Volunteer vs. Service Learning

So I have lately been very interested in the trendy nature of volunteering and the connection between helping others and feeling good ourselves. However I crack up at some of the safe ways that we choose to volunteer and how we might sign up to volunteer for 2 hours on a saturday and something always seems to comes up to make us cancel. Anyways I have been writing about how teenagers know that college admissions counselors look for volunteer work and i think about how much I volunteered in high school pretty much so that i would have lots to talk about for my college essay...lame i know. But all of this started to be better understood, or at least i started to think in new ways about why people do flake on volunteer work, why people choose to play it safe, etc. Last night, in a stellar presentation by another art ed student she distinguished volunteering from service learning in a really comprehensive way. I now realize that when I am throwing every kind of service project under the umbrella term volunteer work, I get comfused. She spoke about how volunteering is usually driven by motives of the volunteer not the recipient of the work, its an isolated event, it implies the volunteer is bringing some of their world/agenda to the world/agenda of the recipient. Versus service learning which incorporates a learning component, there is initial research done on the project, it is rooted in educational progress, there are specific aspects of the project identified, there is a community-based approach, and there is a long term commitment. This is such a different act than volunteering! Now I am not at all saying that volunteering is bad, it is extremely wonderful and necessary but I am so excited to see the educational potential of service being defined as whole other term. I love when things get more complex but because of the complexities suddenly things start to make sense!

This has nothing to do with what i usually blog about but this is really interesting...

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/17/world/20091118-INDIA_index.html

FALL-IN-TO-THE-GAP

I would like to share a quote from a fascinating book I have been reading- Buddhist Mind in Contemporary Art (Baas and Jacob, 2004). They are writing in reference tp Duchamp’s definition of art making having two components.

“In the creative act,” he said, “the artists goes from intention to realization.” Duchamp spoke of a “gap” that “represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention,” a gap that is filled by the participation of the spectator, whose own realization is a “phenomenon of transmutation”: an act of “transubstantiation” in which inert matter is experience as a work of art.

I was really excited when I came to this quote and I want to discuss it here relation to working in a museum. I constantly think about how artists leave their work in a museum. By leave I want to propose that its kind of like letting go of something or someone, all of a sudden that person is not there to talk anymore. I approach my visits to museums as a situation where I am charged with trying to make meaning about the work. I often make a mental list of the questions I would ask the artist if they were there and yet often I'm glad I don't get the questions answered whereas other times I know I really need to speak with that artist (although that is usually always impossible). I wonder why I don't always want to speak with them, I feel like sometimes I get so emotionally connected to a piece and I take my role as viewer too personally that I am afraid the work might fall short if I heard the artists view. I don't like that I think like that because I LOVE hearing artists speak about their work and I think it is so important to be able to hear someones view and still make your own meanings.

Either way, I liked how this text phrased t this experience as a gap. I also like that to be excited by the presence of that gap.

"We haven’t had recess since like fourth grade…[one day] we just got to have a free day…just a moment to get all the extra energy out and then be able to really look at the art a little more."

That was a quote from high school girl at my thesis focus group last week. Well did this make me think or what! First of all, I was already thinking about he recess issues because my little 4th grade cousin (who I pick up from school sometimes) was complaining last week because the teacher's punishment for not doing homework is that you "get the wall". This means that you have to stand against the wall of the school and watch everyone run around at recess. Ok, now I think homework is super important and believe kids should be punished if they do not do it but COME ON. "The wall" sounds horrible for everyone. First of all 4th grade kids NEED recess, taking it away only makes kids more rambunctious in class.

Anyways relating this to what this high school girl said i was thinking about how we are not allowing this free time anymore. With high school programs becoming more and more specialized coupled with the general societal push to grow up faster, are depriving this kids of the development that occurs when kids just chill. Even some of the best out of school programs in this city may border on being too rigid for kids who haven't had an ounce of free time all day. However free time means danger far too often. So what do we do?