Digital Short for Nashville MTA Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LxFkUuga70

Connection to Class Readings

The reading that related most to my service learning experience at the Easly Community Center was defiantly the Kozol piece, Savage Inequalities. The book explores the public school systems of some of the poorest and most underserved school districts. While I think Nashville is a stronger district than some covered in the Kozol book, I do think that many parallels can be drawn between the two. Several of the posts have pertained to this notion of class sizes and the lack of individualized instruction that is provided to the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol talks of the oversized classrooms due to the lack of additional funding for more teachers. From my experiences at Easly, it is obvious that these are larger class sizes and many of the children are at differing points of their comprehension of the materials. Upon coming into the center many of the children to not had solid understandings of the lesson and all but ask the tutors to do the homework for them. However once the child is given sample problems and guided through a section or two of the homework they become more independent and versed in the material. I feel that this goes back to Kozol’s observation of inadequate staffing and funding in many of the public school systems. Maybe if more teachers were hired and the class sizes were smaller than these youth would be able to gain the material faster comprehend the material more easily. While I was not directly in the school system like Kozol I could see many of the things that he faced by simply talking to the outcomes of these institutions—the students who come to the after school programs. For me personally, I would say that my experiences at Easly Community Center reinforce many of the points that Kozol made evident in his book Savage Inequalities.

Final Easley Visit

Today was my last visit to Easly Community Center. I am sad to see the semester drawing to a close and hope to go back to the center next semester. By now I have gotten to know several of the kids, and pretty much have my tutoring regulars who I work with each time I am at the center. I normally work with two twin girls, both with hilarious personalities. I would say my over all experience at Easly is how smart the kids are. It amazed me that once they got to the center in the afternoon many of them would struggle with their homework initially (or at least the ones in the homework room). Then after a couple of sample problems and individualized help they were able to grasp the concepts and succeed at the work. Davidson County schools has a very high dropout rate among high school students, and working at Easly showed me that so many of these students become discouraged because of their one-on-one lack of attention when gaining the materials. It really showed me that it is not necessarily the kids that are failing in the schools, but the schools that are failing the children. Large class sizes, lack of funding, and various other factors probably effect the learning, however this experience has proven to me the potential behind many of these inner-city students.

Consideration of materials and/or social space

While working out at the Easly community center materials played an interesting role in the learning process. Many of the students had Tennessee TCAP approved text and workbooks which gave examples and learning targets, however Easly community center lacked many of the luxuries such as computers with internet access, notebook paper, rules, calculators, and other needed materials. Often times for projects the students and I would be on my iPhone looking up project information, using the calculator, and other functions to complete homework assignments. We are moving more and more to digital interfaces as a society and the lack of resources at the community center and the schools is troublesome. As encyclopedias and other text reference sources being to disappear it is important that the gap be closed and these digital resources be provided to the students for learning.

When it comes to the arrangement of learning, the homework room at easly was a simple room, with three tables surrounded by chairs. One of the major problems I found with the set-up was the distraction by the other students. For example, while the children were sitting next to, or across from, each other they would Easley get into conversation unrelated to the assignments they should have been working on for school. I feel that if they had separate desks maybe separated by cubical style walls they students would be able to better focus on their assignments and complete their work, while at the same time better comprehending what they had learned. Also, because the community center is small their was a lot of external noise in and surrounding the homework room. Unfortunately this too distracted the students and made it difficult for them to concentrate on their homework assignment.

Easly Three

Today was my third trip out to the Easly community center. Once again I had a great time working with the kids. There was not much homework this afternoon and I had the opportunity to play connect-four with a few of the kids at the center. I was surprised at how excited they are that an adult was playing at the center with them. There are several adult chaperons that walk around the center in their metro parks attire, but they seem to rarely sit down and actually play games with the kids. One girl in particular that I played the game with was very excited everything she would win. Previously she had been playing with some of the older boys who would win every game leaving her rather discouraged. It was so exciting for me to watch her laugh and jump around whenever she would win the game between the two of us. It was amazing how once she started winning her confidence automatically improved. She started talking more, telling me more about herself, what types of things she liked to do, etc. At first she was very quiet and seemed rather sad, but once she started winning at the game the transformation was amazing. What I took away from today’s experience was the power of confidence and the feeling of wining and what it can do for a child. Its amazing on attitudes change once you think you can win at something.

Final Service Learning Reflection # 1, Connection to my own literacy experience

In 1999 my family and I moved from Memphis to Brentwood, Tennessee. Upon exiting the Memphis city school system and entering the Williamson County School system I was placed on an IEP, individual education plan. Due to my lack of preparation and learning in Memphis schools I was take out of my regular math and reading classes each school day and placed in a specialized learning environment with a 4:1 teacher to student ratio. After about three years I was able to graduate from my IEP and rejoin the general student learning classes during instructional time. At the Easly community center I saw a need for this type of model. Many of the students would come to the center struggling with the materials they had learned at school that day. Many students would be from the same class; some would grasp the materials quickly, others would take more time to understand what concepts. What I found was that once a student had been given individualized attention and shown a couple of the sample problems one-on-one they normally did very well with the rest of the assignment. It simply took time and effort with the child to get them to grasp the concepts. For me in elementary school large learning environments were not the best way of learning for me. The IEP plan allowed me to gain the foundations to succeeded in the standard classroom. Im sure that due to budget and staffing constraints offering IEPs for these students would be much more difficult, however I do feel that many of the students could benefit from this one-on-one experiences. From my obsorvations and tutoring of the students it wasn’t that some of the kids were not smart, they just needed a different approach to learning than what was being provided in their schools.

Easly Vist 2

This afternoon was my second trip out to Easley community center. I was surprised to find that many of the kids remember me from my pervious trip, which was several weeks ago. One girl in particular even remembered me by name. This week their were about 8 kids in the homework room, all of whom needed help. It was somewhat hectic because each child wanted help all at the same time. For a moment it made me think about what many of the teachers in the metro school system do each day. I was alone at the time with only eight children and they typically have 25 per room in their schools. While it was able to show the individual student who to do a sample problem then move to the next kid, it was hard to manage all of the students who were working at various levels. While many of the children at the schools are focusing on the same assignments, some of the kids were even in the same classes yet they all were at different levels with the material. Some caught on right away while others needed much more individualized attention. It was interesting to think about how the teachers at metro are able to juggle all of these various skill levels into one uniformed classroom. I have been having a good time at Easly so far and am looking forward to going back soon.