"We live in this area, in Cupertino, where the parents really support their children. They've got lots of things, and they never get a chance to see [underprivileged] people," Ahn says. "[My students] got to experience something in a totally different environment. It was a real eye opener."

Ahn's way of uniting the two groups was a creative one literally and figuratively--through art classes.

The idea came to her when her 15-year-old daughter, Rosa Ann, needed community service credit hours.

Ahn arranged this year to take 8 to 10 of her high school art students to the Georgia Travis Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays from late June to the beginning of August.

The center is a daytime drop-in center located near downtown San Jose for homeless or at-risk mothers and their children. There, Ahn's students gave 1 ¹/2-hour art lessons to children whose ages ranged from 5 to 10 years old.

For most of Ahn's teenage group, this wasn't their first volunteer experience, but it was their first time working with underprivileged youngsters and the first time teaching art.

"I have volunteered a lot but not for art," says Michelle Chae, 16, a Homestead High School student.

What Ahn hoped to come from the program, and what she says she thinks she got, was a mutually beneficial experience for both her students and the center's children.

It was like "planting small seed," Ahn says of what she sees as a long-term venture that will pick up again in the fall.

Ahn has been teaching art to children for more than 20 years, either as a volunteer at her children's elementary school or through the studio she opened in 1993.

Comparing the students she typically instructs in her studio to the children at Georgia Travis Center, she says she found the center's children to be easily distracted, less advanced in drawing or sketching and lacking in confidence.

"They had really low self-esteem compared to my students. They really relied on my students," Ahn says. "If we continue to teach them, maybe we can give them more self-esteem."

Signs of lower levels of self-confidence show up in the sketches, she says. On larger sheets of paper, children with high levels of self-confidence will know how to "manage the space very well" by filling it, for example, with a house, parents, children, a pet, or a sun, Ahn says. Most of her Rainbow Art Studio students do this.

On the other hand, children with lower levels of self-confidence will confine their sketches to just a corner and won't know what items to include.

Studying the psychology of art and artists has been a long-time interest for Ahn, who received a master's of fine art degree from a university in Korea and, after she moved to the United States in 1989, received a bachelor's degree in fine art from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Art can provide a healthy outlet for emotions, Ahn says, pointing out a couple of illustrative pieces at an art show held on the final day of the Travis "summer camp."

In an art project where the children were asked to draw a family of aliens, one 6-year-old drew a green-faced alien with pigtails just like its creator but with a scowling face. Another child drew a "mad face" on an origami project and explained to Ahn that it was drawn that way because the child's mother was mad at her that day.

Art can be a passage for expression, Ahn says, and sometimes it can help relieve some of the hurt children feel.

"I hope through these art lessons we can give them another channel to relieve their pain. That is my goal," Ahn says.

The center's children rarely receive one-on-one instruction such as they received from Ahn and her students.

Nancy Koomson, the children's program supervisor at the Travis center, says that because it's a drop-in center, she never knows how many children will show up each day.

"Sometimes there were only eight or 10 kids, and there were as many students as there were kids," she says.

"There was a lot of one-on-one, and the kids loved that," Koomson says.

It seems the teenagers enjoyed it as well.

"It was a good experience," says Chris Fung, a 15-year-old from Los Altos Hills, and a long-time student of Ahn's.

The younger children were not able to concentrate for long on the art projects, the students say. Marc Chew,15, who attends Monta Vista High School with Ahn's daughter Rosa Ann, 15, say the youngsters lost interest in the art after about an hour.

"The last 30 minutes we would just play with them," Rosa says.

On art show day, Rosa and Marc played games with the children, sitting cross-legged at a round table play-fighting with tiny military vehicles, Rosa giving an occasional head-bonk with a snowman hand puppet.

For the Rainbow Art Studio students, the experience hit a nerve early on.

After about the third session when the children were done with a project, they asked to take some of the materials with them and were anxious to hold on to their art projects.

"It's because they don't have a lot of belongings. Some of them have never had a wall or a refrigerator to hang their art on," says Autumn Gutierrez, spokesperson for InnVision, the parent organization of the Georgia Travis Center.

Ahn had her own awareness grow and adjustments to make. She is accustomed to children able to concentrate for long periods of time.

"After the first session I was so exhausted. [The children] didn't listen. My head was spinning. Compared to my regular class, their attitude was totally different than my regular students," she says.

But for Ahn this has sparked a new challenge.

She is a big believer in the opportunities available to citizens of the United States, and as much as she wanted to give something to the Travis children, she also wanted to help her daughter and other students recognize how fortunate they are.

Ahn says she grew up in a big family where sharing was important. During the short time she and her students spent at the center, she says she noticed a shift in the attitude of the teenagers. She says if her students ask for something from their parents and are told 'no,' they are quicker to accept the denial, she says.

Volunteer work has been a part of Ahn's life, and she likens it to being part of a bigger picture.

"Teenagers need some place to express themselves, not just to study, not just to go to school. It's another connection; it's a great opportunity. It makes them feel like, 'I'm really useful; I'm doing something good for society.' They could go work at a supermarket and make money, but they reached out and gave something to society," Ahn says.