Service Learning Project

When I first heard about the Service Learning project, I was kind of confused as to what we would be doing. I wasn't sure what it meant or how we would be completing it. But, when we went to the YWCA, I felt a lot more comfortable learning about what we would be doing. I felt like the YWCA was a very comforting place and it had a good mission statement. I'm excited to help out as much as I can at the YWCA, because I love kids (even though I'll be teaching high school...), and I know that all of the kids there could benefit from having a college students interacting with them. I think this project will be a good and a fun experience for me, and it doesn't even take that much work/effort. I am a little nervous about creating a lesson or activity for the students, but knowing that this can be a collaborative effort makes me a little less nervous. I know I want to be a teacher, but doing things like this make me nervous (I know it'll go away when I do my student teaching and other field experiences, but for right now, I only have 15 hours of obversation under my belt). Plus, I know that the kids will enjoy whatever activity I (or a group I might work with) come up with. Little kids, especially preschool aged kids, love doing fun activities and I feel like I could come up with a pretty good one that would get the engaged, excited, and have fun all at the same time.
Working one on one with a student confuses me a little bit too. Are we supposed to tutor them? Or is it strictly interaction? I guess depending on the age of the student it would vary, and I would like to work with a school aged child if I can. So, are we just going to talk to them one on one? Tutor them? Play games? The requirements document said something about asking about tests. What are we supposed to ask them and what are we supposed to do about it? If they are not good at taking tests, should we help them try to improve their scores? I don't think any of this would be too hard, but I feel like the project as a whole doesn't focus around this. I would definitely be willing to help a school aged child work on homework and help him or her improve grades and/or test scores, but are they really at the YWCA to be tutored?
I really hope I'll be able to find one or two other people to travel to and from the YWCA with. I always feel awkward going into places I don't really know and doing things with people I don't really know. I suppose I just have to get used to it, and I know I will with time. But, for now, I hope there is a way I can do things with other people.

Chapter 5 Response

I have always been the type of student who doesn't talk in class. I hate it. I'm always afraid of being wrong or sounding stupid, so I just avoid that happening at all costs. I can give a presentation, but that's only because I've already researched a topic and I have a power point (or some other thing) right in front of me to read off of. Growing up, I feel like my teachers would make me feel like I was wrong or that I was saying something stupid, so I think that's why I just don't speak up in class. I always hated when teachers said "There are no wrong answers" because there always was. And I always seemed to be the one who said it.

I know that talking out loud in class is scary for students. I know that I will be able to relate to every single one of those students, and I will be sure to let them know that. I want my classroom to be comfortable for my students, unlike how most of my teachers made their classrooms. (There was one particular teacher I had in high school [an English teacher, go figure], that made me feel the worst. I'm pretty sure she hated me for no reason.) I would like for my students to know that not talking is okay... but it's still not the right way. We're in school for learning and I am not the one who can be learning for them. I suppose having large class discussions would make a lot of students feel uncomfortable, and I think I would definitely utilize the small group discussions. I know I always feel more comfortable speaking to a small group, rather than the class as a whole. Smaller classes made me feel more comfortable talking out loud too, but I know I won't be having very many small classes.

I want my students to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts or asking their questions in my classroom, but I know that is almost virtually impossible. I don't think there is a way for every single student in a classroom to feel comfortable talking out loud. I know I would implement strategies to get them to talk, and so I could see what their thoughts were if they don't say anything out loud. I would also probably require a one-on-one a few times a year, just to talk to each individual student's thoughts. My AP English teacher I had for my junior year and senior year of high school did something like this. He would require us to have a journal conference with him twice a semester (aka once a quarter). There he could assess everyone's progress and hear what kinds of things they are thinking about the books and poems we were reading in an extremely laid-back (yet extremely stressful) setting. I would hope my one-on-ones would not be as stressful as those journal conferences, but I do think they would be very helpful for getting my students to talk.

Delpit Response

I feel like teaching children from another race (like a white teacher teaching and African American student) isn't as hard as these chapters made it out to be. Maybe way back when all of the Civil Rights things were happening it was hard for white people to teach African Americans, but it shouldn't be like that now.

Maybe I'm just biased. I went to a high school where the white students were the minority of the school. There were about twice as many Hispanic students as white students, and maybe about the same African American students. I feel like I already know how to interact with these students at a student level, so I think it will be easier for me to interact/teach students from other races while they are in my classroom. I was able to see how my own teachers handled the huge diversity in their classrooms, and I feel like I'll be just as able to handle it as them. Of course, I know that there are other circumstances behind all of the different techniques, but I honestly feel like some authors make it seem like teaching students from other races is a huge challenge. But as a teacher, that just has to be a challenge you are willing to accept. As a teacher, we have to do what is right for our classrooms as a whole, and then break it down to individuals. If an African American student is having trouble reading or writing, the teacher would just have to meet with him or her individually and in private.

I really feel like it wont be as hard to teach in a diverse classroom as some people seem to think it is. Sure, it may be a challenge to some, but I dont think it will be as hard in the society we live in currently. There are better ways to help students now than there were in previous years, and I think a lot of teachers take advantage of these tools. I know I will.

Chapter 14 Response

I'm in Instructional Technology (EDUC 295), and one of our first assignments was to post a forum about what we thought about using blogs in the classroom. At first, I was completely against it. I mean, how could you possibly use a blog in a classroom? Especially an English classroom? At first I thought they really had no educational value whatsoever. But now, after reading about how an actual English teacher used blogs in her classroom while reading a certain book, made me rethink me previous accusation. I think that blogs actually might be useful in the classroom. I think they actually might be a very cool thing to use while reading a novel. Students feel more comfortable when they can say what they want from the protection of their own home and behind a screen. No one can really "attack" them there, if they say something wrong or stupid. I also think it's awesome the even people from other places can access the blog and post their own comments, even though they're not in the class. I think it would be really cool if my class had a blog and some writer began commenting on it. I think it would add a whole new dynamic to the classroom and to the discussion. It would probably even be possible to get that person to come and talk to my class.

I also think that the wikibooks and the book trailer ideas are cool. Both things make students think and have a safety net behind a screen. I think that students feel more comfortable when they can see/hear other student's ideas before they share their own. I know I felt that way in high school, and even sometimes in college, but in high school we never used online technology to do things. See what I've posted here? I would never actually say this out loud in a class. I can write a paper about anything, I can write on a forum post about anything, but talking about anything in class? I just can't do it. That's why I like being able to do things like this, because I know I feel more comfortable with it. I think the book trailer idea would be better as more of a project when students have finished reading a book. I had to do something similar in my creative writing 1 class in high school, where we had to make a book jacket for the "book" we had created during the class. It was fun to see how everyone had created theirs, so I think seeing how students would make a book trailer would be cool.

I was not a huge fun of the podcast idea. I think it might be good for a teacher to have students record book discussions, because I think everyone knows that when the teacher isn't actually around, the book really isn't being discussed. I think it would probably be good for the teacher to hear what went down in the actual discussion, but then when the students post it to the website, then they could edit out those parts so the other members of the group can listen to it again if the need were to arise. Other than that, though, I don't really like the podcast idea. I would probably never use it, and if I did it would be for the reason I explained.

Chapter 8 Response

I think that people (not so much teachers, but everyone else) need to be more considerate to English Language Learners. English is probably one of the hardest languages to learn because of all of the stupid rules we have (rules that don't seem stupid to native speakers). Take for instance, silent letters. How do you expect someone who's native language is Chinese to understand that the p in phone is silent and the "ph" makes an "f" sound? I think that people who are not ESL teachers or who are not bilingual need to understand that learning a new language is hard. Most everyone in the United States has had to take at least one course in another language to graduate from high school or college, or both. The native English speakers need to remember how hard it was trying to learn Spanish (or French or German or whatever other language might have been offered) and think of how hard it must be for someone from one of those countries to learn English. I know from my experience, I always had to hear things in English and learn the concepts in English before I could even remotely understand what I was learning in my Spanish classes. It's the same thing that happens to the people trying to learn English. These students to be put with patient teacher who is willing to go through the English language just as painstakingly as a Spanish teacher goes through the Spanish.

I've had many friends go through an ELL class and they have all loved them. My friend Talitha, who is originally from the Philippines, went through an ELL class when she moved to Illinois when we were in eighth grade. She has said to me before that she probably did not need to go through this class because she had been instructed in English as well as in Tagalog while in the Philippines. Even when we had first met, I couldn't even tell that she came from another country. She speaks English just as well as anyone else I know, and she can speak Tagalog just as fluently. It's fun to watch her at home because her parents do not speak as much English (even though they are fluent enough to get by), so Talitha will switch from talking in English to me to talking in Tagalog with her parents in an instant. Both of her parents and her other older family members (aunts, uncles, etc) have heavy Filippino accents, but Talitha does not have an accent at all. It is interesting to me that the book states most ELL students are afraid to speak outloud in English because of their accents, yet my friend (who is not afraid of anything, really) does not even have an accent when talking in English. (I can sometimes hear it when she is talking with her parents, though.)

Chapter 7 Response

I think vocabulary is a very important thing to learn, no matter how old you are. I love learning new words every day and I always have. I guess that's why I wanted to become an English teacher. The different techniques described in the chapter seemed very well thought out to me and I would definitely try to implement them in my classroom. I'm not entirely sure how I would make learning new vocabulary fun for my students, but I would defintely try my hardest. Something my sophomore English teacher had us do was write the word in one corner of a piece of paper, write the definition you thought it was in another, the actual definition in another, and then use it in a sentence in the last corner. Then, in the middle, we had to draw a picture of the sentence we wrote. I know that really helped me in learning how to use the words in context, and I now actually do use some of the words in my everyday speech. (I wouldn't be able to tell you which ones I actually learned then, since I've been using them for so long, but I do know that that is what helped me to learn new words.)

Chapter 4 Response

I definitely agree with what the author of this chapter wrote about. Teachers need to teach students in a way that they will understand the material for life, not just long enough for the test. The story the author wrote about how she visited a classroom and had the student sit on the floor for the discussion really got me thinking. This is where a lot of students feel more comfortable. If the teacher and all of the students are more physically comfortable on the floor, then they will more than likely be more mentally comfortable to actually listen to the teacher and engage in the learning. That is where the learning takes place.
I also think that the author of this chapter was trying to get at the point of "learning is okay." I think it would be good for a teacher to show the students that he/she is learning the same stuff the students are, just differently. As an English teacher, I think it would be important for the teacher to be reading the books or passages or poems at the same time as the students and talk about the troublesome spots he/she had. That would make for a better discussion with the students, because then they could see that even the teacher had trouble with certain spots, and maybe a few students did too. Then those students can speak up and ask their questions, and the students who felt like they did understand that same section can speak up and give their ideas. These are the things that students will remember for life.
I think that lessons have to be interesting, especially when the topic isn't. I can honestly say that I don't remember much from my US History class in high school because the only thing my teacher ever did was make us fill out enormous packets, take notes (with highlighting! If there wasn't highlighting in your notes, you got points off), and watch movies. Of course I remember HISTORY... I just don't remember all the fine details that I know my teacher gave us. If he would have had us doing more things that were interesting, I would have remembered a lot more.
I think that as a teacher, I will definitely try to implement more of the comprehension ideas the author of this chapter talked about. All are important, but some may not be necessary. For teachers, these things are usually just trial and error. If it works for all, or most, students, then it's something they should keep using. If it doesn't work, well, then you just try another.