Reflections on Your Service Experiences (recommended ASAP after you go attend a service event) Keep your description of what occurred to a minimum. I want you to go beyond factual information and describe the implications of what you experienced, what barriers to progress (for the H.S. students) you experienced and how you sought/will seek to overcome those barriers this summer.
An arts, humanities, and science summer immersion program for high school students; An award-winning student organization; A service-learning opportunity
Initially, I began the service-learning portion of this class tutoring at the local library. From the get go, it was evident that this was a new BRYC program. While it is commendable that there were typically about ten tutors on hand to work with the kids, it became quickly evident that the two same kids would be the only ones to show up for the program. Maybe there would be a third on a lucky day.
ReplyDeleteWill asked if anyone would be willing to sign up for one on one tutoring instead of showing up for the Tuesday night group and I, along with a couple others, offered and wrote down our schedules, and that was about the last time I was able to do much for BRYC. While I’ve since emailed him to follow up on finding another person to tutor, I have not gotten much more than an “I’m looking, thanks for reminding me.” Apparently, getting the fellows to be reliable in terms of tutoring is difficult.
I know that Will is quite busy, but the wasted manpower is kind of frustrating to me, mainly because I know this is a pretty big problem with outreach organizations. There are too many volunteers and nothing to do with them, or too much to do, and not enough people to do the work. I find it hard to believe that there is not one fellow in BRYC that is not “reliable” enough to do one on one tutoring or some other job I could participate in.
While this opinion is going to be made with limited knowledge, it seems that BRYC may be trying to start up too many programs without really having the means to do so. Tutoring is great, but if the organization cannot make the commitment to getting tutors and students together then it may not be the time to start that program. Will would usually show up looking exhausted, and rightly so. Usually the tutoring, if there was any going on would start late, and most of the college students would be sitting around working on their own projects. Maybe doing an after school program that takes place later in the evenings isn’t a good fit since transportation seems to be a big problem. Then again, maybe they couldn’t get volunteers to come out before then. There’s a balance that has to come from projects like this, and it is clear that it is not present.
I hope that this summer is different. I hope that it won't just be good intentions with little pay out. I doubt that this will be the case after seeing videos of previous summers and talking with alumni. I don't feel ill prepared for focus, but a bit more experience in working with students like this would be nice.
As the semester continues along with our service experiences, I see reoccurring events through my weekly tutoring at Villa Del Rey Elementary school that have direct implications to the barriers FOCUS may experience with its participants over the summer. Each Monday, we meet with a small group of first and fifth graders, writing pen pal letters to both build relationships and knowledge of students in other states as well as improve the students’ writing skills. A major conflict I have seen in the progress of the student’s work is attendance. Although a select few (probably one or two) of the students attend every single week, the remaining five come and go; we never know who will show up on a particular day. In order for our “tutoring” and lessons to produce results, the students must attend our meetings regularly and receive instruction/help. Not only does the attendance of the elementary students fluctuate, I have found that the BRYC fellows do not always attend Monday tutoring regularly. The students who are there week-in-and-week-out, however, have become active, engaged, and enthusiastic participants in the curriculum!
ReplyDeleteI understand that over the summer, FOCUS students will be on campus for two weeks so attendance will hopefully be a non-existent issue. If this is the case, the students will richly benefit from the program and all faucets it has to offer. One thing I have learned through service learning, though, is despite which kids show up on a given day (whether they are physically absent or mentally inattentive), the instructor must enthusiastically carry on without missing a beat. By continuing the lessons without major chunks of time catching the previously absent kids up to speed, the students will learn the importance of attendance. It is not to the teacher’s benefit that all kids are there, but it is for both the kids’ enjoyment and growth that regular attendance – once again, but physically and mentally engaged—is maintained!
Things were crazy at Dufrocq a few weeks ago. None of the BRYC fellows were there because of other conflicts and one of the FOCUS members in my group was also unable to make it. We usually have one-on-one tutoring with the children but this time, because there were only two of us and two adults, we each were working with multiple students. All of the students were at different writing levels so it was nearly impossible to do anything constructive with them. They were also more hyper than usual and very few of them wanted to work on writing/editing letters for their pen pals.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it was frustrating to work with that many uninterested students and I left with a head ache, I learned a lot. I couldn’t think of how to keep the older and more advanced elementary students entertained while I was helping the younger ones with basic skills. Now, I know to tell them that it’s important to relearn basic skills and make sure they understand the foundation of everything. It’s gotten them to pay more attention to the “easy things” that I would help a struggling student with. I realized that not all of the high school students participating in FOCUS this summer will be interested in every workshop. As a group leader I’m going to work to keep them motivated and at least put forth effort in the workshops they attend. If a student is very good at science, I’ll remind them that it’s good to relearn the basics.
Uninterested students will be something I need to overcome during my cooking workshop as well. A lot of people don’t like to cook, especially those in their mid-teens. The ones that do enjoy cooking will be a lot more advanced than those that have never cooked a meal. Another obstacle will be the fact that everyone likes different foods. It’s important that my partners and I can find meals that a majority, if not all, students will like. This reminds me of the elementary students in that some of them hate writing or need a lot of improvement. It’s hard to keep them interested, and it’s even harder if they’re uninterested in what they’re supposed to be writing about.
There’s a huge age difference between the students I work with now and the students I’ll be working with over the summer, but there are some general ideas that are the same across the age gap. Over the next few weeks I’m going to try out different methods of keeping the elementary students’ attention and then see how I can relate that to FOCUS. The main things I need to work on are 1) maintaining the attention of a large group of students, 2) helping unskilled students excel while still challenging the more skilled students, and 3) keeping the bored students interested in the lessons taught in workshops.
Things are looking great over at the BRYC house garden. Everyone should go and take a look. I wish I could show you all before and after pictures, because the garden has become a huge success. Every week we are planting new flowers, fruits, or vegetables. This past week we were actually able to harvest some lettuce to make our own salads!
ReplyDeleteWhile we garden, the fellows do not talk much about school, because they come straight from school and the garden is a place to have fun and relax. Very recently though a few of the fellows went on a tour of LSU and had tons of questions for us. It was a very exciting time as they were planning their roommates and which dorms they wanted to live in. However, I asked a fellow, Keterica, what her plans were for college because I knew she had her heart set on LSU. She shared with me that she had just taken the ACT and did not do as well on the math portion as she needed to. I felt bad because all of her friends were excited about getting in and making plans, yet Keterica felt left out and almost embarrassed that she was not able to complete which seemed like such a simple task to her friends. I tried to encourage her as much as I could, because I was in her shoes once. I am awful at standardized test, and I mean it. I could explain to you what muscles you are using when you are exercising and what exact metabolic processes are occurring in your body at the same time, but I cannot remember simple trigonometry rules. Something about those tests just make me forget everything I know.
I hope to help encourage Keterica as her senior year comes to an end, I know she has in it her to succeed.
The last time I attended my service learning at the BRYC House Community Garden downtown, our progress in the garden was undeniably clear. Having started with an overgrown patch of grass amidst the city block’s buildings, the first thing the group did together after arriving was survey the garden that was already growing healthy plants and produce. Everyone was excited by the success and the group started talking about what meals could be made out of the vegetables and what other plants could be grown after the first planting. The group dynamic between the BRYC fellows, the FOCUS volunteers and the supervisors had definitely improved and become more comfortable. Because of this, it seemed like everyone was having more fun and seeing the gardening as less of a service project and more as an opportunity to do something that had nothing to do with the normal stresses of things like school and work. I overheard some of the BRYC Fellows talking about a stressful day they had at school and I could tell that their end-of-the-semester workload was getting crazy- an experience I could definitely relate to. I think that as the gardening project continues weekly, it is becoming something that all of the participants are able to enjoy and use as an escape from normal weekly stresses. From this service I’ve definitely seen how much I can relate to students despite drastically different educational backgrounds. Hopefully I can employ this idea while teaching the FOCUS students this summer in order to relate and learn from the students instead of just the other way around.
ReplyDeleteOur BRYC advocacy group finally got our Waste Campaign launched. In my opinion we kind of failed to pull off a major project. This campaign is a great idea and I feel it can be further developed in the future. There just was not the level of excitement or involvement needed for such a project. Lately, less BRYC fellows have been coming to meetings. Those who come, as well as us FOCUS kids, are all so busy with a million other things. It feels like no one really has enough time.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, the issue is not a lack of caring. I was impressed by the wonderful BRYC students who agreed to meet during their spring break and to come to the Alumni Night. They are so awesome and I'm proud to say we've become friends. I think the advocacy group's moderate as opposed to outstanding acomplishments is largely due to the tendency of wonderful, smart people to commit themselves to more than they can really handle.
In light of that, I think it'd be neat to have an optional fall service learning class working with the BRYC students. I really love the organization and all the wonderful people I've met there. A semester just isn't quite enough time.
The last time I went to tutoring and actually assisted a student, he was working on environmental science worksheets I knew next to nothing about. I figured I wouldn't tell him that, and instead told him to ask me if he had any questions. We had already completed his English essay assignment for the day, which is the only reason why we had moved on to something unplanned. He proceeded to fill out a few questions, then flip the worksheet upside-down, read something, then flip it back and fill out the answer. Turns out the answers to each question were on the bottom of the worksheet, so even if you didn't know what you were doing, simply regurgitating those answers could get you a decent grade. I was kind of shocked, considering I didn't know this kind of thing existed. Sure, there are the answers to the odd-numbered questions in the back of the math book, but i didn't learn that until my sophomore year of high school, when the teachers started assigning only the even-numbered questions.
ReplyDeleteI informed the student that instead of looking at the bottom of the worksheet for the next answer he didn't know, we would instead look at it together and think about what the answer could possibly be. Turns out most of the questions just required a little bit of collaborative thinking, and with a little bit of help from the internet, the student was able to answer all of the remaining questions without checking the bottom of the worksheet.
I suppose this relates to summer in that sometimes, students want to take the easy way out. I know this because I am guilty of doing it. Sometimes, in classes that don't matter, I have skipped reading assignments or not paid as much attention in class as I should. Something I recently learned, though, is that even though a skill or a fact may not be immediately applicable to a higher grade, it will come up later in life. Maybe my and the student's newfound knowledge of the environmental implications of dams will come in handy some day, maybe not. Even if it doesn't, we both still took the time to expand our minds into territory we didn't know we could.
This summer, my challenge to myself and to the students I work with will be to go the extra step each day. Even if it's just one little thing, like looking a word up I or they don't understand. I want to make sure the students are expanding their knowledge, and remaining curious and interested in the world around them. Because there is so much there, you just have to slow down and look.
Tutoring at Dufrocq continues to be rewarding yet stressful. The pen pal project has been a slow process, and since the students would rather be running around than writing letters, they get pretty rowdy. It is hard to communicate with the BRYC students most weeks since the tutoring is focused on the elementary students. I cannot really talk about barriers with the high school students since we do not truly work with high school students. However, there are barriers between the elementary students and us. I think an issue I have is not using enough authority because I don’t want the students to think I’m mean. When the kids cut up and make jokes when they are supposed to be quiet, I cannot help but laugh sometimes because they say/do the funniest things! I know that this is a problem though because it can egg the kids on makes them feel like they are being rewarded for bad behavior. This barrier can definitely carry on to working with the high school students. Even though it is great to have fun with the students and be friends with them, it is important to remember that we still possess authority. It is extremely important to use authority when you have to, but it is difficult to know when to use it and how to use it. Tutoring has showed me that I need to work on this to prepare for the summer program.
ReplyDeleteThe pen pal program is progressing, albeit with some drawbacks. The drawbacks are as follows: the number of students we get every Monday differs, and we have been losing and gaining students at random. It isn’t too bad, but building relationships with the students is difficult. In addition, the number of high school students has dwindled down to two. Shaylan remains constant, but others come and go. Finally, the sister program in Maine has yet to write back. Today, in lieu of letters to answer, the students wrote songs. Before that they drew pictures of characters in a book.
ReplyDeleteOne of the barriers for high school students is their trepidation at making decisions and then having others follow. While the BRYC leader encourages it, it obviously makes Shaylan nervous. This summer, I plan on incorporating subject material that requires the high school students to make their own decisions. So far the curriculum decisions made by the high school students have been above satisfactory, but it seems they need reassurance.
I’ve also noticed that the time when the students are most engaged is when we play a game before we start writing. The games are pretty simple, but the common factor in most of them is that the games revolve around telling the group something about themselves. Normally the students ask if we can play the game again before we leave. As an ice-breaker and an engager, it works very well.
Many of the elementary school students have been improving in their writing skills. Tiphanie, for example, initially would not write or speak to the group. While still reserved, she has written a letter and participated in all activities. Nicholas, too, has opened up to the group. One thing I have noticed is that most of the children are at least competent writers, but are easily distracted. In the mentoring it’s not so hard to combat, since nearly every day the ratio of students to mentors is about 1:1. But that makes me worry about in a classroom setting, where the ratio is much higher.
Not surprisingly, there has yet to be a shortage of students who need help with Math and Science work at Carver Library. Helping students to understand concepts is so much harder than I expected. With math subjects, I have a pretty good understanding on most things, so I can solve problems, but I can also expand on it. One student that I have worked with multiple times, Alexandra, knows all the information about Algebra. If I ask her a question, she can always give me an answer that she is “pretty sure” about and even tell me around where in the book I can find it. However, she does not understand the concepts, so she says that she is “terrible at math.” To me, it seemed like a small jump from memorization to understanding, but working with these students has shown me just how difficult that jump over that giant chasm truly is. I can definitely see why teachers can fall into this trap. Last week, I was trying to explain to Alexandra what it meant to square a number. On concepts such as this, which are very difficult to explain and the easiest explanation is “because,” it is so much easier to teach memorization. I tried to explain to her what meant to square a number and take the square root of a number, but I could not explain the concept properly. It is so much harder to explain how to take the square root of four instead of just saying, “the square root of four is two.” It was extremely frustrating for both her and myself, so this is one of the barriers that I have faced when trying to teach someone. However, I also realize that I am extremely biased towards the way that I have learned things. I think that my way is the best way, but there’s obviously more than one way to learn everything, many of which are probably better than my way. I have to learn how to teach to other people’s learning styles. This is not a small task, and I am not even close to figuring it out, but I have to try my best for the summer. Then, I can leave the teaching to the teachers.
ReplyDeleteI went to a couple more Tuesdays, but it was evident there would never be a sufficient amount of students for the ten+ volunteers seeing as the same two guys came every time.
ReplyDeleteWill told me that I did not have to go and that he hated making me sit there for 3 hours every Tuesday. I told him, though, that this was a class requirement and skipping out would mean I would miss out on a large portion of learning and credit in my class. He offered to set three of us (I think) with students that one-on-one tutoring at a more convenient time for them.
A couple weeks and multiple emails later, I was at the goodwood library with a student. She was nice and bright, but could not make above a 19 on the reading sections despite taking multiple ACT classes and practicing in multiple books.
After a few more practice tests I realized she had two recurring problems and neither of them had anything to do with her inherent intelligence.
1. She did not know what many of the words meant. For many questions or answers she would not understand, all I would have to do is explain one word and Bam, she had the answer.
2. She felt so pressured that she would just guess. When I asked her afterwards why she picked that, she would then try and find a reason and within seconds would say "That answer isn't right, (this) is the answer because of...." which was frustrating for me.
As I am sure we are all aware of, the ACT tests a lot of things, but inherent intelligence? not so much. She did not know these big words maybe because her family or teachers did not use them like mine did. She probably freaked herself out because of all the pressure she was under. This was how she was going to get into college and it was all on this one test.
The only improvement we made was in me being able to point out to her that she is not dumb. That she is psyching herself out 2/3 of the time and just was not familiar with come of the vocabulary.
During one of my midsemester program meetings at the BRYC house, a representative from Princeton Review came by and talked to the fellows about how to prepare for college and all that jazz. Throughout the presentation, I noticed that the fellows were quite reserved in asking questions, receiving facts and advice, and accepting this man as a reputable source for information about their futures.
ReplyDeleteThe presentation revealed several barriers to progress that I think are important to note. Reception of the representative was less than optimal due to several things: tone, approach, and manner. I believe the man was unable to relate to the students largely because of his background and lack of subjection to this population. His tone was very much that of a lecturer. His approach that of an informed college graduate with no more than a sales pitch. And his manner didn't welcome discussion or embrace cultural capital.
I believe this presentation at program was a great learning experience because his verbal and nonverbal communication translated into the overall lack of communication by the fellows. Although speaking very much like Dan and Will, I believe the representative wasn't welcomed due to group familiarity and his perceived cultural capital.
Today is the first day that I don't have to take out the recycling.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean by this, is that since it is the first of May, the April Waste Away Campaign started by the BRYC Advocacy group has come to an end! Hopefully, I will still keep taking out the recycling.
The BRYC Advocacy group was to form some project, of some kind. When it was realized that we were not ready to put on a Youth Speak event, due to lack of time and resources, we decided to start some sort of campaign.
After some deliberating, we decided on a campaign to boost awareness of how much we, as Westerners, waste. We all discussed how we waste, and how we can do better. Whether it is wasting time, money, or resources, everyone wastes.
The idea was for each person to pledge to stop wasting in some form. As I stated before, I pledged to take out the recycling! It's really easy to just throw it away, since my apartment complex doesn't have a recycling bin. I started taking it to LSU, where the recycling bins are copious.
Anyway, I think this campaign was in some ways successful, though maybe not as successful as we had hoped. We did get a lot of pledges, but we were not able to get a booth at Earth Day Baton Rouge like we had planned. I think this was mostly due to lack of time, and with the school year winding down, everyone was very busy.
Even so, I think starting any campaign is a huge accomplishment. We had a Facebook page and everything! I learned a lot about what's needed to start a campaign, and this project gave me, and the rest of the FOCUS and BRYC Advocacy group members, a little taste of how campaigns work.
I have been attending the pen pal program at Villa del Rey this semester in which the goal of the program is to exchange letters with another after school program in Maine. This was the goal, but I say fortunately it didn’t work out exactly as planned. We finally received our first letters from Maine last week which really weren’t very informative, and our last day has come and gone. I say I’m glad it didn’t go as planned because we had to think of some new fun and creative ideas that incorporate writing since we had received no letters from Maine. Emily and Will had the best idea of reading Dr. Seuss and writing about the stories. One day Will even brought his guitar for the children to write a verse and chorus to a song. During this program, we mostly had the children talk about themselves. They really had to share personal information which was sometimes uncomfortable. Unfortunately, only a few of the children attended every Monday, but those who did learned how to overcome emotions and speak in front of a class. I tried to work with one girl, Ashanta, who exhibited terrific writing and grammar skills. Her parents signed her up for the class. Apparently, the other children were there because of bad behavior in class, which brings my attention to class size. Some days we had 1:1 tutor-student ratio. It was obvious that the kids were not motivated to write, even a short paragraph. This has to only be worse in a real classroom. One thing that surprised me was how well the kids accepted each other. We had children ranging from 1st through 5th grade with all types of personalities and interests. They all had great personalities and were a pleasure to be around. Ashanta told me that her favorite subjects were math and English. She also says that she really does like to go to school. I know this is great for now, but I worry about her in high school and what education she may receive and if she will be able to keep an interest in school.
ReplyDeleteMy service project, gardening at the BRYC house, was relatively drama-free compared to how most of these services seem to have gone. We were able to go almost every week (weather allowing) and there were usually at least three or four BRYC fellows there with us. Since we were just gardening, our service didn’t relate to the educational aspect of FOCUS. But I feel it strongly related to the social aspect. We got to know several of the BRYC fellows throughout the year. It was nice to go to service and get away from school for a while. We could all get together and complain about the stresses of the end of the year (most of them are about to graduate, we have finals approaching). Some of the fellows were even planning on attending LSU and it was really fun talking to them about our own first year experiences and what they planned on doing at LSU.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really want to take away from my service project is that FOCUS is about more than just school or college. FOCUS is also about having fun and getting to know great new people. I’m really excited for FOCUS, not only because I’m excited about the classes (all the final presentations were really great and I think the classes are going to be awesome) but also because FOCUS sounds like so much fun, both for us college leaders and for the FOCUS students.
My service project, gardening at the BRYC house, was relatively drama-free compared to how most of these services seem to have gone. We were able to go almost every week (weather allowing) and there were usually at least three or four BRYC fellows there with us. Since we were just gardening, our service didn’t relate to the educational aspect of FOCUS. But I feel it strongly related to the social aspect. We got to know several of the BRYC fellows throughout the year. It was nice to go to service and get away from school for a while. We could all get together and complain about the stresses of the end of the year (most of them are about to graduate, we have finals approaching). Some of the fellows were even planning on attending LSU and it was really fun talking to them about our own first year experiences and what they planned on doing at LSU.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really want to take away from my service project is that FOCUS is about more than just school or college. FOCUS is also about having fun and getting to know great new people. I’m really excited for FOCUS, not only because I’m excited about the classes (all the final presentations were really great and I think the classes are going to be awesome) but also because FOCUS sounds like so much fun, both for us college leaders and for the FOCUS students.
This week I attended the bi-weekly meeting of the BRYC Fellows. Fortunately I also had my first opportunity to see the BRYC House as last session was held in a different location. I came away, once again, really impressed by the atmosphere and the cohesion of this diverse group of students. As Dario mentioned in his post we spend a lot of our time as FOCUS volunteers counseling, motivating, and coaching these high school students on what the college process is like. While I’m sure upperclassman are better suited to help in such a capacity, I feel as if being a freshman allows me to add a different type of opinion; one that isn’t too far removed from high school but also not too oblivious to college life.
ReplyDeleteThe senior BRYC Fellows were not at this last session and this gave a lot of the sophomores and juniors who I hadn’t heard from in the last meeting a chance to voice some of their concerns. One of the more eye-opening parts of the night was when one student spoke about being in fear of physical harm while at his high school. While I’m aware that this is a fact for thousands of high school students around the country it struck home that these people, who I now consider friends, have to be mentally prepared to deal with violence and school-work on a daily basis. I wanted to say to the young man that he deserved a scholarship just on that fact alone. I mean does my ability to ace an exam that I’ve been prepped on for weeks really compare to that kids ability to focus in an environment where he fears for his life? Before we rush off to make proclamations about what needs to happen to the LA public school system can we at least acknowledged that those special few who make it out of this busted system should be commended far more than me and my private school buddies whose high school is closer to Quiznoes territory than gang territory.