{"id":611,"date":"2018-09-07T15:22:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T15:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/?page_id=611"},"modified":"2018-09-07T17:33:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T17:33:06","slug":"reflections","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/student-projects\/steelton-through-their-eyes\/reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had decided earlier that we would meet behind the HUB at two thirty.\u00a0 There were to be two cars, Caroline\u2019s and\u00a0mine.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Caroline could not join us, so Colby and Dana piled into my car and away we went.\u00a0 I was a little worried about the rain, but everything ran smoothly.<\/p>\n

\"DrawingThe drive along Front Street towards the Club showed how Steelton has changed in the last couple of decades.\u00a0 Just as we entered the Borough of Steelton, we were greeted by the ghost of the steel mill on our left.\u00a0 It sat along the river with broken windows and locked doors, telling all passers by that its days of use were almost over.\u00a0 To our right loomed a big hill with narrow stone steps interjected every so often leading to the top, which was not visible to us on the street.\u00a0 As we moved closer to the center of town, the streets started coming closer together and the buildings were smaller and jammed into smaller places.\u00a0 The places we saw connected us with the little town.\u00a0 The Dollar General and the strip mall with the doctor’s office told us that this town was another small town to be explored, with new things to be discovered.\u00a0 Approaching the Club, we realized that we couldn’t park right in front of it and the little street right next to it was one-way.\u00a0 We had to drive around the block on two more one-way streets, passing a church and the post office, in order to park next to the Club.<\/p>\n

Arriving at the Boys and Girls Club, we were greeted by Evelyn, the woman in charge when Ms. Kelly, the director, was not in.\u00a0 She was a relatively short woman, around five feet in height, but her commanding character made up for it.\u00a0 She originally told us that because of the Easter egg hunt planned for the day, we would not be able to do our project (we wanted some of the children to draw pictures of their favorite place in Steelton), but we could help the children with their homework in the back room.\u00a0 We were ushered into what used to be an office, since the Club had been a bank.\u00a0 The room had beautiful wooden trim along the middle of the medium pink walls.\u00a0 There were three long tables set up (designed to fit at most eight people) for the children to do their homework on.\u00a0 As we sat in their waiting for the children, I noticed that along the top of the one wall, hung black construction paper letters forming the words: Black History Month.\u00a0 I didn’t get a chance to examine the room much further because Evelyn, reappeared and explained to us that we couldn’t help the children with their homework because they didn’t have school the next day and therefore didn’t have any homework.\u00a0 We could, after all, complete our project.\u00a0 She then pointed the way to the Arts and Crafts Room.<\/p>\n

This room was much smaller than the homework room.\u00a0 The walls were yellow in hue and one entire wall was literally devoted to a rainbow of hands.\u00a0 Every child that belonged to the club and each of the adult supervisors had pressed their painted hand to the wall to make a green, red, orange, blue and yellow rainbow of hands.\u00a0 There were only two tables in this room, arranged perpendicularly to one another, with a small white bookshelf parallel to the larger table.\u00a0 The chairs were still stacked on one table.\u00a0 We were commissioned to bring them down and place them around the table.<\/p>\n

\"KarateBefore we had even finished setting up, we were joined by Kiersten, a young African American boy in the third grade.\u00a0 He was very eager to do what we asked, but could not think of his favorite place within the town.\u00a0 He needed a little cajoling to get him started.\u00a0 He gave us some very useful insight into his life, through his descriptions of his favorite things to do: karate (in which he claimed to be a black belt), cheerleading (and I was informed by another child that they do in fact have boy cheerleaders) and gymnastics.\u00a0 He drew a picture of each of these things and then proceeded to give us examples of both his cheering abilities and his gymnastic abilities.\u00a0 He performed two cheers, which seemed rather intricate for a third grader– they were better than the cheers of my high school squad– and then showed us his backbend, which he insisted on having photographed.\"Kiersten<\/p>\n

Despite Kiersten’s obvious interest in us and his willingness to share, we also had a few children who outwardly did not want to participate fully, and yet had voluntarily come into the Arts and Crafts Room.\u00a0 Tommy, a Caucasian boy, claimed that he didn’t have a favorite place in Steelton and ended up drawing the Boys and Girls Club because he couldn’t think of anything else.\u00a0 Similarly, Tyrell, an African American boy, who, when asked to draw his favorite place in Steelton, promptly informed us that he was, in fact, not from Steelton, but from New Jersey.\u00a0 He was very insistent that Steelton was not his hometown and that he didn’t even like it there.\u00a0 When I asked why, he responded with \u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would have liked to stay longer, but at four thirty Colby reminded me that we needed to leave.\u00a0 I reluctantly helped pick up all the crayons and reminded Dana that we had to leave.\u00a0 We promised Evelyn that we would be back next week with the photographs that the children took and then we were on our way. ~ Lisa Wheeler<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How it All Began<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0History and Facts<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The Kids<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Gallery<\/a><\/h4>\n

This project was brought to you by<\/p>\n

American Mosaic<\/a>
\nDickinson College<\/a><\/p>\n

Dana Macphee, class of 2004
\nLisa Wheeler, class of 2003<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had decided earlier that we would meet behind the HUB at two thirty.\u00a0 There were to be two cars, Caroline\u2019s and\u00a0mine.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Caroline could not join us, so Colby and Dana piled into my car and away we went.\u00a0 I was a little worried about the rain, but everything ran smoothly. The drive along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":473,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-611","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/611\/revisions\/633"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/steelton2001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}