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.