Reflexíon

Junior Achievement fue sin duda una experiencia positiva de aprendizaje. Es evidente que el programa tiene una sólida reputación dentro de muchas de las escuelas. Los niños no han entendido que eran de Rollins, o estaban trabajando a través de JA, pero aprecia claramente el tiempo que pasamos con ellos. Creo que fue bueno para ellos ver a los estudiantes cerca de su edad. Obviamente, eran mucho mayores, pero todavía en la escuela. Creo que para algunos que realmente fue un estímulo para el trabajo duro e ir a la universidad, que a nuestro nivel de logro.

La parte del programa bilingüe fue muy difícil. No necesariamente para nosotros, pero más para los niños. Algunos no entendían español, en todo caso. Creo que se debió en parte a la escuela que se colocaron in Teníamos que encontrar una escuela que pudiera acomodar nuestro horario. Muy a menudo hemos tenido que volver atrás en el otro, o uno-a-1 con los estudiantes a fin de que todos entiendan. Yo sé lo que esto significa en la actualidad, cuando los maestros dicen que tienen que seguir adelante. Es difícil, pero a fin de mantenerse a la par con los planes de lección que debe tener la capacidad de seguir adelante.

Con todo, me ofrecería voluntaria de nuevo. Siento que he hecho algún tipo de diferencia. Más que nada espero que me inspiró a algunos de esos niños a permanecer en la escuela, y trabajar duro para alcanzar sus objetivos. Esa es la lección más importante que podía dar.

Newspaper Entrepreneurs

My favorite lesson was our final and most recent visit. Our lesson was focused on newspapers. George and I brought in a copy of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. We defined what a headline was, and the purpose of a newspaper article. Our game here was the 5W's. We explained the importance of the elements who, what, where, why, and when to gathering information necessary for a news story. This became difficult because most of boys in the class just started coloring on the newspapers by drawing mustaches, darkening eyes, or what was a real hit was putting boobs on every man in the newspaper. It showed that these kids could be in different moods at any time. This was by far the most wound up we saw the kids. They had a lot of trouble paying attention, especially because our class is so large we had 4 different tables of students working on their own story. For obvious reasons the teacher used this time to correct students work and being just two people George and I had to shuffle back and forth between all the 4 tables of students.

A few girl in the class however were very intelligent. About 5 of them grouped together and picked an article about ballerinas, and were able to depict the information about it. They even pretended they were ballarinas and began to twirl around. Whereas some other students have very poor reading abilities, and need to be guided through the process. One student in particular, Alijandro, I feel really benefited from our volunteer work. Numerous lessons I would work 1-on-1 with Alijandro to help him understand what was going on. At one point he sat down in front of the chalk board to copy notes exactly. He really wanted to learn, at times he would nearly break down in tears asking for help. It was evident that he was so upset he did not know what was going on, and by giving him a little extra help made me feel better about the JA program.

City Planning

Continuing with our theme of City Planning, George and I emphasized our lessons off the importance of city zones. We tried to explain to the class that there are residential zones, multipurpose zones, commercial, and agricultural/farming zones. We described what entails buildings such as City Hall, a factory, school. grocery store, farm, and restaurants,  Each of them have their own purpose to a city and society. We realized that most of the lessons planned by JA were a little complex for our 2nd graders. However it must be noted that our lesson plan was intended for 3rd grade. Even so, we adjusted well and stuck with activities that took up a majority of the time.

To keep the entire class from losing control at times, we focused playing games. In general our main focus was to encourage creativity. We split the class in 4 groups and tried to get them to think of any building and what explain what the importance of it was. This was a very different experience than I had in elementary school. It is honestly my first exposure to any sort of public school system. This was also my first time volunteering with this sort of program. Because the kids were so excited to see us each visit, it felt very good to give back.