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.