Final Post (#4) Wage Claim Clinic

 Mariana De Paiva

Wage Claim Clinic

                      

        

    Working at the Wage Claim Clinic has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have gone through. For the past couple of months I have set aside my Thursday evenings to dedicate myself to helping others gain justice to count for school credit and  I could not have asked for a better assignment. Overtime it became so natural to me that I would often forget to sign in or would rarely check my hours. When they first heard I was a film major they immediately asked for my assistance with a video project that would introduce the program to our workers. I was extremely honored and really put all my efforts into the video. The experience in video making that I got was extremely helpful so in the end everybody benefited from it.

 However, my inner transformation I went through was the most benefiting part.  

        A part of me is very idealistic and thinks that the world is/should be this perfect candy land like place where everyone is always smiling and there are no conflicts at all. So when I first saw all the horrible things done to the workers I was very overwhelmed and traumatized. However, the way in which the people who work there cared for each worker really gave me back hope. Through their urge to fight for justice for one individual they are propagating world peace and there is no cause as noble as the cause for world peace. So, being there for me feels right and even though it may not seem like it but I gain more from helping these workers than the other way around.

            As we read Shakespeare in class I thought about the effects that social class has on justice. Most of the workers that go to the Wage Claim Clinic are undocumented and speak little to no English. They work crazy number of hours and have to send most of their earnings to their families overseas and consequently live below the poverty line. Because of this they are taken advantage of and have to conform to not being paid in fear of being deported. I wonder, what makes people think that it is okay to mistreat others like that? Knowing that these people are in extremely difficult circumstances, why not help instead?

I feel like these questions are actually a lot harder to answer than they seem. Simply justifying that people are “evil” and that it’s all about greed is not good enough. The answer is a lot more complex and Shakespeare does a really good job of using different circumstances to describe a character’s intentions.

Even though I have completed all my service learning requirements I feel like my job is not done and so I will continue  volunteering.

p.s the tab thing was not working correctly and I couldn't indent properly so that's why the paragraphs look really deformed.

Blog Post #4, LBPF, Gabrielle Gatto

         The prompt for this last post guided me immediately to a set of pictures in the New Canal Lighthouse education center where I give tours. The picture is a map of the Pontchartrain Basin in 2009, and then placed under it, a projected image of what will be left of it in 2100.  Looking back, I first chose this placement solely because I felt bad no one approached the LPBF (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation) table at the SERVE fair, but now, it’s these images that solidify my commitment to the organization and have me confident I chose the right placement. New Orleans will be completely submerged under water if efforts to save our coast are not followed through with. This frightening image is what led me to respect community engagement specifically in New Orleans. Raising awareness about the important issues is vital to growth and sustainability. When I look back on our time in class together, supplemented with my time at my Service Learning placement, I see an opportunity well sought out after. I’m proud of the work I have done in both arenas, and learned a lot about myself as well. Academically, I think I will draw more connections from two seemingly unrelated ideas. Forced to become creative in my analytical thinking, I found new avenues to let my mind wander down. This reminded me of Tim Morton’s lecture on ecology and my arduous endeavor to link his concepts to scenes from the plays we studied earlier in the semester. My other blog posts include the cast of characters I volunteer with who were surprised I wasn’t placed there for an environmental class. Now, when visitors ask about my service learning, my coworkers and I laugh and tell them, “it just makes sense somehow,” when it absolutely did not a few months ago. 

          The coast of Louisiana should be like Shakespeare’s famous works:preserved and maintained. Part of my “monologue” that is my tour, is to repeat and expand on what preservation and maintenance means for natural and man made defenses that protect our coast. Besides Shakespeare, this led me to think about the immense effort put into preserving the Declaration of Independence and other important documents. There are scientists and preservationists working around the clock to keep these documents safe for posterity-this is similar to what we do with Shakespeare and why we still study him in order to keep him alive. The coast of Louisiana needs the same tender loving care. The same careful efforts also need to implemented in order to preserve and maintain the coast. I plan to continue volunteering as a docent at the lighthouse. Raising awareness is something that has become very important to me, just as awareness of Shakespeare's work is still vital to literature around the world. I think I really benefitted from this experience-I've met some incredible people, learned a lot about the environment around me, and as cliche as it sounds, I feel I've done some good. I've never had a service learning class before, so I would just like to thank Dr. Eklund for the opportunity;it really was worthwhile. 

Katherine Seitel- Blog #4

Throughout my time at Uptown Shepherd’s I questioned my role as a volunteer and attempted to quantify my value as a volunteer in the space. Whether or not I was helping and in what tangible ways was I contributing to the space. This tangibility was perhaps most difficult for me to grapple with because I wasn’t, for the most part, helping in ways that I could point to. I mostly sat and listened, observed and was a presence in the room. My presence changed the space and as I got to know the members of USC, their quirks, likes and dislikes, the cliques that form and who isn’t feeling well today, I realized that my presence was important because contact with those that are unlike yourself is important to growth regardless of age. I think about this as a young person and how much more thought provoking it is to talk to people much older or much younger than myself. Their vastly different experiences force me to examine my own experience and to challenge my way of interpreting the world. It is very easy as a college student to be consumed by other 20somthings and their problems with homework or their service industry jobs or how hard it is to be 23 and feel so much more mature than the 20-year-olds in your class.  But talking to someone who is 90-years-old who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam and are still excited and nervous to perform in a play at a community center is pretty remarkable and definitely puts my own problems into perspective.

We talk a lot in literature classes about the place in which the narrative is situated; the political climate, globalization and colonization, and what people must have been feeling when this particular work was written. While writing the research paper for Early Shakespeare I read about the reception of Taming of the Shrew and how the perception of domestic violence was shifting in the Early Modern period in England. In reading about what the political and social climates were when the play was originally performed, I no longer hated the play. I began to see that it was challenging and subversive, to some extent, for it’s time and how easy it is to be dismissive of a work when you have little context. I think people are often dismissive of older generations, much like they are of Shakespeare. In taking the time to get to know a group of older people and in researching one play, I can see the danger of oversimplifying and the importance of examining the complexity of the experience of others. When I go to USC I am exposing myself to the values and experiences a generation that I do not interact with very often. In talking to people who are so much older than me that have perhaps lived through traumatizing events and are still eager to experience new things inspires me to be positive and maintain the curiosity and sense of adventure I think many adults lose as they age.

Taylor Hebert, post 4

            My experience service learning experience at Bridge House has left a lasting impression on me to say the least. I spent a lot of time at my placement, as I had two courses for which I was doing service learning. My understanding of the nature of addiction has grown greatly, both by depth and breadth. Addiction has plagued and haunted my family for as long as I can remember. I am grateful that those closest to me have conquered it. But I have seen the enduring, scarring power that addiction has had on lives that have been a part of mine. Because of this, I cannot treat substances with the same laissez-faire attitude of the ordinary college freshman. In New Orleans I see addiction as a rampant part of the culture. There is a sort of unspoken codependence around it. And what I found at Bridge House is that each and every one of the men and women residents never thought that they’d end up there at the beginning. That is the sad part. When I see nineteen and twenty year old people experimenting with harder drugs (as they inevitably do in the gateway of narcotics), I just cringe and remember the faces of the afflicted friends I have met at Bridge House.

            In this class I have started reading Shakespeare in a very self-reflective sense. As a theatre person, I always thought that Shakespeare was meant to be performed. I thought it would only make sense coming out of the mouths of actors.  But I have learned to explore Shakespeare through my own eyes and associations, and found that it warrants some critical self-reflection as addicts are forced to do on their way to recovery. Sadly, for the brain of the average addict it takes 7-8 stints in rehab to finally break the cycle of substance abuse, and for most people that won’t be over until they are middle aged.

            I have seen the bitter resentment and frustration that this causes. On my last day and in the last hour of service learning I had, a fistfight broke out literally ten feet away from me between residents. I was in shock. First of all, I have not witnessed many fistfights in my life, so I didn’t know exactly how to react. So I just stood there in awe as I saw all the emotions that these individuals were pushing down for years and years through substance abuse come out in a rage, and they didn’t know how to deal with them. After debriefing a bit with my supervisor (a graduate of the Bridge House program) after the incident, I realized how deep this disease runs within the afflicted, and how it is a community issue and not just a personal one as I previously held to be true.

            Addiction has always been personal, but through my work, but starting to look at it through a community lens and its affect on society has been what I think I can take away from Bridge House, as well as the many friendships I have made there. I have seen two women, who worked alongside, graduate the program and be reunited with their families. I have realized that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel, and programs like Bridge House make that possible. I plan to continue to volunteer there next semester because of the rewarding and challenging opportunity if provided.

Blog Post #3, LBPF, Gabrielle Gatto

    When people ask me how I became a docent at the New Canal Lighthouse, they often laugh when I reveal it was a result of my Early Shakespeare class. My fellow docents and mentors are well aware and happy to have a set of service learners there to help, but I am the curious one with a class that doesn't seem to match this placement. I struggled with this as well for a length of time, but when I compared my tour to a scene in a play (trying to engage my audience, as I explain in my previous blog post) my mentors were able to see a clearer connection. We elaborated on this idea for quite some time, and talked about Shakespeare's various tragedies and satirical flourishes. We even took the time to act out certain portions of Shakespearian text from extracting a memory from a high school exam or a famous line we all seemed to  know (I was most impressed by an older woman named Pat that did a monologue from Hamlet she learned in high school completely from memory) I pay closer attention to the information I am relaying now (on my tours about New Orleans history and the lighthouses place in it), just as in class we take a closer look at a certain text or word that when analyzed yields historical context with wordplay, etc. For example, when we nibble bit by bit at a sonnet or monologue with suspicious couplets, or finding symbols and themes (nature, water, etc.) in the text.

     Lauren, in my cluster, has the topic of rank and status for her critical concepts blog. She found that at first a distinction, on the surface, was extremely clear, but upon looking at this topic more thoroughly and through the lens of our assigned texts the lines of rank and status were blurred on a more complex level. I truly believe Shakespeare's  exploration of rank and status infiltrates itself into every day life, even if one never links this to Shakespeare himself. In New Orleans we may see a very clear caste distinction but from the view of us service learners we have been able to see first hand where these ideas weave in and out of society. In New Orleans specifically we see the juxtaposition of the affluent garden district and mansions of Saint Charles Ave. with Central City, an area with a lower economic "rank" and struggling families. Shakespeare, as an idea or symbol for advanced study and prestige, can be present in both locations even though on the surface it appears it cannot be or that it has no place. We see the negation of this most clearly in the article assigned about the refugee camp; Shakespeare is a gift to the world and not just for the privileged. The people of the garden district and the people of Central City still celebrate Mardi Gras together on the same streets, identify with New Orleans culture, and reside in more or less in the same area, just a few blocks away most of the time. Asking the important questions such as, why is this so? is exactly what Shakespeare filters into the minds of people everywhere and invites us to look at these differences paralleled with their similarities.

     As a society, we raise the bold questions Shakespeare challenged in his many works, even if we fail to realize we are doing it. Just as I once saw no relevance between our class and serving at the lighthouse, upon a closer look, it becomes wildly clear. 

#3 Gabby

This question was one in which I had to take my time with. I read it over and over again to truly grasp it in context of my life and my involvement in Service Learning at Hagar's House. When I first brought up the question of Shakespeare with the women, the women seemed very hesitant to respond. One of the women said, "I never studied Shakespeare but I feel I never took the time to engage with his works because they don't relate to me." I thought she made a very valid point. How do we get someone like Shakespeare, a 16th and 17th century English man, to engage with the diversity within our society? I, to an extent, agreed with her. Even for those who may not be so familiar with Shakespeare, when you see productions of Shakespeare's theatrical works and even movie versions of them it sometimes feels like you are watching it at a distance. What I mean by that is that you feel removed from it and I think one of the reasons people may feel removed from it is because you never see people of color play a lot of Shakespearean roles and therefore it seems as if Shakespeare becomes solely exclusive to White audiences and White people.

How can we get Shakespeare's works to transcend the borders of color? Well, first off the themes within Shakespeare's works aren't color exclusive. Treachery, betrayal, loss of innocence, insanity, mental instability, love, chaos, these are all themes in which I think every person can relate too, but it makes it harder to relate to it when you feel, that as a person of color, that people who look like you are never cast in these roles. Therefore you feel isolated from the work. I told the women that Shakespeare is for everyone and that we all must open our eyes to find the deeper meaning within the text.

One thing I like about Shakespeare is that Shakespeare critiqued all classes and he didn't abide by the rules of his time. According to Aristotle, wealthy men could only be tragic heroes and therefore plays produced should show them in a favoring light where audiences felt sympathy for them. Shakespeare said screw that and he showed the flaws of every character, whether rich or poor, and made all characters very human. The very rich, no matter how divine they may think they are, are still human and they are flawed. I told the women to not let Shakespeare isolate you but to engage with the text and allow Shakespeare to bring these characters to life for you by revealing their flaws.

Shakespeare relates to the real world because he creates characters that are three dimensional and representative of humans. Shakespeare has helped inform my service learning because it helped me connect with the women. We all have something to learn from one another and sometimes people can think that if your doing the service that you are the one who is there to teach but in reality, if you are open to it, you can and will learn. As humans we are all each other's teachers and students and there is a sense of humility that comes with that. Shakespeare reminds us that no matter what walk of life you come from you are still subjected to human error and flaw. No person is better than the other and we are all just learning along the way.

Post #3

My time volunteering at APEX center so far has made me, sometimes forced me, to think about things that aren’t necessarily easy to think about it.  Driving to the center every week has become a sort of ritual, just like going to class or work.  But at the same time, I’m still not completely comfortable with it.  I still automatically hold my breath on the drive there, and look around me warily as I get out or into my car.  As many times as I go to the center, I have to remind myself that it’s not getting any safer.  In turn, the center reminds me that I can do my part to help those who are being affected by the violent and unsafe environment that surrounds APEX.  It also reminds me to be grateful for the privileges in life that I often take for granted like attending college or getting support from my parents. 

            I’ve encountered a few moments while volunteering at APEX where people question who I am or what I’m doing there.  I’ve had to explain, or had the employers explain, that I’m a volunteer from Loyola who comes once a week to help. The former head volunteer at APEX once asked why I was volunteering there and for what class. When I said it was for my Shakespeare class, she looked at me in surprise and asked, “Really, why?” Initially, I didn’t know how to respond, but I ended up telling her that we were supposed to relate real world situations to Shakespeare.  She just smiled and said, “Oh, that’s interesting.”  For her, working at APEX was a huge part of her life.  She was there six days a week.  (She just had to resign because the government stopped paying for her to work there) I was just another volunteer who needed hours for a class, and who would move on from the center. 

Sometimes I worry that I’m not helping since I spend most of my time there behind a computer.  But during our cluster conversations this week, someone in my group said something that gave me much needed encouragement.  He said that whether you’re doing data work at a desk or interacting with the children, both jobs are equally as important.  I have to remind myself that without the office work, the center would not be able to run successfully.  It also helps when I see or hear about the great work that goes on in the center.

I recently met a young man who represents one of the center’s success stories.  He was in danger of being pulled into a negative lifestyle, but because of his time at APEX was able to get out and create a new life for himself.  I watched the pastor (who runs the center with his wife) proudly tell me and another volunteer how this man had come back to volunteer at the shelter in order to give back to the community that had helped him.  This moment showed me how the hard work that goes in the center pays off. 

This moment also reminded me of the article we read for class about the kids in Syria who put on a Shakespeare play. I thought about how preparing for the play must have gotten the children’s’ minds off of the bad things in their life, given them hope for the future, and also educated them at the same time.  This is similar to what goes on at APEX.  The children come to get away from the bad things in their surroundings and are given hope for a successful, violent-free life, all while in an educational and safe environment.  

Blog Post 3- Katherine Seitel

Throughout my time at Uptown Shepherd’s Center I’ve talked to the members about my Shakespeare class; why a Shakespeare class would place me at USC, why I don’t have a theater background, and variations on those two questions. When I first started attending the theater class I shrugged at these questions, I wasn’t sure why I was in a theater class since I don’t have a theater background, a skill highly coveted in the class as only one woman who commutes from Alabama to attend USC and her community orchestra rehearsal every Monday. It was hard to say that I was in a theater class because I am graduating and the Shakespeare class was the only one that satisfied a requirement or that the theater class fit into my schedule. Instead I said things that varied from ‘I did a theater camp in middle school, but I’m really not into performing…’ to ‘I’m excited to learn!’ to ‘why not?!’  The responses to my responses vary because the levels of lucidity and memory vary so greatly among the members of USC. There have not been specific times at USC that I think that my experience is similar or connected to Shakespeare, but in thinking about my time there in retrospect I can see that the way Shakespeare does in fact connect on basic levels to the work that I do at USC. These levels include the human experience of feeling dislocated from a community as an outsider. This theme is explored in many of the plays we read, most memorably for me in The Merchant of Venice and The Comedy of Errors. The feeling of dislocation I felt as an outsider and not understanding the rules of USC reminded me of the dislocation felt by characters in Shakespeare’s plays. The notion of place and outsider/insider status in Shakespeare’s plays helped me to situate this experience in my own life in the context of Shakespeare’s time period. In examining my experience of feeling like an outsider to this feeling described by Shakespeare made my experience at USC seem to align more with a class on Shakespeare. I think that Shakespeare does have a place in the world of service learning and community service in general, but I have had real difficulty parsing exactly what this place should be. In thinking about Shakespeare’s place in these environments I also thought a lot about accessibility and education. In the classroom at Loyola there is a level of discourse in regarding Shakespeare that I at times struggle to follow and when I listen to members of USC struggle to read, I have trouble viewing Shakespeare as accessible and applicable to society today. Shakespeare was for the masses in his time, but before this class I had not read Shakespeare since my freshman year of high school. Whether this was a failure on the part of my education is debatable, but it leads me to question Shakespeare place in our modern society. Overall, I have mixed feelings about Shakespeare in the context of USC and the service learning in general, I have had an amazing time working with the people at USC and feel really grateful that I have had the opportunity to get to know such lively and welcoming people. The fact that a Shakespeare class has the option for service learning is great and I definitely think it has helped me to examine privilege and to value my education. The fact that I get to read Shakespeare is a privilege and in meeting and interacting with people unlike myself, I can see the ways in which examining service learning through the lens of Shakespeare helps to appreciate my education.

3 Otto, APEX

          My time at APEX seems to have gone by so fast. I am almost done with the required hours and although my experience there has gotten better, I still sometimes feel useless. Rarely have there been instances where there were enough kids to pair up one on one with the volunteers so I am still often left sitting in a chair listening to the loud video games that the boys are obsessed with or listening to the music that the girls are into (most of which I’ve never even heard of). Maybe a handful of times have I interacted with the kids. In class the other day I described the experience that has been the best at APEX. 

The Story:

          My roommate and I started to do Bikram Yoga on Oak Street last month. It is essentially just regular yoga but in a room where the turn the temperature up to 105 degrees for and hour and a half. We generally like to go to the evening classes and so one Thursday I decided to just wear my yoga clothes under sweatpants to APEX and I would just leave there for Yoga at 6:30. Generally I try not to wear sweatpants out of the house but I didn’t want to run around APEX in yoga shorts and a tank top so I just decided to go with it. 

          When I arrived to volunteer there were about five kids there. A huge group of volunteers from Colorado was also there, visiting on their Spring Break. I sat down and half listened to them talking and half watching video games. Then I heard “Hey Coach” multiple times. Finally I came back to reality and realized a kid was talking to me. When I made eye contact and gave him a look that proved I was not in fact a zombie he said, “Hey Coach, do you want to play ping pong?” Thrilled at the idea of actually interacting with someone while there I got up and we played a few games. 

          I was terrible. We then moved on to pool where he said he would teach me how to play because he was a master. I beat him. While we were playing, our conversation didn’t get far past me asking him what his name was, him telling me it was DJ and then continuing to tell me he was fantastic and awesome and a master at pool and ping pong and he was going to teach me how to play. I laughed it all off and had a good time. DJ never asked me my name. Finally we parted and he went outside to play basketball and I sat down again watching the group from Colorado play air hockey. At six I left, tripping in the tennis shoes I hadn’t worn in months, and made my way to yoga. 

          After thinking about this experience, I found myself a little disappointed that I haven’t interacted with the kids more. I wanted to play games with them and help them study and all of that but there always seemed to be a barrier. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was wearing sweatpants and looked more approachable, or if he was just an outgoing kid, but it was one of the best times that I have had at APEX thus far. Unfortunately I found that I live in a bubble. It is almost as if I never left my flowered gate and entered the APEX gate scattered with the hand written signs, I was just looking through the petals and black iron. Or maybe I just respond better to the name of “Coach.” I don’t know yet. I am hoping that my last few visits to APEX are as gratifying as that one though. I started to see more of that community in that 13 year old than I had ever before.  

Blog Post #3 Chris Plattsmie....Power and Cause & Effect in Shakespeare and Service Learning

The prompt for this blog post makes me have to reach back to early experiences in my Service Learning placement.  After being at APEX youth center for nearly three months now, the connections between Shakespeare and modern social constructs have slowly revealed themselves.  I initially felt nervous about telling my fellow volunteers and managers of the center that I was volunteering there in part to help further my studies regarding Shakespeare. I’m already an outsider to the culture and location of the youth center, what are they going to think of me when I tell them I’m here to learn about Shakespeare? That is what I thought to myself.  I was also nervous that I was not going to have much luck being able to relate Shakespeare to a youth center for inner-city kids who are not normally to keen to volunteers in the first place. 

            The first time I met my fellow volunteers and supervisors, I was hoping I could get away without telling them I was there for a Shakespeare class.  All the other volunteers were either there on their own good grace or are starting graduate studies in social work.  When I answered their questions and told them I was there for a Shakespeare class, they seem intrigued.  I tried to explain to them how Shakespeare and Service Learning related, but I probably failed miserably.  However, in more recent weeks when I have talked to groups of students from all over the country who have volunteered at the center as part of a mission trips for their respective universities, I think I have improved my answer. I tell them that my observations have been geared to looking for social and cultural power struggles between the kids at the center, the kids and the supervisors and the kids and the volunteers.  This fits with my paper topic, which looks into the relationship between social, political and hierarchal power with violence in Titus Andronicus.  Some of the people saw the relevance and others thought it was a stretch, but I think I have finally been able to do a good job explaining the social concepts I am trying to relate to my service.

             The biggest thing I have gained from reading Shakespeare is insight to the cause and effect nature of social contexts.  None of Shakespeare’s plays have unnecessary scenes or lines, every action and line has a consequence.  Whether it is personal or social consequences, Shakespeare’s plays are in constant motion of cause and effect scenarios.  In my opinion, this is Shakespeare’s place in the real world.  At APEX I have seen how every actions and words of the kids effect their standing or perception in the eyes of their peers and the workers at the center.  Being a marginalized group (lower-income African Americans) it is easy to think that these kids have greater consequences for their actions, but at times they are the ones with power at the center.  They outnumber the volunteers and workers and sometimes (most of the times) we are the outsiders at the center who have to catch up to their actions and thoughts.  It has been really interesting to see how volunteers and workers at the center are often left powerless, by either not knowing how to interact with the kids or by social and cultural barriers.  I think that the kids observe everything I do there just as much as I observe their actions.  There is no action that does not have a social or cultural judgment made by the kids and volunteers alike.  This is how I’ve seen Shakespeare through my service learning, and it has taken form in both subtle and noticeable ways.