Connection and Support: An Eye Opening Semester at the Boys and Girls Club

I have spent the past semester as a service-learner and ethnographer at the Boys and Girls Club in Bloomington, Indiana. I honestly have learned more than I ever thought I would have through this experience, and found that through a critical reading of several articles for class, I was able to draw more knowledge from my time there than I ever would have as a volunteer. I had spent actually a lot of time working in and for organizations that support the growth and development of children before this semester, but I had never taken that step back and thought to analyze my situation for anything other than the status quo. Because I had so much experience working with children going in to the Boys and Girls Club, I often thought back to an mock ethnography we read at the beginning of the semester, "Body Ritual of the Nacirema", by Horace Miner, which can be read here. This is a humorous piece, designed to make us realize the oddity inherent in all cultures and customs, even our own. I often thought of myself as being one of the "Nacirema" while at the Boys and Girls Club, and that I had to constantly check myself from falling into an overly comfortable pattern of being I had known so well from before my days of being a service learner.
As such, I found that I had a very aware, and very informative semester. I am certain that the information I gleaned both in class from readings, and especially from observing as well as serving at the Boys and Girls Club will be useful into the future, as I continue to work with children. However, I do believe that from now on I will always think back to the "Nacirema" every once in awhile as I do so, and I will remember to observe and learn from my surroundings.

Major Projects:
American Girls: Meek and Mild, or Bold and Wild?

A Portrait of Chris Tann: Renaissance Man

Producing Desired Behavior in Children

Maintaining Authority and Making Connections: The Balance Between Controlling Behavior and Making A Difference



Supporting Projects: (in chronological order)

A Short Analysis of "Body Projects"

Visual Representations of the Boys and Girls Club

A Relation of Positive Reinforcement and Strength-Based Discipline

My Difficulties as "Ethnographer" vs. "Insider"

One Last Verbal Snapshot of the BGC

Finally, my three favorite images from the semester:
Chaos
Fierce
Basketball

One Last Verbal Snapshot of the BGC

For this final blog post, I would like to do a verbal snapshot and impression of another person at the BGC who I find incredibly interesting, and a key part of what makes the club unique. The person I chose is Dave Steele*. Dave is an integral part of both carrying out the over arching image and mission of the club, as well as the main staff member involved in the club's day to day activities. He is an interesting person - despite having little educational background in recreation (he majored in a liberal arts field), Dave is incredibly enthusiastic about the club and making sure it runs smoothly and in the way the mission of the establishment dictates. Because of this, Dave is a bit of a rule enforcer. He does not tolerate the breaking of the rules, and will always pull a volunteer aside if they have broken a rule to correct them. Because of this policy, he is not exactly popular with the service learners in general and even the work study staff. Earlier in the semester, once, in class I mentioned that a work study staff member kicked some boys off a game that was on the line of being inappropriate because a higher ranking staff member was about to enter the room; that person was Dave. He can be a bit of a tee-totaler, but he is also quite multifaceted. When you might expect someone with such a love of rules and decorum to be boring and quite the downer, Dave is quite the opposite. For instance,there was a day when all the staff members dressed up as their ideal career. What did Dave long to be? A lounge singer, complete with ruffled pink shirt, purple plastic microphone, and flamboyant wave. He traipsed around in the club all day, waving at children and occasionally even bursting into song. Now, you might think this would lead to the members not taking him seriously, but no. On the very same day, I saw Dave pull a misbehaving member aside, and speak to him pretty sternly without ever removing the play microphone from his hand. The result was astounding: the child was reformed instantly, not even needing Dave to say much of anything. It is apparent that though the kids are eager and able to have fun with Dave, they know that what Dave says is not a suggestion. Dave is the type of person that is essential to the functioning of any successful youth recreation: fun, enthusiastic, and willing to lay down the law. *Name changed to protect privacy

My Difficulties as "Ethnographer" vs. "Insider"

I have found the process of taking field note to be both challenging and interesting, as it was difficult for me to separate myself from the BGC itself and to not fully become one of the members of the community instead of an ethnographer. I did not anticipate this being a problem, and in fact I chose the BGC largely because I thought I would be more comfortable there and more able to access insider information. However, it seems to me that this insider information may have been more of a burden than an advantage, much like the ethnography we read about the med student and the ICU. I am, I think, overly informed and too much a part of communities like the BGC to be able to objectively observe and reflect without substantial effort on my part. This was not aided by the fact that the BGC is not by any means a place where it is easy to take a step back from the scene at hand, or to quietly jot down notes about the situations that unfold. Rather, there is continually someone that needs help or something that needs doing, and not doing either of those things means you're not doing your job as a service learner (at least in the eyes of the BGC). So where does this leave me in terms of field notes? Well, mainly, doing quite a bit of observation. Even then, though, I find it to be incredibly difficult to resist the urge to tell that small child dangling off a banister that he should probably find a better activity, or to join in on leading an activity with a particularly frustrated looking volunteer. However, I realized that this fact was a realization in itself about the culture and community that is present at the BGC, and as I looked around during my observations, I found my suspicions to be confirmed. Literally every adult at the Boys and Girls Club is either actively engaged in a task or very actively seeking one out - laziness is really not apparent. This is different from what I have experienced in other youth organizations where I have been involved, and is not what I had expected to encounter. In conclusion, I found that through my difficulties and frustrations with my field notes, I had made a startling discovery after all: those who spend their time at the BGC, for whatever reason, are truly motivated to energize and aid the club.

Relation of Positive Reinforcement and Strength Based Discipline

For this assignment, I will be relating the two articles "From Positive Reinforcement to Positive Behaviors: An Everyday Guide for the Practitioner", by Ellen Sigler and Shirley Aamidor and "Strength Based Discipline that Taps into the Resilience of Youth" by Scott Larson. These two articles take slightly different views on how to discipline and speak to children on a regular basis in order to encourage long-term positive behaviors. Neither of the two are encouraging hitting or spankings, or any other kind of corporal punishment be inflicted on the child, but rather they vary in degree of harshness.
Sigler focuses almost exclusively on the actions that an educator or caretaker should take when a child behaves the way that educator wants them to, and how to reward them to encourage that action. She does not suggest that every single action the child makes should be praised, but that those that do garner praise should always be recognized. Often, she says, people fall to one or the other sides of this argument in their actions, they either do not praise the good actions enough, or they praise seemingly without discretion, telling the child they are behaving correctly, even when that is not the case. This is bad because children are very able to tell the difference between earned praise and unearned praise, and if the praise becomes a constant, not a reward, that praise has no effect, or at the least that effect is seriously diluted.
Scott Larson chooses to talk more about how a disciplinarian should react when a child acts out, or in the least behaves in a way that is undesirable. It is important, he says, that the "badness" of the deed and the child are separated early on in the process, that just because a child has acted badly does not mean they themselves are bad, only that they have done something they shouldn't have. However, he does say that we should place the blame for those actions on the child, not making the acting out a blameless affair. For example, one could ask: "You're a good kid - why did you do _____?" This way, the child knows they themselves are not implicitly bad, but also that the actions the have been engaging in are not acceptable.

Visual Representations of the Boys and Girls Club

1. For my first manipulation of this image, I chose this effect. As this is a picture of the art supplies in the computer room, I think that this effect brings out the primacy of the subject and the image, and shows how these things can be a very basic need for a program such as those at the Boys and Girl's Club, even if they do not always seem that way.

2. I really like the effect that this filter has on the photo, as it seems that everything in the picture is almost vibrating. This seems very appropriate to me, as I have spent quite a bit of time in this room and I know that it is a room very much full of energy, something you really wouldn't expect a computer lab to be after having been to so many on IU's campus. It seems as though this effect on the photo is showing how changed the room can be when there are kids in it, and that change is something I myself have already witnessed.

3. I chose this effect because it seems to me that it draws a attention to how many individual items comprise what we see in the photo, and that really applies to both this specific club as well as the organization as a whole. From the outside, it is not really apparent how much individual work and time goes in to the club, but there are a very large number of people who have to work hard to make everything at the BGC happen. Similarly, one might not care to notice every single thing in this photograph until they were painstakingly pointed out, as they are in this effect.

4. This filter appears to me to look like an old television screen, or one without a very good signal. To me this works well in this photo and for this room in the club because many of the things in the computer lab are not exactly the newest or nicest pieces of technology that are available, but they are still very much able to be used, and well used, by those who need them.

5. In contrast to #4, I feel like this filter makes the photo look much more futuristic, and seems to suggest even more for the Boys and Girls Club as time goes on. This seems especially referential as the photo is from the computer lab, where technology is the main attraction, and so much of technology is based on the future. I think this suggests that the Boys and Girls Club does have a future of being technologically progressive and continuing to be relevant as technology gets more and more advanced.

A Short Analysis of Body Projects

In Joan Brumberg's "Body Projects", many different techniques as discussed in Fieldworking are discussed, most obviously the range of data supplied is truly revealing. Throughout the article, we are given insight into the journals and writings of several particular girls, as they go through their different "body projects". This article was written about a a time before when we think of women as having had severe body and self image problems, present day or maybe the 80's, and went back to the origin of those very issues in the early 1900's.

Without the careful examination and excellent implementation of the information and data found within those journals, this article simply would not have had nearly the impact or interest that it has now. As an ethnography, data is of course essential, but even more intrinsic to its value is the correct use of that very data. As we see and is discussed in Fieldworking, data is the skeleton and basis for all well conducted research, and a good example of that exact use of data can be found in Body Projects, an excellent article which quite effectively utilizes the data at its disposal.