5-16 Photos

Artist Statement

The most important thing that I got from my time spent learning about JPNA was how hard the members work to enrich their communities. Early on in the semester when I would tell my friends that I had to go to the Johnsons Park area, they would act shocked that I would have any business going over there. I remember one of my friends saying, “Wow, you're going all the way out there? You're not going by yourself are you?” Now when I talk to people about my Service Learning with JPNA, I have to explain how nice the neighborhood actually is. Without this project I would have never had gone to the neighborhood and I would have never even known about how the area is being rebuilt and how there are so many new homes there.

One of the challenges that I encountered for this project was the actual act of blogging. I've never had a blog before and working with Google blogger was difficult at certain times. I know a little bit about computers and if I had to, I can figure out html for really simple things but other than that I'm pretty bad at setting stuff. I kept my blog as simple as I could so that the finished product could look uniform and the same throughout. Also, I'm generally not the kind of person that works on a project a little at a time until its done. Usually, I wait until the last minute and then work on it all at once. This was a difficult strategy for this project because I would have to keep updated with my blog entries and I would have to keep up with my work.

Another one of the difficulties that I found with this project was the topic that I picked. Initially I wanted to do a project about the early history of Johnson's Park and its involvement in the Underground Railroad. However, after working with my group and from doing research, I found that to would be too difficult for me to incorporate that aspect of the area into the project. I went to the Milwaukee Historical Society but was informed that there was little information on that specific neighborhood. Not only that, but even if there were photos and texts that I would have wanted to use for my project, it would cost me around $100 per image. That would be too much for me to afford for that topic. The topic ended up being a general overview of what the community is all about.

Working on the video was also an interesting experience for me. Last time I used iMovie was when I was in middle school so everything that I did know about it, I forgot. I'm grateful that Josh was in our group and knew had to make the video look great. There were several times were we all got together just so we could edit the video. My suggestions mainly dealt with making sure that the necessary information made it into the video and that it flowed nicely.

Overall, the entire final project for me was all about new experiences. Both with learning about JPNA and with working with iMovie. Before this project, I didn't really know how neighborhoods functioned on a whole and how they evolve over time. I knew that neighborhoods could change but I didn't know where that change comes from. I learned that it comes from people like Tony Gibson who want to make a change in their community. Also I learned a thing or two about working in the blog-o-sphere and editing videos so that I can become more and more advance with my technological skills.

Peer Review

From looking at other people's blogs, it made me think about how I could improve my own and make it more visually appealing and more of a reflection of myself. The blog that I had to peer review was Josh's. Josh's blog looks great, and I think most of this is credited due to the fact the he is proficient with his Macbook and because of his skill at editing images and being able to post them in a very creative way. Because we were both working on the same project, I already knew about the same information but he did attend some different service learning meetings than I did so I did learn some new stuff from his experiences. Most of the comments that I had for his blog were mostly just simple typos and spelling errors. I would usually leave comments about the errors that I found or I would just let him know in person. From looking at other blogs, I was influenced how to make my blog look more uniformed. I made sure that I used the same font throughout all of my posts and I made sure that I posted pictures the same way each time. I also altered the format of my blog so that it looked simpler and focused more on each post. I made sure to keep my blog simple because I don't know that much about Google Blogger, so the simpler I can keep it, the better it will end up looking.

Service Learning

This was my second experience with Service Learning. My first class with Service Learning was with Linguistic Anthropology 105. When I signed up for the class I had no idea what service learning was or that the class required it. I had to take the class because it was a requirement for my Anthropology major. There were a couple different options for service learning in that class, the one that I picked was working with the Milwaukee Literacy Services. For that I would go to the Milwaukee Literacy Services Center and I would tutor people who were learning English. I tutored people who spoke English fluently and were just illiterate and people who were illiterate and non-English speakers. At first I was very uncomfortable with tutoring people because I wasn't sure how well I would be able to teach them and how willing they were to learn. All of the students at MLS were there voluntarily and they all really wanted to learn how to read and write. Also, because more of the people there have a reading level below a 3rd Grade average, having a high school diploma is way more than necessary to teach someone how to get through basic English exercises.


My experiences with Film 150 and JPNA were considerably different. For one, I knew before taking the class that I would have to do service learning. I took the class in order to get my Cultures and Communities Certificate. Working with JPNA was a lot different than working with MLS. When I was working with MLS, I was the one tutoring the students and I was firsthand making the changes in people's lives. With JPNA, there were other people making changes in people's lives but I was just observing that happening. I'm sure there were opportunities for me to make direct changes in people's lives, but either they were irrelevant to my project or I wouldn't be able to attend those opportunities. My JPNA experience was more of an learning experience of how community organizations work while my MLS experience was more of what it is like actually being part of a community organization.

First picture is from http://image.volunteersolutions.org/images/cache/000/010/233/893/10233893698.jpg
Second picture is from http://sub.resilientcities.org/content/Portals/0/Johnsons%20Park/Sketch.%20JP%20Entrance%20Bright.JPG