In past semesters, students in this class have worked with 5th graders in an elementary school (see the other geographies of children websites). Last fall, students built a website to capture the experiences of young people during a pandemic. This fall we were expecting some return to normalcy, but no. The principals we reached out to did not respond and the class was at a loss. Students generated a number of ideas, including working with an after school program, working with student teachers, reaching out to young people we know, and building a website to identify research subjects online. Eventually, we got access to an after school program located in a local housing complex. Our schedules were planned around completing research during the school day, so we all had to navigate a new schedule. Different students were available at different times and we ended up with a couple different days when we did research. The after school/homework club had inconsistent attendance and participants, in part because the local public schools often had half days (in response to the challenges of reopening when the pandemic hadn’t quite burnt out (but teachers and students had). We generally had to wait until students were done with their homework before we engaged with them. Their understanding of who we were and what our project was about was limited.
In past semesters, we have given cameras to elementary students and conducted photo elicitation interviews and mental mapping interviews in an attempt to keep our research engaging and interactive. This year we decided to hand out disposable cameras, which always adds some time pressure for collecting the cameras and getting the film developed and then returning photos to the young people who took them. We developed a bingo board to help prompt photos. On the days when we were waiting to collect consent forms or to return developed pictures, we played soccer or on the playground with the young residents in the neighborhood. This helped us build relationships with the young people, but raised other issues (see limitations section in our findings).
We focused on the pandemic and how it changed the everyday experiences and geographies of young people. This general research topic ended up not necessarily fitting the specific research setting and subjects. We worked in a small, tightly knit community, where many residents (and participants in our study) were Afghan refugees.
