Reflective Blog#1

         Walking into the classroom for the first time, I found myself feeling like a child again. I am more mature this time around and have the experience of adulthood but I still had to fight my natural urge to want to seek out the ‘in’ crowd. The kids filed in, interested in their own conversations and thoughts. For the time being, I figured that I would just sit and be an observer. Their little heads seemed filled with thoughts, I had almost forgotten at thirteen that you can feel stress and frustration for the work that you have to do. Even with the weight of the work they had waiting for them though, they all interacted in a jovial and agreeable way. Now that I had observed and gotten a feeling for where the kids are at I decided that I would jump in and see what I could learn from them.

            Their style of learning was something that was very abstract, the first challenge I was going to try to tackle was understanding the math they were doing. This was interesting because it was covering surface area and the ‘wrapping’ thought that accompanies understanding how surface area equates. The interesting thing is I could figure out the problems in the way that I knew how to do it, but I literally couldn’t understand their method of doing the math. We achieved the same results, but they got it in a significantly different way. I have always believed that it is best to learn by different methods, but I usually equate that to how a teacher issues the material, I had not really thought about changing the method of the process all together. After a time of losing myself in a conquest to understand their method, I recognized one of the kids who seemed like he was struggling.

            I decided to abandon my conquest and walked over to him, I asked, “is there anything that I could help you with?”

He looked at me, deliberating whether I was worth asking, and after a second he responded, “why do we need to learn about segregation?”

At this time they were learning about the early years of the country during and post slavery. I let him know that I thought this was a very good question, but I think it is important to think about that for a minute for himself. After a short time of him thinking, I asked if he would explain to me what he had learned about it so far. He began to explain examples in his book and after listening we engaged in a conversation about the benefits of learning from the past, among other things.

            I found these children wildy impressive, both in their comprehension and adaptability. This is the perfect school for me to attend, because the teaching that the students are given, not only seems to be giving them a depth of knowledge, but also their comfortability in changing environments were unreal. There were six students in class and every one I went to was able to clearly bring across their thoughts and didn’t show the timidness, and unease that most children would show meeting new people, especially adults. I am very excited to continue with my service learning and see what I can gain from my interaction with the children of this school.