Edelman's Court experience: age 11

It's been about 6-7 weeks now, since I've driven down the same highway, walked through the same doors, looked many different innocent eyes, and worked with tiny and medium sized hands as we ventured through glue, paint, crayons and various arts an crafts. One of my graduation requirements in to do an internship with an organization, The organization that I intern for is called Free Arts, which has a really great philosophy behind it and a very supportive staff. The location that I volunteer at is at the Edmund. E. Edelman's court house is which the only children's court house within Los Angeles county. I thought I would share some of my experiences there. This is going to be a little tricky because I only want to write based on my experience, the things that i have learned and observed and hopefully I don't come off offensive or biases. I am not trying tarnish anyone's name, I am just in pursuit of journalist truth, and hopefully can expose some short or... something through what i experience and write about.
So here are my major experiences:

1. Age 11
He was 11, he had a younger sister about a year or two younger then him. I think the project we were workinmg on were making masks. I chose to create masks, because of the different uses for mask. One of them being to hide and to take on a new identity. I thought that mind be effective in working with children who may be in foster care or are in the court because they come from abusive home. While I was talking to this boy, he told me that his brother was shot in the head, while he was coming home from his girlfriends house. He also told me that the man that shot him got 55 years in jail. ( nice to know our justice system is working)
He also told me that the kids he goes to school with are really into gangs but he isn't.
Throughout our whole conversation this boy was calm. Same tone of voice, as if events like these were normal. Although i could tell that he was sad about his brothers passing, and is chooseing to honor is brother's life by nameing his future son after his brother, I was amazed at this boys strength. And during our conversation I wished that i could gather all the hope in the world and build a walll around him and his family so that nothing could stop him from growing up happy and reaching his full potiental,. because this boy had a lot of potiental. After our conversation he was called into the courtoom and I didn't see him again after that. But he will always be in my prayers.