Journal #6 4/11/19

Today was my last day at my service learning internship and it was bittersweet. I seriously loved the time I got to spend with all the children helping them learn and grow. Today was like any other day, except I had gotten there early in the school day so I was able to go with them for lunch. Before that, they were doing their different centers and a little boy wanted me to help him with Mr. Potato Head so I did. He got excited and would throw Mr. Potato Head and then all of the pieces would come out so he would asked me to help me again. He kept doing it for awhile but I didn't mind because it made him happy. I kept playing with him until another little kid had come over and asked me to play with the dinosaurs with him. Eventually, it was time to clean up for circle time where they would go over the day and who was present and who wasn't. After that, was another round of centers before lunchtime and I just walked around the room playing with each student as much as I could, I used magnetic letters to spell out my name on the door for the little kids. The it was lunchtime which was nice to spend with the kids before I left. I had a difficult time telling the kids that it was my last day, I didn't know how to tell them that my hours were completed because I knew they wouldn't understand what I meant. The teacher knew but once it was time for me to leave, I just told the kids I would back one day because the teacher had invited me to continue to come and help her with the children once I was done with classes which I'm probably going to do and because I didn't want them to be sad.

Hebert - Connections

Hebert's article "Separate and Unequal" discusses about how it's difficult for teachers to get good results in schools that are in high-impoverished areas. Expectations in these schools are much lower levels of parent involvement and student achievement. A goal that is logical would be to have kids that come from poor ethnic backgrounds in school with middle class peers because that is a long line of evidence that shows they do better academically. In order to truly improve poor children's education, we need to take them out of the environments are are riddled with poverty.

Two articles that I connected to Hebert's article are Kristof's "Land of Limitations" and Kozol's "Amazing Grace". Kristof's article talks about how the children from the lower social classes can be the most talented person in the world but it won't matter because where they come from. It's unlikely for them to be able to break out of the constraints of their social class. I connected this article to Hebert's "Separate and Unequal" because there's a connection between since children from schools that are in high-poverty areas are limited academically in school because all the poverty and crime that surrounds them which relates to Krisof's quote from his article that states that talent is universal but opportunity isn't. They relate to each other because the kids that go to school in areas of poverty can or are talented individuals but they won't have the opportunities to make something of that talent because the social class they come from.
Kozol's article talks about the imbalance of power in our country and how bad it has gotten. Neighborhoods that are consider "ghetto" in New York are broken and run down because the city does not care to do anything about it. It talks about how people always say "if you don't like your situation, just change it" but you can't because you don't actually have the power to change it. I connected Kozol to Hebert because the children that go to schools in impoverished areas also live in the run down and broken "ghettos" that Kozol talks about. How can we expect children to learn and improve if they're stuck in poverty when they go to school? We can't expect students to be able to learn and think about their futures if they can't see a future that isn't in poverty. In order, to help them imagine a better future we need to remove them from the environment that doesn't allow them to grow.

Shor - Reflection

The article "Empowering Education" by Ira Shor talks how participation is important for student involvement because the traditional classrooms lack students being active participants in their own education.  It also discusses empowering classes in schools that help students develop skills and knowledge along with high expectations for their education, future and themselves as well. It helps them "to fight for a quality of life in which all human beings benefit." An important concept in the article is "Banking Education" which is basically that a good amount of educators just stand in front of the classroom and piled information about subjects that do not make them interested or invested in their own education.

Personal connections that I made to this text is that my whole education up until high school was banking education. I remember just sitting at a desk everyday day for hours in different subjects listening to the teachers drone on and on about topics that had nothing to do with me. I often remember thinking why was I forced to learn things that wouldn't help me later in life? In 7th grade social studies class, we had to examine and study maps and then recreate it by ourselves. How did remembering continents ans states help me further myself in life? All it did was help me memorize information for the quizzes that we had but the information from it seems useless otherwise.

As a future teacher, I don't want to force my kids to listen talk for hours about information that they won't need later in life but encourage them to about themselves and, their future and their education by constantly thinking of different ways have them participate actively in their own education. I'm going to make it one of my goals to be the kind of teacher that empowers her students to learn and engage rather than drain them of their curiosity and social instincts. It's really our job as future teachers to help teach and guide our children into becoming great citizens that think and question the world and society they live in rather than robots that do what they are told too without questioning it.

Kahne and Westheimer - Argument

Kahne and Westheimer argue that service learning is an important aspect to have in society and classrooms because it can give a different energy to the class providing experiences that influence students to want to improve or change the things around them

Kahne and Westheimer's main idea is the importance service learning curriculum within classrooms. They discuss the important difference in charity and change within service learning. Charity in service learning can be explained as an action of giving rather and experiencing what it feels like to to do something before understanding what exactly is need. Charity is temporary change that impacts single people. An example of charity described by Kahne and Westheimer is Mr. Johnson's class that put together daily life kits for the homeless. They had decided on what to put in the kits without having a conversation with someone that is homeless or someone who has knowledge on the subject. This stopped the children from experiencing any meaningful interactions and develop an understanding, caring relationships. Change on the other hand can be explained as gaining knowledge about an important economic issue and thinking of what ways to help change the issue. An example of change explained by Kahne and Westheimer is Ms. Adams class that examined issues of concern and voted to put their attention on homelessness. Their service learning unit discussed and looked deeper into political determinants, legal and social and economic of homelessness before inviting guest speakers and read newspapers and books about the topic. After, they thought and developed plans of action for relief efforts for the homeless people in their communities and raised money for homeless advocacy groups they chose. They also discuss how important meaningful reflection is withing the service learning curriculum.

Journal #5 4/3/19

Today was a good day at my service learning, I arrived at 12:30 which is around the time that the teacher takes the kids outside to play for about thirty minutes depending on the weather. I enjoy going outside with them because a little girl "Samariah" always asks if I'll play goose with her (duck, duck goose) which the children's version is naming someone (me) the goose and I just run around trying to catch all the little ducks. It's different than the way I played as a little girl but I enjoy it nonetheless. Instead of just playing goose the entire recess time, she also wanted to play catch with me where I tried to get her to throw the ball from a good distance so I could catch it but she much preferred bouncing it to each other or throwing it from a short distance. We had fun playing with the ball for a while and then I noticed that hopscotch painted on the ground for the children so I asked "Samariah" if she knew how to play and when she said she didn't I taught her the best I could (I was never the best) and we had tons of fun just taking turns playing hopscotch for the rest of recess. By time the class goes back inside, its almost time for dismissal so the teacher assistant gets the end of the day snacks set out for the kids to come up and get some cereal in a cup and a juice box if they haven't brought their own from home. While the children are eating their snacks, the teacher passes out their dismissal badges that they need when they go home whether on the bus or if their parent comes and picks them up.  The teacher also gives the students that behaved or listened well, a little paper that says "I did good listening today" with a smiley face and allows them to take a sticker from her sticker box.

Map The Authors

A couple of weeks ago at my service learning internship, I go into the school expecting the same stuff as usual and for the most part things were the same but as it got to the time where the students had to start getting ready to go to lunch and the little girl that's in the group I work with every week "Lindsey" tells me that the boy that's also in the group "Issac" punched another little boy from a different classroom in the face so the principal and teacher decided that "Issac" should be disciplined by being forced to eat in the office away from all other students and his classmates for the foreseeable future. I connected a number of authors to this one story. Some of the authors that I connected to my experience and story are August because in her article said said that students cannot learn if they do not feel safe in their school settings, I connected August because "Issac" probably didn't feel completely safe in his environment for whatever the reason may be and made the wrong decision to punch the other student in the face. I believe that instead of just giving him what's known as in-school suspension, the principal and teacher could have tried and talked to "Issac" to find out not only what made him decide to punch another kid but why did he decide that was his best option? Did he not feel safe or confident enough to be able to go to an adult and tell them about an issue? Did the teacher and principal not make "Issac" feel safe within his school? A second author that I connected my story to was McIntosh, in her article she talks about how white people do not recognize how their race is valued higher unless they are actively paying attention to it. I connected McIntosh to my story because as expected the teachers and other faculty members are predominantly white so I would say that this story is a prime example of how whiteness in valued at the school and also how whiteness shows its power to all of the students, not just "Issac". A third and final author that I'm going to talk about that I connected to this story, is Christensen, in her article she discusses how schools need to help students acquire the tools to interpret the media and other cultural texts to be able to recognize oppression and stereotypes so they don't feel excluded or like something is wrong with them. I connected Christensen to my story because from what I've witnessed at my visits, not just this particular one is the teacher and other staff members tend to 'single out' "Issac" quite a bit over some of the other kids I work with. I can imagine and also relate to the fact that "Issac" felt like he was a problem when the principal and teacher forced him to eat lunch alone in the office and that he also felt very excluded as well. Seeing as "Issac" is apart of the minority population I feel that the school principal and teacher could have tried to find a better less excluding way to discipline "Isaac" for his negative behavior that wouldn't have made him felt singled out or like a problem that needed to be corrected.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PAH_eki-CiWtNSg0CUHIVQUehp92rE3UUF8JeiolrGQ/edit