LA COMUNICACIÓN COMO ACCIÓN COMÚN PARA REFORZAR LA EFICACIA EN LOS PROCESOS PARTICIPATIVOS

The mid-afternoon light fills the large kitchen/dining room where Jo and I are meeting to discuss his portfolio and overall experience with the project. Both of our families are in the background somewhere making tea, taking care of the dogs outside, or popping in the Cars movie in the other room. On this day, his home has been the site of a marathon of creativity, a catch-up session to make up for a couple of meetings he had missed due to varsity-level basketball tournaments (which his team won second place at Nationals). We sit down with hot tea and begin to flip slowly through the newly assembled portfolio, a product in which he has expressed sincere pride.

Jo shares with me the meaning behind the pages and stories behind their photos, and he opens up when asked about what he had learned during our overall time together. Naturally, as a basketball player, his responses refer to the teamwork and teambuilding that he noticed and appreciated. “I learned a lot about the other people we were working with. Having them there, I hadn’t really talked to them much before. I learned quite a bit about them.” After more discussion regarding the teamwork involved in the service projects, he adds, “It was really fun to go out with friends and go support the community.” Both of us taking sips of tea, I turn the conversation to the modes of artmaking within the project and their impact on his learning through civic engagement. I ask, “How did the art activities facilitate your learning in these

ways?” He responds with bright eyes and a smile, “It was interesting learning how to put everything together and it was mind-boggling just trying to grasp different ideas and put them together. Stuff like that. It was a fun experience today, doing that.” I offer, “Mind-boggling how to represent everything you wanted to say in a way that was fun?” He replies, “Yes, it was hard to do. Challenging.” Coming from a basketball tournament champion, I knew that “challenges” to him meant something thrilling, something that authentically engaged him in the process of learning. As he reflected about his basketball team in one of his portfolio pages, “We finally pulled it all together right before State… We fought hard and overcame what nobody thought we could and ended up winning third place at State and going on to Nationals and placing second!” He supports his reflection with the stamped embellishment, “the challenges of today.” For Jo, challenges are thrilling and rewarding. The process of “pulling it all together” demonstrates that challenges for him are also educative. Therefore, the challenge of this project was an intervention in his learning.

For Jo, the learning processes of reflective artmaking and service-learning were inseparable in the overall project. His responses consisted of the “mind-boggling” enmeshment of both. Among the most striking examples are his portfolio pages that display his photographic “Who is my community?” project.

For example, on one page of the four-page series, Jo uses a stamp that was popular among this group, two hands clasping at the wrists, to express helping one another. Unlike others in the group, he angles his aesthetic embellishment upward, as opposed from side-to-side, symbolizing lifting another upward. Those to whom he reaches out are represented photographically on the page. His first photo is his family standing together, which could be interpreted as a symbol of familial unity, and he journals below the photo “Outreaching to

friends and family… [sic]” (Figure 6). His second photo is of his basketball team praying before the final championship game, a symbol of camaraderie and/or spiritual unity, and he journals below the photo, “Faith is my Rock” (Figure 6). Included next to this second photo is his drawn image of a rock, an arrow pointing the text to the rock, the label “rock” beside it, an image of the Christian cross, and an opened Bible.

Figure 6: Jo's Final Portfolio page about "Outreaching to friends and family"

Displaying his community aesthetically was an exercise in symbolic representation of his role in his community. He is the “maintainer,” he told me in my interview with him, “someone who keeps everything in working order.” Such a person is the one who takes care of others, keeps them on track. He helps them along by lifting them up when they are down (clasping hands stamp). Referring to his Christian faith, Christ is the solid rock upon which he stands

when he is caring for others as the “maintainer.” Consequently, he sees himself as maintaining an important role within his closest realms of community.

He expanded his explanation of the pages verbally during my interview with him. As we flipped through and lingered upon each page, it was evident to me that “trying to grasp the ideas and put them together” fostered meaning-making, problem solving, and a host of other learning interventions. I expound on his story and present the culmination of his symbolic representation in Chapter 8 through his textually imaged Self-Portrait of himself in his community.

In this chapter, I present my findings within the “mind-boggling” enmeshment of themes by exhibiting recognized patterns and the nuances therein. My initial findings surprised me, and as I continued to work with the data, more layers of understanding became visible to me. Like a large, showy heirloom rose continues to blossom in the sun, more themes related to the development of sense of community emerged with diligent systematic documentation through my capacities-based analysis of the reflective artmaking service-learning experiences within my study.

This chapter’s exhibition of findings regards the two intersecting themes of the Capacities for Imaginative Learning and the modes of artmaking. This focus illuminates what kinds of capacities the students gained in arts-based learning as it was coupled with service-learning. Although the learning processes exist as a cohesive, inseparable unit, I am able to hold a magnifying glass to the modes of artmaking to display its unique relationship with both processes.