Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Update: Latest Field Trip for Arts/Music Camp

This Week's Theme: Spring Cleaning in the form of post updates

Art/Music Camp field trip posts as well as posts about reaching out to college students have had a prominent place here at this blog. Today's post involves both themes.

Our March field trip was on campus at Wightman Hall where most art classes take place. This time the trip was just for campers (a family fun night is planned for March 28). It was a two hour day camp focused on creating art projects.

Volunteers from the National Art Education Association (NAEA, a Central Michigan University group) acting as counselors hosted the day camp for eight or nine of our campers. Each camper had their own counselor. (The NAEA is the third group on campus that I'm aware of to have volunteered to work with children on campus. It's a sign of great progress.)

Anyway, with all the autism-related projects I've been working on, I was grateful that all I had to do for this field trip was send out a few emails. The director of the camp and the NAEA handled the small and large details.

A reporter from the student newspaper was on hand to report on the day camp as well as to photograph the event. My favorite quote from the article in Monday's CM Life edition came from a certain nine year old's counselor:

"I've never worked with Autistic kids before," she said. "I'm going to be a teacher, so this is good experience for that. It wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be. I'm not afraid to work with kids anymore. I didn't know how to handle this before, but now I have a better sense of understanding."

I guess that nine year old made a difference by just being there. Both the counselor and the child was interviewed and photographed for the story. Again a certain blogger mama is pretty proud.

I can vouch that the boy in question had a great time and brought home a lot of froggy-theme art projects. However, I encourage you to see for your self as to how happy that youngster was to be there. Hope you enjoy the article almost as much as I did.

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