started planting lots of new fruits and vegetables for our garden, but how will you know what is what? I mean really, how many people know the name of every type of vegetable and fruit (and trust me, we picked some awesomely unusual ones!) and know exactly what it looks like? I’m betting not many!

This is where one of our Youth Imagine students, Elfriede, steps in. She is thinking about painting a picture of all of the different plants in our greenhouse, including kale, carrots, melons, broccoli and so much more! Along with the image, she will also label each plant with its name, the amount of time it takes to grow, and also the vitamins that you can get from eating it. We aren’t exactly sure where this painting will go just yet, but you can be sure it will be located within sprouting distance of the greenhouse so you can reference it.

It will still be a little while before the greenhouse is all set for our visitors. Soon, the plants will all be in their raised beds, and children will be free to explore it and participate in a variety of programs that are being designed specifically for the greenhouse. (Plus, it’s still chilly out, so it wouldn’t be nearly as fun to play in it right now!) When you do get a chance to poke around in it, make sure to keep an eye out for Elfriede’s painting!

It’s mid-term week at USM, which means I’m in the dregs of research and outlines for papers. Personally, I think the best part about doing a presentation, or writing a paper, is polishing them until they sparkle, and just finding that perfect phrase to get my point across. It’s really the little details that matter. This Tuesday, a couple of students began putting the finishing touches on their service-learning projects, and even picked the dates for their programs!

One of our students, Rahma, has decided to do an education program called Where Your Food Comes From. She wants to teach children that their food does not just come from a grocery store, or a kitchen, but is actually grown in a garden first. She hopes to do this program in the Explore Some More room, and then bring the kids to our new greenhouse to show them the plants we are growing! It’s very exciting!

Another one of our students, Suzan, wants to do an education program focused on language. She hopes to teach the kids a little about her own language, Arabic, by teaching them some Arabic letters, and showing the kids how she writes them. Did you know that Arabic is written from right to left, instead of left to right? Isn’t that awesome? Suzan is thinking about doing this program in the We Are Maine exhibit.

These kids are really getting to the point where they can focus on the details of their projects. For example, we asked them how they would keep kids excited while doing their projects. Their answers ranged from food, to art, to music!  Hopefully, next week, we’ll have more amazing ideas to share with you!

This week, the Youth Imagine Project focused on proposal writing. We discussed how a proposal is used, the different sections of a proposal, and then the students began writing their own for their service learning projects. While talking about introductions, I asked the students to think about what makes their projects important, why should someone pay attention to what they are doing? They came up with many awesome answers, but it got me thinking, why is the Youth Imagine Project important?

There are many benefits to service-learning projects. Studies have proven that it can lead to higher graduation rates because it keeps students more engaged with the classroom by connecting academics with real-world experiences. However, as a whole, Portland’s drop-out rate is better than the national average, and our students’ school, Portland High School, has drop-out rates that are better than many other high schools in Maine. In other words, while higher graduation rates are grand, they aren’t exactly the biggest concern. There are many other statistics that prove the benefits of service learning, and the ones most relevant to the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine share the same factor: voice.

Looking back on my high school years, I can honestly say that one of my biggest frustrations with school was a lack of voice. Even the student government, the voice of the entire student body, really didn’t seem to have a say in the decisions that affected us, and it really hurts student morale and confidence. One of the great benefits of service-learning projects is that it gives students voice, especially in the case of the Youth Imagine Project, in which they design their own project. Studies have proven that service-learning projects that allow students to have their own voice lead to students participating more in political engagement and are more connected to their community. One study has even stated that students become more accepting of differences, which I find poignant considering that many of our students are designing projects centered on the idea of teaching children about accepting cultural differences, and the prevention of bullying.

As an upper-level college student, I am often faced with the dilemma of narrowing down a very broad topic into a very detailed thesis.  As you might know, writing papers is all about structure, and you can’t build a strong argument on a shaky thesis. This challenge frequently leaves me staring at my textbooks for hours trying to figure out how to take a grand idea and turn it into something practical. So, I understood the strife of our students this Tuesday as they tried to narrow down and combine their interests and concerns into a manageable service learning project.

We started off with a worksheet which posed the challenge to create a service learning project by combining an interest and a community issue. I personally think the greatest difficulty in creating a project is finding the means of combining both ideas into something that can actually function. For example, it’s easy to say you want to combine your interest in dance with your interest in cultural education, but then little details get in the way, like, how are you going to talk to kids about culture and keep their attention? Are you going to have them participate in the dance, or are you going to perform for them? What dance will you perform and why is it significant? These questions can cause cracks in the foundations of projects, and sometimes they are hard to patch up, but these kids worked through them like champs!

 They have come up with a lot of brilliant ideas. For example, one of our students is concerned with teaching kids about where their food comes from. In other words, she wants to show kids that food doesn’t just come from a grocery store. She is thinking about doing a program in our new greenhouse in order to teach kids about this topic! Isn’t that awesome? There are lots of other great ideas that include topics such as the history of technology, dance, culture, food, art, and giving kids some time to dream. Be sure to check back for individual student interviews, which will allow you to get to know these kids and a little about their projects!

                It’s been a busy week at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. With the Explore India event, and the new program surrounding celebration of Mawlid (did you get to meet some of our students? They were helping at both events!) we haven’t had much time to sit down, organize our thoughts, and answer some questions. That being said, sometimes the big questions come up in hindsight. The other day, we began to realize that we had one big question to answer as we proceed with the Youth Imagine Project: why the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine? Why should we get to create and host this amazing program, with a group of kids that is well beyond our normal age bracket? We began to think of our mission statement – that the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine is very focused on facilitating discovery and imagination through exploration and play. How could this mission statement be related to the Youth Imagine Project?

                Honestly, it comes down to two words in that mission statement: discovery and play.  The Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine offers a safe space for all families and children. It’s that very atmosphere offers a unique opportunity for students to play at being grown up; that is, discover themselves and their interests while being able to make mistakes and try new things. So, I guess the Youth Imagine Project is a lot like dressing up as a firefighter in the Fire Truck exhibit, only these kids are trying on certain careers, passions and personas.

                When you really think about it, play time is a time to try something new without fear of judgment. There are no such things as mistakes during play, only opportunities for improvisation and learning. We hope to bring this mission and attitude to every meeting with these kids.  While it’s important to gain professional skills, it’s just as important to know what makes you tick. We hope that by developing their own service-learning projects, students will be able to try out a potential interest that could become an important aspect of their life… or not.  Sometimes it’s just as valuable to know what doesn’t work for you.  So, in short, what we really want to do is offer these kids some time to discover themselves through play, while giving them a few mental toys to use along the way.