I am excited to say that our project has basically been completed. Dannielle and I went to William J. Fischer Elementary school and conducted an outstanding girls group with about 20 7^th and 8^th grade girls. The girls were super excited and eager to answer the many questions that we posed. We came to classroom and the students were signing in and then go situated on the comfortable bean bags and chairs that the school provided. We introduced ourselves and then had the students introduce themselves and say one thing that they believed made them beautiful. Answers such as “my hair”, “my eyes”, and “everything about me” were common responses to this question. Often times we do not take the time to think about such things as this and asking such a question allowed for not only the students, but the teachers and Dannielle and I to think about the question as well. After this we asked the students a few questions about media, self-esteem, and their relation. Some examples of these questions are “who influences how good you feel about yourself?” and “do you think that the images on television are good for young girls to watch?”.  The responses were good and well thought out which was a great contribution to the discussion that we were trying to create. We asked many other questions and then had the girls answer a few true and false questions about body image, media, and self-esteem. It was very interesting to do this project because as a psychology major I was paying close attention to group dynamics and how each individual girl responded even when it came to saying their name. I took note of the fact that some girls did not want to introduce themselves and others did not want to say what they thought made them beautiful. It made the project all the more fun and geared towards my future endeavors. Following the quiz they went to lunch.

 When they returned they had a chance to look at some pictures in magazines that were positive images of women. Michelle Obama and Jennifer Hudson were included in the magazine viewing. Both of these women were dressed very professionally and represented women very well. Next we reminded them that they were beautiful for many reasons and we made them realize how. We did this by acknowledges various activities that they may partake in that make them beautiful. We then told them about ways to build up their self-esteem and they seemed to understand what we were presenting to them. We then proceeded into our closing activities. We had everyone put their name in the center of a big sheet of paper and then we had everyone put on nice thing about the person on their respective papers. It presented a problem when I discovered that a few girls were deliberately writing negative things on some of the girl’s papers. For example, “pretty…sike!”, “fat”, and even “ugly” were statements that were written. It was sad to see, but it just proved that there is some need for programs such and these and more effort to be made in improving this issue. It made sure to let the girls know that by writing such statements as those we are just bringing each other down. The program director commended me for handling the situation the way that I did. Everything about the entire project went well and pretty much according to planned. We left the girls with their positivity sheets and a paper with questions related to their long term goals. Our hope is that they will use those sheets and fill them out so that they can see where they are and where they would ultimately like to go.

Often times when people dedicate time to serve it is going against the general population. Jesus was someone who practiced counterculture up until the day that he was crucified. Counterculture is defined as going against the cultural norms. He was a clear example of this concept and went “against the grain” leading many people to become Christians. This was unheard of during this time because no one was willing to do so. In addition to leading people to Christianity, He was willing to sacrifice his life for His faith in God and the Christian people. People referred to Jesus as the Messiah and this scared the leaders during this time because they felt as though he was threat to the power that they possessed. This even more solidified how counterculture he really was because the people of this time period even noticed how “different” he was. I think that Jesus can most definitely be a model for us and we embark on our service projects for this theology 1120 class. He is the ultimate server…

In regards to my service project and its relationship to counterculture there is some correlation. Doing service is not necessarily something that is going against the culture of this country, but it is something that is lacking in our society. It seems as though over time people have become more selfish in their ways and have forgotten to give back. Service is something that should be reincorporated into the lives of everyone is the world. If we think about there are no free services, but for those that can offer whatever necessary services there is the potential to lend them for free. Why not allow ourselves to give and note expect money in return. I believe that if everyone was to decide they will dedicate a certain number of hours to community and even world service we would see a drastic change overall, especially in relation to the issues that many of us listed as the three biggest world problems. Going outside of our own personal worlds and opening our eyes to the need for such change will allow us to become better people. Returning back to the idea about my project being counterculture, I think that many college students would have chosen to do something different with their time. So therefore my project could very well be counterculture in comparison to my college peers.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Week 12: Related Readings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.