Creat! Don't Hate( First day)

Alright so today was my first of four mornings at Patterson HS. Myself along with other members of Baltimore's AIGA are working one on one with students to create Billboards with the theme of tolerance. 8 designs will be chosen and turned into real billboards, which is exciting! Anyways today we met the students we were to work with and we started brainstorming. The girl I worked with's name tag said " Madoline" but I thought she said something different when we first met... I know I sound like a jackass not knowing her name( I'll get it right next week), however I learned a lot about her including where her family is from, where she lives, where she wants to go to school, dreams and aspirations as well as hobbies and more. It's funny her future goal, like mine at her age,is to go to and work in Japan.. what highschooler doesn't love Japan?

The day started with intorductions and going over the project a bit, what they were told about it, thoughts and ideas, as well as what I knew about it and stuff I thought would be important to consider( basic things like legibility and what media would be used). After this basic intro we did some brainstorming, though that did not last too long, words were just not coming to Madoline(?). I tried to delve a bit into intolerance and tolerance in her life, which she had obviously experienced but was also very hesitant to delve into. I did not want to make her uncomfortable so I tried to take another approach. I had brought some magazines and scissors and offered she find some pictures and make a collage of things she realted to tollerance. This worked well we came up with a bunch of new ideas

So, we've got two ideas we're working with now that both involve tolerance of people and of the environment. While I'm not so sure if the environmental one would be chosen to be turned into a real billboard( I don't think that is what they are going for) I think it is a good idea and if that is the direction Madoline(?) wants to go in then I am all for it! For homework I suggested we both brainstorm some slogans and look up any non copywritten images she would want to use.
I'm a little nervous with only 4 weeks to work on this and only an hour each week..but hopefully we can make something sweet.