Service Learning Activism Log: Three

Rachel Miles

Prof. Meredith Tweed

WST 4021

17 November 2011

Service Learning Activism Log: Three

Action:

Involvement this week was very limited. Because our meeting was with the big sisters (our last one of the semester, sadly), we did not have the opportunity to collect tweets from the girls. We did, however, have another fundraiser for YWLP on Wednesday night, this time at Chik-Fil-A. I was unable to attend because of my work schedule, but I heard from people who did go that it went well. More specific to our project, we still have only one submission for the ’zine. We reminded the girls about it again at the fundraiser and plan to once more at Saturday’s picnic alumni event. Chances are, though, that we will have to extend the ’zine into a two-semester project with contributions from girls in both terms, unfortunately meaning that we will not have a final product to give to the girls at our last meeting.

Reflection:

Again, I have spent most of this week focusing on the lack of response from the girls to the ’zine and am still questioning whether our decision for the girls to have them work on a ’zine was the best call. Throughout the semester, we have promoted both the ’zine and the tweets as ways for the girls to get their voices out, express themselves, and otherwise be heard. This misses an obvious question: what if the girls do not want to be heard? Or, alternatively, what if they do not want to be heard in this way? I recognize—and, from what they have shared with us, the girls do, too—the importance of encouraging girls to speak out about their ideas and experiences. There is a line, though, between encouraging and forcing, asking and invading, crossing into territory of “eliciting young women’s voices” in a way that Harris suggests “constitutes a kind of surveillance” (11). I would not say that our project has crossed that line, but it definitely operates on the assumptions undergrounding it. As the girls’ reticence to respond to the ’zine may suggest, our project, while well-intentioned, requires serious revision before it effectively can address the issues of girls’ independent creativity we originally wanted to explore.

Reciprocity:

Most of what I have gained from this week and, indeed, from the entire project has centered around ways to improve this project for next semester. We began this term with expectations for how the girls would respond and what our finished products would be. These expectations were not fundamentally wrong, but they did create difficulties in our ability to reassess and make changes as the semester progressed. Now that the term is concluding and we have a complete picture of our project’s successes and failures, we can extensively reevaluate and redesign the project where needed. Primarily, we need to keep in mind that this reevaluation does not mean we have entirely failed. As this term has showed me, every project is a work-in-progress; success depends not on your original design, but on how willing you are to change and improve it where needed

Work Cited

Harris, Anita. Future Girl. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

[Word Count: 500]

Service Learning Activism Log: Two

Rachel Miles

Prof. Meredith Tweed

WST 4021

10 November 2011

Service Learning Activism Log: Two

Action:

This week was, like last week, fairly quiet regarding our individual project. We collected and posted tweets from the girls at Wednesday’s meeting. Emily also got the pictures from UCF Day developed, but we have not looked through them. We still have only received a few submissions from the girls for the ’zine, so we reminded them about it again on Wednesday. A few of the girls expressed open enthusiasm when we brought it up, which I am hoping means that we will have more submissions from them soon. Until then, we plan to just continue reminding them with fliers and announcements to encourage them to submit work.

Reflection:

Lately, I have been focusing on the lack of response from the girls regarding the ’zine. We intended for the ’zine to be a creative space for the girls to express themselves, and I think in many ways, it could still become that. With the reality of the girls’ seeming disinterest, though, I cannot help but feel that we might have let our ideas about which activities and spaces are empowering overwhelm the actual intended goal of the project. Instead of, as the girls in the AGSL program did with their group research project, allowing the girls to choose how to express themselves and how to define the space they would use for that, we presented the girls with a set idea of what they would be contributing to, not an opportunity to decide what they would create (Muno and Keenan). Even without intention on our part—quite the opposite, actually, given how we provided for areas, like the girls coming up with the ’zine name, that we thought would specifically address girls’ autonomy in creating it—the space of the ’zine has been classified as one we set up for the girls to add to, not one that they made from the start. With time and scheduling constraints of YWLP as a program, I understand that allowing the girls total freedom in developing the type of project they would work on from the beginning is an unrealistic goal. Still, I cannot shake the thought that we might have contradicted ourselves in assuming that a ’zine, not a girl-decided project, would be the best and most empowering project for the girls to complete.

Reciprocity:

Most of this week’s activities have forced me to examine the assumptions I bring to YWLP about the girls we work with. The discussion we had with the girls about body image at Wednesday’s meeting were eye-opening for everyone in terms of how much our girls already knew. I love YWLP, but as with our plan for the ’zine, I think it might benefit the program and us as participants to reevaluate what we assume about what the girls already know, what would be most empowering for them, and what they need from us. Otherwise, we risk supplanting our own ideas of what girls’ agency should look like, rather than providing the girls with genuine opportunity to reclaim that agency for themselves.

Work Cited:

Muno, Ann, and Lynn D. Keenan. “The After-School Girls Leadership Program: Transforming the School Environment for Adolescent Girls.” Social Work in Education 22.2 Apr. (2000): 116-28. CINAHL Plus. Web. 10 Nov. 2011.

[Word Count: 500]

Service Learning Activism Log: One

Rachel Miles

Prof. Meredith Tweed

WST 4021

3 November 2011

Service Learning Activism Log: One

Action:

This week, most of my group’s activist work was focused on general YWLP involvement. As part of a fundraising effort for YWLP, we all had dinner at Applebee’s on Thursday night. We also attended the big sister meeting on Wednesday, where we prepared for next week’s lesson on body image and self-esteem. Given the subject matter, I am both excited and nervous for the tweets we will receive from the girls after next week’s meeting; should they choose to use the tweets to respond to the themes of our discussion, they could be very telling of how these issues actually affect the littles we are working with this term.

Specific to our project, we received our first submission for the ’zine this week. Response to this has not quite been what we had looked forward to so far, but hopefully we will receive more as the term wraps up and we continue reminding the girls about the ongoing project. We had also planned to meet up and discuss this, the video, and adjustments to our UCF day lesson plan for next term, but that meeting did not occur. Instead, we are all going to continue brainstorming ideas for when we are able to meet, preferably sometime this week.

Reflection:

Because our group did not make much progress on our specific project, most of my own thoughts and self-reflections for this week have focused on larger YWLP activities, unfortunately in a more critical light. Probably because of the topic I chose for our last class paper, I have been concentrating on consumerist activism recently. As much as I enjoyed getting dinner with friends from YWLP tonight, I cannot help but feel a little uncomfortable at how much of the activism I do plays into consumerist ideas of the dollar and the choice of when and where to spend it as power. In eating at Applebee’s under the frame of supporting YWLP, I bought into models of activism that “[link] civic viability with consumption” and consequently construct “civic rights” as “exercised by making these kinds of consumer choices” (Harris 69), even knowing how these systems negatively impact girls’ leadership thanks to our in-class discussions. I recognize that much of this is a necessary evil; as Emily reminded me, YWLP receives no funding from UCF and depends entirely on donations and fundraising drives like tonight’s. Regardless, I still feel a bit hypocritical and like I should be working harder to change these systems instead of participating in them as necessary evils, even if I am not sure yet of how to begin doing that.

Reciprocity:

This week, the “work” I did with YWLP inspired some fairly difficult realizations about my own activist work and how often it falls into the category of consumerist activism. I still do not have any answers to that issue and do not expect to come across any through this project. It is, however, something to think about and work on as I develop my own activist involvement in future projects and undertakings.

Works Cited:

Harris, Anita. Future Girl. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

[Word Count: 500]