what i do

so in the midst of going to graduate school, interning and maintaining a minor social life, i work a couple of jobs at the university. at the risk of confusing everybody i know, i tend to never really elaborate on, specify or clarify between jobs and/or interning. most of you all just know that for several hours of the day i am either at school or working/interning somewhere. to put it simply, i am busy. i have come to realize that when i try to explain about jobs/interning or the like, my tiny audience is just looking at me oddly trying to piece together the puzzle of jobs that i do. with that reaction, i leave out most of the details. until now.......

one of the jobs that i do as part of one of my graduate assistantships is to work on fridays at a school called westside leadership magnet. westside and lmu have a partnership that involves a service learning program called ARTsmart. with the ARTsmart program, undergraduate "mentors" volunteer their time and expertise in the classroom and facilitate art lessons to a school that under the LAUSD umbrella, lacks an art program. in the year that i have worked, i have had the opportunity to visit a myriad of k-8 classrooms at the school and work with both the mentors and the elementary students.

as a culminating event, a team of lmu students worked for about 5 days and installed a beautiful show of the artwork created by these talented elementary students. the program was fortunate enough to harness a new art space at the lmu campus. the students work was shown in a playful, yet professional manner. to heighten the experience of the show, a field trip was coordinated so that ALL the students could see their art up on display. pretty fantastic. we had other activities like mural painting, gallery talks and campus tours for the kids. the field trip was a blast and really honed in on just how meaningful art can be for kids of all ages.
check out some more pictures taken by the schools magnet coordinator:

http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Westside_Leadership_Magnet/Westside_Leadership_Magnet/Whats_Happening/Pages/LMU_ARTsmart_Exhibition.html#grid