My Most Challenging Class: PART 1 of 2

It was a rough road at the beginning with this class, but this is a fairy tale story with an amazing ending about how brilliant these kids really are...

MEET MY CHALLENGING CLASS:
The 2nd week into the "Bright Stars" Camp, I was assigned a brand new group of 8 students to teach art to. I realized, almost immediately, that they would be my most challenging class of all. For starters, they were not even interested in art, nor did they want to learn about art, and they had no self confidence in themselves & their artistic abilities.

SERBIAN JEWELRY LESSON:
This was how I captured their attention...I told them that I would take whatever jewelry they created & packaged in class, and I would sell it at the music festival I was going to in Serbia.

THE VALUE OF YOUR OWN ARTWORK- JEWELRY PRICE TAGS:
I created English-Arabic Tags for the students to fill out & include inside the jewelry packages, full of confetti.

They wrote their name, age, hometown, and price (in New Israeli Shekels) on the tag, and then wrote a message about themselves on the inside. I told them to write whatever it was that they wanted people from around the world to know about them. Some wrote about how they live in a refugee camp, many wrote about how they love their country Palestine. Ina (my German roommate) helped me create labels to seal each jewelry package, which included a photo of the student who made it & the ICB's web address.

Many of the students asked me about what price they should sell their jewelry for. I told them that the artist should be the only one to know the true value of their work. I wanted to help boost the students self-esteem, making them think their jewelry was really incredible and help them learn how to feel proud of their work.


WE WANT HOMEWORK!:
They loved this idea so much that they asked if they could take the beads home with them to work on for homework!

NADYA HELPING TRANSLATE MESSAGES FOR JEWELRY TAGS:

SALES WITH SASS IN SERBIA:
At the festival in Serbia, me & my friend Charlotte (from England) sold all the jewelry in one day! We took photos of each of the lovely people who purchased the jewelry so that my class, back in Palestine, could see their international customer-base & view their jewelry being worn by those very people who bought their artwork.

JEWELRY CUSTOMERS @ FESTIVAL:

A SUCCESS, BUT WHAT'S NEXT?:
When I returned from Serbia, all the students were extremely excited to see me to find out about their jewelry-sales. Many of the Palestinian Camp Staff members kept telling me to just give each kid their earned money and "halas" (be done with it). BUT I HAD A BETTER PLAN IN MIND...

PAINTING A MURAL:

It was an easy decision between the students. They wanted to do something really cool with the money: to purchase cans of paint to create a mural on a wall outside the school.

THE PRINCIPLE BEHIND THE PROJECT:

To give the Palestinian children the experience & oportunity to...

1) EARN their own money (like real adults)

2) View earnings as a "Communal Fund" (not $ individually earned)
3) Experience International Relations

(through photos & messages between students & customers from Euro-festival)

4) Responsibly CHOOSE what to do w/earned $ (& then agree together, as a team)

5) Feel empowered to "give back" to the community

TO BE CONTINUED...
(painting mural= see Part 2 of Blog Post)