From: valerie boes
Submit: Post Field Note
VisitDate: 10.10.96
Date: 11 Oct 1996
Time: 13:57:28
Remote Name: mingong-mac-03.ucsc.edu
Isis-7, another girl that i think is in the same grade
Yesterday there were a lot of new faces at barrios unidos. two young children caught my attention and the last part of my visit was dedicated to hanging out with them. The two children were a little girl named Isis and the other girl( who i embaresingly(sp?) mistaked as a boy i cant remember the name. her mother was there though and she has a younger sister there. So what happened is that i ended up playing connect the dots with the two girls and said its his turn. so the girl who i thought was a guy goes "hey im not a guy" and i somehow do this a lot so i said something to cover up my mistake. she didn't seem to really care that i said that which took a load of my mind. the two girls didn't really want to play the real game so our game of connect dots turned into a game of "who can put their dots in first". After we got sick of this game, i asked them if they wanted to play dominoes. at first i was thinking that it would just be putting the dominoes up and then pushing them down so we could watch the chain reaction. the girls whos name i forgot, said she wanted to play real dom's, so we started to play. this is the first time at barrios unidos that i really felt like i was contributing to the actual learning of kids. while we were playing i had many opportunities to question the validity of their move and if they could not see why a dom couldnt go where they put it, i was able to have them count the dots out with me and realize that 7 dots does not = 6 dots. this game proved challenging but fun to both of the girls as well as rewarding to me.
my mistake with the gender of the girl brought back a lot of embarresing experiences in my life. I have no idea why i cant tell sometimes. its almost funny to me that even if i have the name, see the face, hear the voice, im still oblivious to what sex some children are.
Does anyone else have this problem? any suggestions?