Final Service Reflection #3

Tutoring at Easley have further my understanding related to Mike Rose about kids in his book “Living in the boundary.” Easley has shown me the sad reality that we’re still facing in our education system. Mike Rose has emphasized of inequality in public school system. As I can see at Easley, most of the students come from poor neighborhood where it’s lack of funding and bureaucracy’s affect on the public educational system. Most of time when I was tutoring, kids have to copy all the questions from their workbooks and answer the questions in a separate paper instead having their own workbook to write on and carry with them. I asked why, and one of the students told me that they’re not supposed to write on it because they have to return them back at the end of school year so the school can reuse it for next school year. Sometime, half of the time in my tutor section was to wait for kids to just copying their questions. This emphasizes unprepared teaching in school system. In addition, teachers are unable to encourage the students to seek for higher education. They are not giving out enough imagination to motivate kids. When being asked for what they want to become in the future, I received a lot answers that are like “ I just hope to be like my mother, a hairdresser” or “I hope I can make money like my dad. He fixes cars.” With their background’s influence, most of the kids do not want to work hard, instead they just want to be “average.” They see their parents as their role models. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. However, a more professional career seems to be impossible for them and they are afraid to dream big. They limit themselves in a zone of what they can do and what they like to do.

Final Service Learning Reflection #2

The first impression I have about Easley space is the tiny room for tutor section, which has a glass window looking out to the front hallway and the playroom. I could see how kids got distracted while doing their homework because of noise from other activities outside the room. In contrast with the tutor section, Easley has huge inside gym, a big playroom for games and outside playground. Most of their activities are taken place in the gym, playroom and outside playground. For that reason, I would think the tutor room is not designed for this purpose at the beginning but it become handy to supervise all the kids at the same time since these places are closed to each other. That also hints that Easley has a limited number of supervisors to watch out for these kids in different section.

The teaching materials at Easley seem a bit out-of-date, and limited. I have looked over the bookshelf and noticed there are some encyclopedia books and some elementary school cartoon books.  For past couple month tutoring there, I didn’t use any books or any other materials provided there at all because they are not really relevant and seem to be useless. Most students bring their own paper or school textbooks to do their homework. In my experience, providing paper station would be beneficial for the kids here to facilitate them in learning. I remember there are couple times when we were working on some math homework and the kids really need to have some blank paper for drafting but it took me almost fifteen minutes to looking for some. In addition, they don’t have too much of teaching tools and equipment for kids to actually hand on in order to visualize most of the problems. They are lack of creative games such as scrapple or some mathematic logo pieces. Instead, most of the games provided here are simple and ineffective in teaching kids critical thinking.

Final Service Learning Reflection #1

Growing up in a small town where having a class of forty-five students is common, I considered myself having somewhat similarity to these kids at Easley. They are lack of attention from either teachers or parents or both. Most of them are self-learned through their interaction with friends and others in their community. The result from self-learned is varied ranging from good to bad in which way they choose to grow up. Some kids like to challenge themselves with homework while others like to depend on tutors to get the answer or just simply copy the answer from classmates. In difference, I grow up with full attention from my family, therefore, even I was not really attentive at school, I had a lot supports from family which push me to study and get me to understand the importance of education. Through my family’s teaching and caring, I place a high expectation for myself. In contrast, under their family condition, a lot of these kids grow up without experiencing love and assistance from their family. For this reason, their aspects about life and others are different than mine. Through communication, I realized their definition for literacy is somewhat limited. I often hear some of them asking why they have to do all of the science homework if they’ve already known they are not going to apply this knowledge into their lives. They don’t dream big. The reason could be explained for lacking of resource. They would consider graduate high school is their best achieve without considering college level.

 Interacting with them for the last couple months, I have seen their learning condition and grew to understand them even more, not just through tutorial, but communication and relationship. Their behaviors are shaped by their growing environment that includes crime, violence, poverty, etc. I don’t blame for their inappropriate behavior, I just feel heartbreaking for what they are short in life. I hope children will be deserved to have what mean to belong to them. 

Digital Storyboard Draft

This is just a draft of my digital storyboard.  I've already done with the script and will try to insert the voice for the entire video. I also will insert a short video and edit some text in the clip.

Easley 8, Mon

This is my last time here at Easley. I felt some relief for completing my requirement, but I also felt sad. I kept wondering myself if there will be enough people to help the kids. This time, I brought 1 pack of gum to share with the kids because they have asked me for gum every time I came in. I got there at 3:30 and surprisingly, all the kids were done with their homework and were playing in the gym or outside in the playground. I spent the whole hour and half playing with kids outside and inside. There are less kids today at Easley for some reason. I spent my first 30 minutes watching a group of girl dancing. They told me they have to perform this dance for a project at school and are really excited about it. For shortly, they became so tired and wanted to play something else. I ended up playing individually with each of them until they left. There is one 5 years old girl wanted to play marbles, and she was out of rule. The funny part is we still have fun playing without knowing the rules. By playing this, I also taught her how to count the marbles so she can practice her counting to 100. And the rest of the time, I and three other kids played "skip-bo". This game is similar to Uno, but the rule is a little different and the kids here made it even more different. The kids were distracted with other activities  and spent half of the time arguing the "right" rule. After all, we played happily for the last 20 minutes. And it's time to leave. I felt so sad for a moment. I gave out all my  gum. It's so joyful to see excitement and happiness on these kids' faces. I knew I have done something good...

Easley 7, Tues

As I have experienced for the past couple weeks, the main focus for 3-4 section is kids' homework. For this reason, I tried to get there as soon as possible to have more time to help them today. The tutor is needed at Easley. Without people watching or helping them, some kids tend to just copy from friends or use calculator ( as they're not supported to). As like before, their main concern for today homework was math subject. Kids were doing fine with their writing and reading. Some still struggled with basic concept of science today also, but as soon as I asked them to read the textbook over again, they soon understood the problem. But with math, I feel like they are lacking of foundation concept. For example, I worked with this group including 2 boys and 2 girls, they are all have the same math homework. We were working on the proportion and fraction. Most of them get it, but they have trouble doing multiplication or division, that result in false answers. So I had to review all the step for multiplication or division and I was surprised how far they were behind. After the section, I felt so proud of myself for noticing the problem these kids were struggling and helping them to understand, even it was just a part of the whole things.