During my second week in 826NYC, I felt familiar with the center's activities, Brooklyn, as well as the people I was working with. I actively switched between roles, was less reticent with giving my inputs to both my co-workers regarding potential curriculum suggestions to make the kids more engaged during their activities, as well as with kids when they were writing stories and coming up with illustrations. I'd notice during our Storytelling + Bookmarking sessions that quite a lot of children who were shy to speak up in class would come up with amazing endings to stories when they finally had to write them down individually and put a finished book together. This reminded me quite a lot of myself, as when I was around their age (8-9 years old), I'd lean more towards introverted ways of expressing myself. In a way to encourage these children to speak up, I suggested creating mini-groups of students after the end of the activity where shyer students would feel more comfortable and empowered to share their unique ideas and participate in more extroverted storytelling. 

This slight modification to the curriculum model saw a very positive response from these students, with their teachers commenting that it was the first time these students willingly shared something with the class (even if it was just a sub group).  Motivated by this, I tried to think of ways to empower the students who were excellent illustrators and expressed themselves through that medium as well in my next week. Simultaneously, I also took up duties as an illustrator for the students when our main illustrator called in sick, and instead of having my sketches based on the story created by the students as a stand alone for viewing, I photocopied my black-and-white cartoon creations and distributed them amongst the students to color. This made the activity more interactive and engaged visual senses of color and aesthetic amongst the students that was previously not present. 

Invigorated by my work, I also signed up to help edit and illustrate 826NYC's review in July, where all of the work that I + other volunteers are doing with the students right now will be collectively put together in a very cool zine. I felt it would serve as an excellent reflective exercise and an interesting deliverable to possibly share with other Laidlaw Scholars as well. I really began to enjoy my work this week, including things that I never expected to (like illustration and curriculum creation)!

P.S. I would have loved to share some pictures of all this in action, but I am not permitted to take photographs of/with students by the organization. Hence, I hope these behind the scene pictures will still give you a good idea of what I'm upto :)