My Testimonial on Internship at Queens Museum

<What I learned about the Korean community and my Korean program> & <Positive Behavior Support> By Jiyoung Lee

Looking back over my time staying in the United States of America, now that I am spending my second summer in New York and the end of my days as an intern at the Queens Museum is coming soon, I feel very lucky to have experienced so many great things. Though my research project on behalf of an educational outreach program serving the Korean community in Queens, I met numerous children with autism and their families. It was a unique opportunity to explore a Korean community abroad and help to come up with creative ways to make a difference in their lives. The Korean population in Queens is huge: the borough’s Korean population is now the third largest Asian group in Queens, behind Asian Indians and the Chinese, according to the United States Census. From 62,130 Koreans in 2000, the Korean population has ballooned to almost 90,000. Art Access’s programs affiliated with the Queens museum are intended for a diverse variety of ethnic families, and currently include Spanish as well as Korean-language support. Staff members at the museum are very passionate and greatly experienced educators. They always wanted to learn about cultural phenomena from everywhere; and they helped us to teach kids with autism in more effective ways.

I am most grateful that they gave me an opportunity to work with a Korean program named the “K-reative Korean Club,” which is similar name to the “Museum Explorer Club,” last May. There was also another Korean intern, Sara, as well as three educators, Michelle, Jenn and Mitra, who helped us to run the program by giving proper directions and much useful advice from their own experience. I am proud that could gain real teaching experience by applying the guidelines from the book “Room to Grow.” We ran a four-week program about art making that dealt with the theme of the Korean family month of May.

People in the community really glad to have a program with Korean language support. They said, “Sometimes we feel we lack information about education programs, but this program provides the kind of information we need in the Korean language for free. It is really a great program!”

What I learned from this program and from my community research is that various minority group in Queens need social programs in a community space. This is especially true for parents of special needs kids, because many parents find it difficult to communicate with others. Some Korean families emigrated here for the sake of their children’s special education. They expected that the U.S. would be more open to special needs kids. They tried to make their kids happy, but they don’t really feel happy themselves. I think this kind of community program really helps not only kids, but also parents, communicate and share information together. One more thing that I want to mention is about information. When their son or daughter got the diagnosis of autism, the parents, most of whom emigrated here within the past 15 years, say they didn’t know what they could do for their children. They had a hard time for looking for a proper program because of language barriers and limited relationship with the community. To think more about this, I held a ‘Korean mommy’ group meeting with Michelle to get their opinions of our programs, and to discuss cultural differences based on their immigrant experience. Many parents mentioned the same kind of things that I have mentioned so far, but one thing that I was really interested in promoting is getting them to praise and be proud of what their kids are doing. I felt that Korean parents usually are very strict about their children’s behavior. One of the mothers said, “My parents never praised me up when I grew up. But I’m trying to do it to my kids.” ”I was really impressed with an educator’s way of supporting my kids at the program.” Through our program, parents realized that praising behavior is very important to extending a child’s self-confidence.

“Room to Grow” is based on the idea of combining art making with positive behavior support (PBS). Making art is a really good way to support the natural development of children’s intellectual abilities. Because we can give them great verbal support whenever they make something, children seem to develop pride and confidence in themselves through these classes. My experience with this program makes me feel that “Room to Grow” is perfectly aligned with the needs of the local Korean community. I am now working on an article intended to promote the idea that this program should be more widely available to members of the Korean community in New York City.