Scott Blog #2

Thursday night was a dream come true for the courageous youth who braved the peering eyes of a judgmental audience; they became vulnerable individuals expressing themselves through a medium that they incorporated to be their own. Because lets face it, what audience is not judging you? They have expectations to be met or broken: they want to be entertained, to be challenged, to laugh and experience something new and for the most part that is exactly what they were met with. To watch these kids progress so much since the first blog is astonishing. As Chris mentioned, it takes years for some of these kids to open up to their teachers, and within a matter of months we were able to teach them, help them and be their friends; not an easy undertaking. Obvious challenges were faced when the dynamics of the group changed from week to week. The omission of some individuals, for example Avanna, drastically changed the attitude of the other youth in her presence. Raven and Reena would work very well in her absence, and the two of them opened up extremely well with Miranda and me as we worked with them one-on-one with their beats. I think the attention they received while being creative helped them foster confidence in the work they were doing. I found though that I was working more with the girls in the class than the guys. But that was partly due to them also asking for my help. It took more work to break down those barriers of "attitude" or "machismo" that some of the boys had so that I could help them. But not all of the guys were like that. Little Mike was thankful for the help, but he also would get easily frustrated when things were not sounding right. But within the last few weeks, I noticed that he wanted to succeed and complete something tangible, and his motivation led him to even rapping over his own beat. At first, the notion of having an all female team seemed to slow things down, but as they realized our intentions and got to know our personalities, their ability to listen and work increased. Obviously, it took more work for the guys to realize that we are not a threat to their identities than for the girls. The experience of giving these youth education through a tool that they can relate to and enjoy develops within them a positive feeling and attitude towards school. For example, I overheard Ryan in his interview exclaiming how doing a project such as this has given him renewed hope in pursuing a future, a higher education. He wants to come to university and he has the motivation to do so. Since this was the first inception of this project, it can only improve and grow from here on. I do wonder how this experience has changed some of the other youth and how it will shape their future decisions. Will they take what they have learned and apply it to their other areas of study? Will their same confidence and motivation fostered here remain with them? How have we impacted their lives as strong female role models? And how has their mentality towards education changed?