Journal
September 3, 2019
Not sure if this was the day Mrs.Boutilier came into my Advisory class to talk about Capstone, but I do remember starting to think about it. Well I did technically start thinking about it on the first day of school but I didn’t actually move or did anything in general during the last couple of days. I knew one thing for sure though, I definitely wanted to do something involving art. Art has been with me since elementary school, it was pretty much the only thing I was actually decent at and it was a nice way to spend my afternoons. During my first block which was Graphic Design I was brainstorming what I could do for my Capstone instead of paying attention to Mr.Rodriguez. All I could think about was Art and how I could implement that into my capstone and that’s when I remembered that in middle school they used to have an Art club after school that Mrs.Jacocks was in charge of, it might’ve been a capstone who knows. I wasn’t in that club because of the limited amount of members and it filled up pretty quick. So the plan was to talk to Mrs.Jacocks after school to get things started and that was the first “Oh nooo” moment in my capstone project. As it turns out Mrs.Jacocks is actually a very busy lady and the most she could do was have an Art club at least once a month which was not enough for my Capstone project and I don’t think anybody in their right mind would join a club that only happens once a month. Mrs.Jacocks actually started to help me brainstorm ideas for my Capstone since I told her I wanted to implement Art into it. She told me I needed a mentor since it wouldn’t make sense to have her because she can only do it once a month. That’s when I remembered Mrs.Finkenstein who I’ve heard has a very flexible schedule and she was the LGBT club’s mentor last year so I knew she had experience. I told Mrs.Jacocks about her and she told me that maybe I could make it into a writing/illustration club because Mrs.Finkenstein is an english teacher and could help me with that part of the club. I’m not going to lie I wasn’t in love with the idea at first but I also had nothing to lose so I ran up the stairs to see if Mrs.Finkenstein was still there in her classroom and to my surprise, she was already in the first floor leaving. I explained to her the capstone idea that Mrs.Jacocks had and she agreed to be not only my mentor but to also supervise my club.Choose this theme to customize and add content to this page.
January 31,2020
This week I went around explaining, handing out permission slips and then hunting the kids down who I gave the permission slip to and let me tell you it was tiring as hell having to look for these kids. I really hate having to walk up and down those stairs. It would’ve been great if they were all in one place. I went one last time to Mrs.Frankenstein's room to make sure she was going to be here on Monday and thank God I did because she immediately started to tell me that she might not be here because her daughter and husband both got sick and she expecting to get sick over this weekend which by the way was the strangest thing I have ever heard. This made me panic a little of course all I could think of is how it will ruin everything and I will have to wait until next week to start the club, but then I thought that the probability of that happening was very low and this helped me stop panicking.
February 3, 2020
So I was dead wrong. On my way to school I checked my email to see if Mrs.Finkenstein was here or not and hey would you look at that...She wasn’t. On my way to school I started to complain to my brother about this and I told him that I didn’t know what to do which was incredibly frustrating. The walk to school was awful since we walked by some roadkill that smelled awful. By the time I arrived I was already in an awful mood, I was cold, I could still smell the skunk, and my mentor wasn’t here to supervise my club. It wasn’t until I ran into Mrs.Boutilier that things started to get better. She reminded me that I still had Mrs.Jacocks to count on which I was a bit iffy about since she was a very busy lady and only agreed to supervise every last Monday of the month. I still decided to ask of course just in case she said yes and she did. She was going to be a substitute during her free period so she was planning on staying after anyway so it all worked out. For me at least...kinda sucked that she had to stay behind because of work. After that stressful morning, all I could think about was how nervous I felt and how I didn’t really have much planned because I was so focused on getting it actually started that I didn’t prepare for the actual club itself.
February 3, 2020
School went by pretty quickly and it was already time to go to my club. When I came in the Freshmen girls and one 8th grader were already getting ready to get started. I told them to sit in the front row of the class as we waited for the last kid to arrive. On that day I had a total of 5 kids who turned in their permission slips and actually joined me in. I started off with a simple introduction and a quick reminder of what the club was about, I kept repeating and saying ‘um’ a lot which annoyed me a lot and to be honest I just wanted this end already. I also ended up introducing them to my brother who would also be joining us for my club only because I didn’t want him to walk home alone. I decided to share some stories about my childhood and how I ended up loving to draw which encouraged them to share theirs as well. I did end up making fun of my brother’s drawings when he was younger and even drew them an example which they ended up laughing at. I think this helped them feel at ease if that makes any sense because after that they all started to ask questions and share more stories about themselves which let me get to know them a lot better. We did draw while we talked and I asked to see their sketchbooks which the ones who had them showed me their drawings without any hesitation. I asked to draw a head just to see what their process was and most of them did what I asked for but two did something completely different which was fine. We ended things on a good note and I had everyone follow me to the entrance so I can make sure they all went home. Which brings me to one of my club members who asked me if I could call their brother which I did and he told me he would be there in a couple of minutes and asked if I could tell his sister to wait somewhere he could see her. I told her and my ride was waiting for me and they were getting impatient so I told my club member I had to go. Once I arrived home I called the brother again and asked if he picked her up only to make sure since she was the only one that stayed behind. He said no and I immediately started to panic since I didn’t want to lose a child on the first day of my club. Everything was okay in the end.
February 10, 2020
The club happened in Mrs.Finkenstein’s room this time I wasn’t sure how it would work out since I wasn’t very prepared and I didn’t have paper so they could draw. That day I got to greet a new member to the club. He’s in 8th grade and I was hunting him down the week before for his permission slip that he kept forgetting to sign. One of the 8th graders brought in snacks and shared with everybody and yes they do have permission to bring snacks Mrs.Fink and Mrs.Jacocks were cool with it as long as we clean up after ourselves. I decided to go over what the club was about because of the new member and even added a few things like they were now allowed to grab a book and take a scene from there and draw it as long as they cite the book correctly. They were also allowed to grab quotes and videos from the internet as long as they cite it. Two members were missing that day because they both got sick. They’re siblings and so far I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting the older sister who’s a freshman.
February 24,2020
Since it was the last Monday of the month we had the club in Mrs.Jacock’s room. I was surprised to see a cart full of supplies, Mrs.Jacocks then informed me that those were the supplies for my club. The club members that were there already got excited but I shut that down by telling them that they are only going to touch it once I see a story or at least a sketch with an idea for a story. There was this one member who was ready to go so I gave her a canvas and paint. The older sister’s brother was there this time so I greeted him and reviewed what the club was about and what was expected. I already knew that he had trouble writing so I offered to help him if he ever needed it. I also offered my help for painting since there was a chance they had to mix the paint to get the color they wanted, which I’m not going to lie I'm not very familiar with color mixing but I at least had an understanding on what direction to head towards. He asked if he could use a canvas and I handed him one only because he was the youngest member in my club and I couldn’t say no. There was another new member who said he couldn’t draw but he likes to write poems and stories. He even read me one of his poems and it was so well written and captivating that I offered to draw a scene for him and he agreed. We started to discuss what the drawing should have like the background and what the person should be doing. We were interrupted by the 6th grader who wanted help with mixing the colors for his drawing. He drew his favorite character from a game he plays and then asked me to help him with the colors which I gladly did. I ended up helping him out until time ran out.
March 2, 2020
I had a lost child for the beginning of it which I thought was kinda funny because I saw him before going to Mrs.Fink’s room and I heard Mrs.Jacocks direct him to the lobby and i did offer to take him to Mrs.Finks but Jacocks said no that it would be easier for his sister to find him at the lobby. So I go upstairs and I see his sister and I tell her that he should be in the lobby. I had a new member this day as well since he saw us during our club last week and asked if he could join. He's one of the member’s younger brother and he was also a 6th grader so I thought it would work out since he seemed to be friends with the other 6th grader in my club. Everything was okay until he pulled out his speaker and started asking for a hotspot. He lied to me saying that he needed it to find a reference but I told him that we were allowed to use the computers inside the cart. He grabbed one and looked up pictures to draw, now I’m completely fine with people drawing characters from anime or cartoons, but what I’m not okay with is people placing a piece of paper on the computer screen and proceeding to trace the character because then they’re not learning how to draw they’re just tracing lines. I did ask him not to do that but he didn’t stop until he was finished which kinda annoyed me. Around that time the sister found her brother who apparently wasn’t at the lobby because he left to go buy snacks from Mrs.Schmidt.
Here’s where it gets better. Two 8th graders got a hold of the speaker the 6th grader owned and connected it to their phone and started to blast music. I had to actually yell at them to stop and then give out a whole lecture about how we couldn’t use speakers because not everybody likes the same music and it could make people lose focus which did happen. Not only did they have a whole argument about how Billie Ellish sucks but one of the Freshmen girls got a headache from the whole situation which is why I raised my voice. The worst part about all of this is that I had three seniors there watching the whole time and it was just embarrassing.
March 9, 2020
This time we had to be in Mrs.Jacocks because Mrs.Finkenstein was out that day. Once everybody was there I reminded them that I was okay with people wearing earphones but speakers were banned since it causes distractions. I handed the canvases to the members who had already started painting and then helped a 6th grader mix his colors. Again everything was going fine until the other 6th grader started asking for a Hotspot everybody denied him and then he started making up excuses. He supposedly wanted to use it to call his mother but his brother immediately shut that down and told him he couldn’t call their mother because she was at work but the younger brother kept insisting that he needed the hotspot to call his mother. Now please note that I was not bothered by this because I have seen kids act like this before. Mrs.Jacocks then told him to sit down and to start working on something but he continued to ask for a hotspot. Once he got the idea that nobody was going to give him a hotspot he proceeded to ask me to go to Mrs.Vitali to get a computer which Mrs.Jacocks said no because we had cups filled with water and she even told him to use the PC’s she had in her room that were far away from the water cups but he said no because he didn’t want to MOVE the Pc to the desk. I have no idea why he thought he had to move the PC but I didn’t say anything and just continued to work with the other 6th grader who still needed help with his painting. After a couple of minutes of silence the kid started to act up again. He started to throw his football around and I told him to not do that but he continued until he hit a pringles cup that a member brought in. Mrs.Jacocks got fed up and told him to sit down where the PC’s were and he obeyed. Again there was a couple of silence until he started to act up again. This time he started to bug an 8th grader. I didn’t take notice until time was done for that day. I was cleaning up the supplies and while I was inside the closet I heard yelling. I quickly finished what I was doing and left the closet and I saw Mrs.Jacocks standing in between the 8th grader and the 6th grader who were both yelling at each other. Apparently the 6th grader pushed the 8th grader which caused the 8th grader to push back and that made the 6th grader blow up. He started to call him names while walking in circles and his face was just red and full of anger. Mrs.Jacocks told me that it would be wise to not have him come back which I agreed and told him that he wasn’t allowed back due to his disruptive behavior which he was fine with because the club was clearly not for him. His brother and him walked out the classroom and Mrs.Jacocks told me that she was going to keep the 8th grader in her class and instructed me to tell Adi to call her if the kid was left home so she could release the 8th grader. I did as I was told and watched the other club members head home with their parents.
March 13, 2020
It was the last day of school before going on a small break due to the Coronavirus. I was terrified because I was going to barely make the hours I needed to graduate. Throughout the whole morning all I could think about was how I was going to get those hours and I tried asking Mrs.Bou if she thought I should extend by club so it’s two days a week instead of one, but she didn’t really give me a clear answer. By the end of the day I made up my mind and told only the members I could find that I was planning on making it two days a week. They were completely fine with it.
March 27, 2020
On this day I started to think about my Capstone once more and what I should do with it because of an email my Capstone teacher sent me. The thing that stood out to me the most was the mention of online communities which made me think of an app I use daily called Discord. Its an app I use to communicate with some of my friends and it allows us to screen share, video chat, and voice chat all for free so nobody had to spend money on it. It also let me keep things a bit organize and divide everything into sections so everybody can know where everything is. After I decided to make an online club I first talked about it with Mrs.Bou and she thought it was a pretty good idea so I went with it and texted one of my club members to see if she could help out to get the others. Now the problem with this was that not every club member had a phone or gave me a way to get a hold of them. I ended up inviting two of my friends a senior that I knew from last year and my sister and let me tell you, I never thought these people would actually ever meet mainly because I like to keep things separate and I didn’t think their personalities would really go well with each other, but once I set everything up and invited in the server they got along pretty well and immediately started chatting about random things they had in common which didn’t help me at all because they were getting distracted. Once I got a hold of their attention I started to explain what the club was about and what I kinda wanted to see from them. I made a set of rules to remind them that it had to be school appropriate and to be respectful towards each other. I made the schedule so it wouldn’t really get in the way of the online school schedule and we would meet up three times a week to show each other our progress in the art piece that week. I mentioned something about having a theme each week in case they ran out of ideas which they agreed to and then they immediately asked for a theme to start on which I was kinda against to do cause I wanted to start the club officially on Monday but in the end, I gave them a theme and it was “ghost” so I was somewhat expecting Ghost stories along with something scary to look at.
March 30, 2020
So this was my downfall. I only received one entry and the rest said they got busy with other stuff. So I just moved on and told them it was fine and that this week I trust that they would join me for my club. I don’t know what it was but in the end, I didn’t receive anything I don’t know if it was because of school or because of personal reasons or just because they forgot even tho I kept reminding them. Once it April 1st I got two entries but they both send it to me in my DMS and when I asked them why they wouldn’t show they told me it was because nobody else has shown their drawings. In the end, I ended the club well I was forced to because of personal problems that began to appear out of the blue.
April 28, 2020
Recently I picked up a new hobby due to quarantine. I’ve been getting bored with the same routine and I just wanted to do something new. So after some research, I ended up with needle felting. It was relaxing and really gave me a sense of accomplishment in a way. Needle felting is when you get a sharp thin needle and you stab wool fiber together and when you do that you end up kinda tangling up those fibers which will eventually make them tighten up resulting in some stiff wool so it won’t get dismantled easily. Now it was kinda fun seeing the progress of the ball of wool get stiff and also seeing me improve throughout those days. During those days I would show my brother what I was making and he actually decided to try it out which gave me the idea of asking my teacher if it was okay so include this in my capstone which she agreed to and even asked me if I could make a video to show her daughters. To be honest I’m not sure why I accepted. I’ve never made a video before and I’m pretty sure I explain stuff weirdly to the point that I tend to over-complicate things. By this point, I had run out of material and I needed to purchase a kit for my brother to try it out. Now due to the quarantine Amazon changed their delivery dates so the package was going to come in next week instead of two days. That stressed me out a little because I don’t like making people wait too long for something.
May 5, 2020
My packaged arrived rather late in the day yay.
May 6,2020
Now that I had the things I needed to start needle felting again I managed to wake up early to set everything up for my brother and me. We sat down in our kitchen table and I kinda just froze my mind just went blank and my brother just stared at me like if he was expecting something out of me and it was just really quiet. That’s when I realized that I actually had to teach this to him and it just made me remember the times I’ve tried teaching him something even remotely relating to the arts. It always ended with him kinda giving up but then again he was a kid back then he’s 15 now it should be fine right? He should have that mindset that he’s a beginner at this so he should be expecting to make mistakes right? No. No, not at all after I explained the tools and what they’re used for he started to ask if it hurts to be stabbed by the needle and if it was going to take long because he already wanted to go leave to his computer to play games. I just told him not to worry about it and reminded him that he asked me to show him how to make these character keychains. Now we both started off by sketching what we wanted to make, I do this every time before needle felting because it helps me visualize what I want to make and it guides me so I don’t forget anything. I went with a hamster and he went with a grim reaper. It was a cute looking grim reaper like those cartoons you see sometimes that make the grim reaper small and cute? I don’t know if that's in a cartoon actually...Anyways after that I slowly eased him to making a ball I personally don’t usually take too long in making a ball but for whatever reason, it took him 2 hours to makes a ball and it made me question what I was doing if that makes any sense. I kept thinking things like ‘oh no am I not explaining this right?’ ‘Am I just not cut out to teach others?’ ‘Is he just not stabbing enough times?’. Eventually, he made the ball stiff enough now the reason I prefer having the ball stiff is because we have a cat named Cena and he likes to play with whatever he finds and ever since I started to needle felt these characters I always find them on the ground with chunks of fibers loose from being tangled up with his claws. This helped me improve and now my characters are more resistant to his claws and they don’t break as easily. Alright so after finishing the balls we started to add the details we wanted on the head. I helped his try making the head seem more like a hoodie since the grim reaper wears a black cloak and then I taught him how he should first outline the shape instead of just adding a huge chunk of wool onto the face because that could mess up the design and he wouldn’t be able to take it out easily. So after we finished the heads we called it a day mainly because we sat there for a long period of time.
May 7, 2020
Today my brother decided to skip out on needle felting because he was going to hang out with a friend online which was fine with me because I wanted to make the needle felting video without having him around. It was embarrassing having to record myself and then having to hear it in case I made a mistake which I did several times and I just couldn’t handle it very well. Just having to hear me talk about needle felting and explain it was a weird concept and something I haven’t really done before. The video ended up being over an hour long and I still haven’t found a way to really send it to Mrs.Bou or my friend who was just curious about needle felting.
Not sure if this was the day Mrs.Boutilier came into my Advisory class to talk about Capstone, but I do remember starting to think about it. Well I did technically start thinking about it on the first day of school but I didn’t actually move or did anything in general during the last couple of days. I knew one thing for sure though, I definitely wanted to do something involving art. Art has been with me since elementary school, it was pretty much the only thing I was actually decent at and it was a nice way to spend my afternoons. During my first block which was Graphic Design I was brainstorming what I could do for my Capstone instead of paying attention to Mr.Rodriguez. All I could think about was Art and how I could implement that into my capstone and that’s when I remembered that in middle school they used to have an Art club after school that Mrs.Jacocks was in charge of, it might’ve been a capstone who knows. I wasn’t in that club because of the limited amount of members and it filled up pretty quick. So the plan was to talk to Mrs.Jacocks after school to get things started and that was the first “Oh nooo” moment in my capstone project. As it turns out Mrs.Jacocks is actually a very busy lady and the most she could do was have an Art club at least once a month which was not enough for my Capstone project and I don’t think anybody in their right mind would join a club that only happens once a month. Mrs.Jacocks actually started to help me brainstorm ideas for my Capstone since I told her I wanted to implement Art into it. She told me I needed a mentor since it wouldn’t make sense to have her because she can only do it once a month. That’s when I remembered Mrs.Finkenstein who I’ve heard has a very flexible schedule and she was the LGBT club’s mentor last year so I knew she had experience. I told Mrs.Jacocks about her and she told me that maybe I could make it into a writing/illustration club because Mrs.Finkenstein is an english teacher and could help me with that part of the club. I’m not going to lie I wasn’t in love with the idea at first but I also had nothing to lose so I ran up the stairs to see if Mrs.Finkenstein was still there in her classroom and to my surprise, she was already in the first floor leaving. I explained to her the capstone idea that Mrs.Jacocks had and she agreed to be not only my mentor but to also supervise my club.Choose this theme to customize and add content to this page.
January 31,2020
This week I went around explaining, handing out permission slips and then hunting the kids down who I gave the permission slip to and let me tell you it was tiring as hell having to look for these kids. I really hate having to walk up and down those stairs. It would’ve been great if they were all in one place. I went one last time to Mrs.Frankenstein's room to make sure she was going to be here on Monday and thank God I did because she immediately started to tell me that she might not be here because her daughter and husband both got sick and she expecting to get sick over this weekend which by the way was the strangest thing I have ever heard. This made me panic a little of course all I could think of is how it will ruin everything and I will have to wait until next week to start the club, but then I thought that the probability of that happening was very low and this helped me stop panicking.
February 3, 2020
So I was dead wrong. On my way to school I checked my email to see if Mrs.Finkenstein was here or not and hey would you look at that...She wasn’t. On my way to school I started to complain to my brother about this and I told him that I didn’t know what to do which was incredibly frustrating. The walk to school was awful since we walked by some roadkill that smelled awful. By the time I arrived I was already in an awful mood, I was cold, I could still smell the skunk, and my mentor wasn’t here to supervise my club. It wasn’t until I ran into Mrs.Boutilier that things started to get better. She reminded me that I still had Mrs.Jacocks to count on which I was a bit iffy about since she was a very busy lady and only agreed to supervise every last Monday of the month. I still decided to ask of course just in case she said yes and she did. She was going to be a substitute during her free period so she was planning on staying after anyway so it all worked out. For me at least...kinda sucked that she had to stay behind because of work. After that stressful morning, all I could think about was how nervous I felt and how I didn’t really have much planned because I was so focused on getting it actually started that I didn’t prepare for the actual club itself.
February 3, 2020
School went by pretty quickly and it was already time to go to my club. When I came in the Freshmen girls and one 8th grader were already getting ready to get started. I told them to sit in the front row of the class as we waited for the last kid to arrive. On that day I had a total of 5 kids who turned in their permission slips and actually joined me in. I started off with a simple introduction and a quick reminder of what the club was about, I kept repeating and saying ‘um’ a lot which annoyed me a lot and to be honest I just wanted this end already. I also ended up introducing them to my brother who would also be joining us for my club only because I didn’t want him to walk home alone. I decided to share some stories about my childhood and how I ended up loving to draw which encouraged them to share theirs as well. I did end up making fun of my brother’s drawings when he was younger and even drew them an example which they ended up laughing at. I think this helped them feel at ease if that makes any sense because after that they all started to ask questions and share more stories about themselves which let me get to know them a lot better. We did draw while we talked and I asked to see their sketchbooks which the ones who had them showed me their drawings without any hesitation. I asked to draw a head just to see what their process was and most of them did what I asked for but two did something completely different which was fine. We ended things on a good note and I had everyone follow me to the entrance so I can make sure they all went home. Which brings me to one of my club members who asked me if I could call their brother which I did and he told me he would be there in a couple of minutes and asked if I could tell his sister to wait somewhere he could see her. I told her and my ride was waiting for me and they were getting impatient so I told my club member I had to go. Once I arrived home I called the brother again and asked if he picked her up only to make sure since she was the only one that stayed behind. He said no and I immediately started to panic since I didn’t want to lose a child on the first day of my club. Everything was okay in the end.
February 10, 2020
The club happened in Mrs.Finkenstein’s room this time I wasn’t sure how it would work out since I wasn’t very prepared and I didn’t have paper so they could draw. That day I got to greet a new member to the club. He’s in 8th grade and I was hunting him down the week before for his permission slip that he kept forgetting to sign. One of the 8th graders brought in snacks and shared with everybody and yes they do have permission to bring snacks Mrs.Fink and Mrs.Jacocks were cool with it as long as we clean up after ourselves. I decided to go over what the club was about because of the new member and even added a few things like they were now allowed to grab a book and take a scene from there and draw it as long as they cite the book correctly. They were also allowed to grab quotes and videos from the internet as long as they cite it. Two members were missing that day because they both got sick. They’re siblings and so far I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting the older sister who’s a freshman.
February 24,2020
Since it was the last Monday of the month we had the club in Mrs.Jacock’s room. I was surprised to see a cart full of supplies, Mrs.Jacocks then informed me that those were the supplies for my club. The club members that were there already got excited but I shut that down by telling them that they are only going to touch it once I see a story or at least a sketch with an idea for a story. There was this one member who was ready to go so I gave her a canvas and paint. The older sister’s brother was there this time so I greeted him and reviewed what the club was about and what was expected. I already knew that he had trouble writing so I offered to help him if he ever needed it. I also offered my help for painting since there was a chance they had to mix the paint to get the color they wanted, which I’m not going to lie I'm not very familiar with color mixing but I at least had an understanding on what direction to head towards. He asked if he could use a canvas and I handed him one only because he was the youngest member in my club and I couldn’t say no. There was another new member who said he couldn’t draw but he likes to write poems and stories. He even read me one of his poems and it was so well written and captivating that I offered to draw a scene for him and he agreed. We started to discuss what the drawing should have like the background and what the person should be doing. We were interrupted by the 6th grader who wanted help with mixing the colors for his drawing. He drew his favorite character from a game he plays and then asked me to help him with the colors which I gladly did. I ended up helping him out until time ran out.
March 2, 2020
I had a lost child for the beginning of it which I thought was kinda funny because I saw him before going to Mrs.Fink’s room and I heard Mrs.Jacocks direct him to the lobby and i did offer to take him to Mrs.Finks but Jacocks said no that it would be easier for his sister to find him at the lobby. So I go upstairs and I see his sister and I tell her that he should be in the lobby. I had a new member this day as well since he saw us during our club last week and asked if he could join. He's one of the member’s younger brother and he was also a 6th grader so I thought it would work out since he seemed to be friends with the other 6th grader in my club. Everything was okay until he pulled out his speaker and started asking for a hotspot. He lied to me saying that he needed it to find a reference but I told him that we were allowed to use the computers inside the cart. He grabbed one and looked up pictures to draw, now I’m completely fine with people drawing characters from anime or cartoons, but what I’m not okay with is people placing a piece of paper on the computer screen and proceeding to trace the character because then they’re not learning how to draw they’re just tracing lines. I did ask him not to do that but he didn’t stop until he was finished which kinda annoyed me. Around that time the sister found her brother who apparently wasn’t at the lobby because he left to go buy snacks from Mrs.Schmidt.
Here’s where it gets better. Two 8th graders got a hold of the speaker the 6th grader owned and connected it to their phone and started to blast music. I had to actually yell at them to stop and then give out a whole lecture about how we couldn’t use speakers because not everybody likes the same music and it could make people lose focus which did happen. Not only did they have a whole argument about how Billie Ellish sucks but one of the Freshmen girls got a headache from the whole situation which is why I raised my voice. The worst part about all of this is that I had three seniors there watching the whole time and it was just embarrassing.
March 9, 2020
This time we had to be in Mrs.Jacocks because Mrs.Finkenstein was out that day. Once everybody was there I reminded them that I was okay with people wearing earphones but speakers were banned since it causes distractions. I handed the canvases to the members who had already started painting and then helped a 6th grader mix his colors. Again everything was going fine until the other 6th grader started asking for a Hotspot everybody denied him and then he started making up excuses. He supposedly wanted to use it to call his mother but his brother immediately shut that down and told him he couldn’t call their mother because she was at work but the younger brother kept insisting that he needed the hotspot to call his mother. Now please note that I was not bothered by this because I have seen kids act like this before. Mrs.Jacocks then told him to sit down and to start working on something but he continued to ask for a hotspot. Once he got the idea that nobody was going to give him a hotspot he proceeded to ask me to go to Mrs.Vitali to get a computer which Mrs.Jacocks said no because we had cups filled with water and she even told him to use the PC’s she had in her room that were far away from the water cups but he said no because he didn’t want to MOVE the Pc to the desk. I have no idea why he thought he had to move the PC but I didn’t say anything and just continued to work with the other 6th grader who still needed help with his painting. After a couple of minutes of silence the kid started to act up again. He started to throw his football around and I told him to not do that but he continued until he hit a pringles cup that a member brought in. Mrs.Jacocks got fed up and told him to sit down where the PC’s were and he obeyed. Again there was a couple of silence until he started to act up again. This time he started to bug an 8th grader. I didn’t take notice until time was done for that day. I was cleaning up the supplies and while I was inside the closet I heard yelling. I quickly finished what I was doing and left the closet and I saw Mrs.Jacocks standing in between the 8th grader and the 6th grader who were both yelling at each other. Apparently the 6th grader pushed the 8th grader which caused the 8th grader to push back and that made the 6th grader blow up. He started to call him names while walking in circles and his face was just red and full of anger. Mrs.Jacocks told me that it would be wise to not have him come back which I agreed and told him that he wasn’t allowed back due to his disruptive behavior which he was fine with because the club was clearly not for him. His brother and him walked out the classroom and Mrs.Jacocks told me that she was going to keep the 8th grader in her class and instructed me to tell Adi to call her if the kid was left home so she could release the 8th grader. I did as I was told and watched the other club members head home with their parents.
March 13, 2020
It was the last day of school before going on a small break due to the Coronavirus. I was terrified because I was going to barely make the hours I needed to graduate. Throughout the whole morning all I could think about was how I was going to get those hours and I tried asking Mrs.Bou if she thought I should extend by club so it’s two days a week instead of one, but she didn’t really give me a clear answer. By the end of the day I made up my mind and told only the members I could find that I was planning on making it two days a week. They were completely fine with it.
March 27, 2020
On this day I started to think about my Capstone once more and what I should do with it because of an email my Capstone teacher sent me. The thing that stood out to me the most was the mention of online communities which made me think of an app I use daily called Discord. Its an app I use to communicate with some of my friends and it allows us to screen share, video chat, and voice chat all for free so nobody had to spend money on it. It also let me keep things a bit organize and divide everything into sections so everybody can know where everything is. After I decided to make an online club I first talked about it with Mrs.Bou and she thought it was a pretty good idea so I went with it and texted one of my club members to see if she could help out to get the others. Now the problem with this was that not every club member had a phone or gave me a way to get a hold of them. I ended up inviting two of my friends a senior that I knew from last year and my sister and let me tell you, I never thought these people would actually ever meet mainly because I like to keep things separate and I didn’t think their personalities would really go well with each other, but once I set everything up and invited in the server they got along pretty well and immediately started chatting about random things they had in common which didn’t help me at all because they were getting distracted. Once I got a hold of their attention I started to explain what the club was about and what I kinda wanted to see from them. I made a set of rules to remind them that it had to be school appropriate and to be respectful towards each other. I made the schedule so it wouldn’t really get in the way of the online school schedule and we would meet up three times a week to show each other our progress in the art piece that week. I mentioned something about having a theme each week in case they ran out of ideas which they agreed to and then they immediately asked for a theme to start on which I was kinda against to do cause I wanted to start the club officially on Monday but in the end, I gave them a theme and it was “ghost” so I was somewhat expecting Ghost stories along with something scary to look at.
March 30, 2020
So this was my downfall. I only received one entry and the rest said they got busy with other stuff. So I just moved on and told them it was fine and that this week I trust that they would join me for my club. I don’t know what it was but in the end, I didn’t receive anything I don’t know if it was because of school or because of personal reasons or just because they forgot even tho I kept reminding them. Once it April 1st I got two entries but they both send it to me in my DMS and when I asked them why they wouldn’t show they told me it was because nobody else has shown their drawings. In the end, I ended the club well I was forced to because of personal problems that began to appear out of the blue.
April 28, 2020
Recently I picked up a new hobby due to quarantine. I’ve been getting bored with the same routine and I just wanted to do something new. So after some research, I ended up with needle felting. It was relaxing and really gave me a sense of accomplishment in a way. Needle felting is when you get a sharp thin needle and you stab wool fiber together and when you do that you end up kinda tangling up those fibers which will eventually make them tighten up resulting in some stiff wool so it won’t get dismantled easily. Now it was kinda fun seeing the progress of the ball of wool get stiff and also seeing me improve throughout those days. During those days I would show my brother what I was making and he actually decided to try it out which gave me the idea of asking my teacher if it was okay so include this in my capstone which she agreed to and even asked me if I could make a video to show her daughters. To be honest I’m not sure why I accepted. I’ve never made a video before and I’m pretty sure I explain stuff weirdly to the point that I tend to over-complicate things. By this point, I had run out of material and I needed to purchase a kit for my brother to try it out. Now due to the quarantine Amazon changed their delivery dates so the package was going to come in next week instead of two days. That stressed me out a little because I don’t like making people wait too long for something.
May 5, 2020
My packaged arrived rather late in the day yay.
May 6,2020
Now that I had the things I needed to start needle felting again I managed to wake up early to set everything up for my brother and me. We sat down in our kitchen table and I kinda just froze my mind just went blank and my brother just stared at me like if he was expecting something out of me and it was just really quiet. That’s when I realized that I actually had to teach this to him and it just made me remember the times I’ve tried teaching him something even remotely relating to the arts. It always ended with him kinda giving up but then again he was a kid back then he’s 15 now it should be fine right? He should have that mindset that he’s a beginner at this so he should be expecting to make mistakes right? No. No, not at all after I explained the tools and what they’re used for he started to ask if it hurts to be stabbed by the needle and if it was going to take long because he already wanted to go leave to his computer to play games. I just told him not to worry about it and reminded him that he asked me to show him how to make these character keychains. Now we both started off by sketching what we wanted to make, I do this every time before needle felting because it helps me visualize what I want to make and it guides me so I don’t forget anything. I went with a hamster and he went with a grim reaper. It was a cute looking grim reaper like those cartoons you see sometimes that make the grim reaper small and cute? I don’t know if that's in a cartoon actually...Anyways after that I slowly eased him to making a ball I personally don’t usually take too long in making a ball but for whatever reason, it took him 2 hours to makes a ball and it made me question what I was doing if that makes any sense. I kept thinking things like ‘oh no am I not explaining this right?’ ‘Am I just not cut out to teach others?’ ‘Is he just not stabbing enough times?’. Eventually, he made the ball stiff enough now the reason I prefer having the ball stiff is because we have a cat named Cena and he likes to play with whatever he finds and ever since I started to needle felt these characters I always find them on the ground with chunks of fibers loose from being tangled up with his claws. This helped me improve and now my characters are more resistant to his claws and they don’t break as easily. Alright so after finishing the balls we started to add the details we wanted on the head. I helped his try making the head seem more like a hoodie since the grim reaper wears a black cloak and then I taught him how he should first outline the shape instead of just adding a huge chunk of wool onto the face because that could mess up the design and he wouldn’t be able to take it out easily. So after we finished the heads we called it a day mainly because we sat there for a long period of time.
May 7, 2020
Today my brother decided to skip out on needle felting because he was going to hang out with a friend online which was fine with me because I wanted to make the needle felting video without having him around. It was embarrassing having to record myself and then having to hear it in case I made a mistake which I did several times and I just couldn’t handle it very well. Just having to hear me talk about needle felting and explain it was a weird concept and something I haven’t really done before. The video ended up being over an hour long and I still haven’t found a way to really send it to Mrs.Bou or my friend who was just curious about needle felting.