Portfolio Assignment #1

Portfolio Assignment #1
Debriefing Notes

I chose to do my participant observation at the Juvenile Hall that I volunteer at every Friday. On September 25th, me and two female volunteers led a creative writing class in Unit 1 of the San Bernardino Juvenile Hall, the female unit. The two female volunteers were the main facilitators of the lesson and I was more or less an observer. They structured the class so that we would read a poem about personal identity, discuss it, write an "I Am Poem", then one last reflective writing on the whole topic of the day.
I woke up this Friday morning feeling a little nervous, it was my first time entering Juvenile Hall since spring semester. My previous experiences volunteering have taught me that you need to enter these types of environments with the most positivity that you can muster up, so I was really focusing on having a productive session. I entered the Juvenile Hall complex with the two other volunteers, and after signing in with security and briefing with the head teacher of the Juvenile Hall we proceeded to the classroom we were going to work in. Most of the guards were very nice, however few introduced themselves, and two gave us, volunteers, some annoyed looks. Despite some of their ill feelings they all fully cooperated with our needs and demands for the class.
I opened the door to a classroom of 14 brown and black teenage women. I was immediately flooded a wave of emotion and information. First of all, I had been expecting to work with young men, since they hold a larger population, and partially because of my instinctive ideas of what someone in juvenile hall looks like (i.e. male, person of color etc.). The classroom smelled of Lysol disinfectant spray, and the desks creaked as the young women sat up straight and gripped the front of their desks with two hands. Juvenile Hall is loaded with rules and protocol that both the faculty and the inmates are well educated in. These rules range from sitting at attention and grabbing the front of their desk whenever someone of authority enter the room, to walking with their hands clasped behind their back to refraining from using profanity. These rules are related to a point system, in which each inmate are given certain amounts of points, which allow them to certain liberties and privileges. When an inmate breaks a rule, depending on how the authoritative figure interprets the severity, a certain amount of points are taken away, prohibiting them from certain activities or material goods. Inmates and teachers/authority figures know each others boundaries, some young women knew which rules their teacher would allow them to break (i.e. profanity), and how far they could push the boundaries. Teachers in turn know which students they can rely on to pass out pencils, or do other tasks and chores, there is obviously a social structure between students and authority. Some inmates were interpreters between the two groups.
Before we read the poem, each of the volunteers said something about themselves, I was very particular with that I said because I was one of the only white people in the room, as well as being the only male besides the teacher. I refrained from trying to explain my complicated reasons for volunteering and instead told them that I was simply here to "kick it" and hang out with them. The were quite warm to this remark and seemed to approve the way I carried myself and spoke. We read a poem about personal identity, which received mixed reviews from the young women. I noticed that when we asked for a volunteer to read, several hand went up. In the boys unit that I worked in last year this was rare, and it usually took a little time to get them to loosen up. We asked them to choose lines that stood out to them and explain why they were significant. 3 girls chose to speak, and all of the lines they chose had to do with self change. After we read the poem we wrote our own poems to a certain format given to us. I read mine first, choosing to disregard the format I wrote about who i was and where I came from. All the girls clapped when I finished speaking. The young women also disregarded the format, one girl chose to write a page long rap about who she was.
Often times during our discussions the girls would recount personal experiences in order to explain a point. I thought this was interesting, they were very open about some very personal events in their life. After 45 minutes of activities and discussion we spent the last 15 to 25 minutes writing our last reflection for the class. When I looked around, every girl except for 1 was writing. The one girl that wasn't writing had a very annoyed look and seemed to not want to be there. Most of the girls were very cooperative with the group, and contributed positively. Congruently the girls were very nice with all of us too, while maintaining their own air of confidence. They never spared us from whatever it was they were thinking at the time.
The leader of our volunteer group, Professor Jennifer Tilton, was my key informant, she was present that day and a couple days later we had a meeting to describe what we had observed. We examined the different levels of what our class was doing, and the meaning behind our interactions within Juvenile Hall. She explained the balance of emotion and social investigation that results from our volunteer sessions. While we are providing a creative, productive environment for the inmates to express themselves, we are also getting them to think critically of their own lives, and place themselves within a social structure. We spoke about my position as a volunteer, and the battle of being a mentor versus a friend or an authoritative figure. I declared my insecurities of being an authoritative figure and she explained the importance of some sense of authority. All together we are giving the inmates in Juvenile hall new alternatives. We are listening to a voice that has been silenced and disregarded, and in turn these inmates are being able to express their ideas and emotions to an attentive audience.