Artist Statement

A Foto of Escuela
For my final project I wanted to focus on becoming a part of Escuela and the community since, for my first project, I focused on being welcomed. I tried capturing pictures that would relate to Escuela’s values and what they teach the students there. The pictures that I took for this project were taken over three weeks and I would ask the kids to pose for me or either take just candid shots of them.
The reason I chose the title “A Foto of Escuela” is because I felt that my project portrayed just a glimpse of Escuela. I also chose to use the Spanish version of “picture” because my project is all about the language barrier between students, teachers, volunteers, and parents. Throughout the video, I used a Spanish phrase to describe a picture and then switch to the English translation. This is how I experienced my time at Escuela. Since the woman I worked with didn’t speak a lot of English, I would ask the students to translate for me to find out what they were supposed to be doing. For example, the picture of the paper star was a team activity and each student made one point of the star. This was extremely difficult because the directions were only in Spanish and I had a hard time helping them. That day I learned a lot about patience and the intelligence of the students.
The biggest roadblock throughout making my project was my relationship with a volunteer I worked with every week, Ms. Valdivia. It took many weeks for me to break the ice with her, but when I finally did, I found out that she speaks mainly Spanish and was learning English. I started noticing in the later weeks that she was incorporating more English into her instructions for the kids which helped our relationship. The picture I have of her in my project says a great deal about her personality in that she is very mature for her age. In the end I feel like with more time, we could have bonded on a much higher level.
I decided to end my project with an open ended question because I feel that it lets my audience decide whether or not there is a solution to the language barrier. I personally felt alienated at times when the volunteers would only speak Spanish around me. I determined that is how the Hispanic community must feel around people who primarily speak English. I picked the song “One Tribe” by the Black Eyed Peas because I felt the message of the song related to the main theme in my project; although there is a language barrier, we still can communicate on some level with one another.
Ultimately, I feel that my project depicted my time spent at Escuela and the impact I made there. Not only did I make an impact, but the students made an impact on me and opened my eyes to “la communidad”.

Final Blog Post!

As this is my final blog post, I would just like to start out by saying how much I appreciated my time with the kids at Escuela and am really going to miss some of them. I feel that I did make a difference in some of the kids' lives and that they will remember the times I spent with them. For example my favorite person I worked with was Jonathan. Every week he always put a smile on my face and was really the only one who remembered my name. When we said goodbye, he gave me a huge hug and said he was really going to miss me. Also, I feel like I did make a connection with Ms. Valdivia in the end, even though she didn’t speak a lot of English. I could tell she was really trying towards the end to include me in what she was doing and I truly appreciated that and I knew the kids did as well. I think the most challenging thing I faced over the course of my time there was the language barrier. At the beginning, I didn’t talk at all to Ms. Valdivia but at the end I managed to talk to her and get to know her. Also, the kids would switch more into Spanish at the beginning, but towards the end they talked in mostly English around me and interpreted for me Spanish if I didn’t know what was going on. Overall, I feel like I gained a better understanding of the school as well as the Latino community.

This is my little buddy Jonathan singing me a song about brushing his teeth! They were working on making faces with healthy teeth and then a picture of unbrushed teeth and he started singing this. He was my favorite :)

B&GCoGM Decade of Hope Intiative

This is a video of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee and the Vice President explaining the intiative of the club and showing pictures from some of the schools involved with the club.

Los Mextizoz- El Respeto De Las Calles

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This is a group from the south side of Milwaukee
You can check out their MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/losmextizoz