Final Service Learning Reflection #2

The thing that comes to mind when thinking about comparing one of the stories we have read to our tutoring is from Savage Inequalities. Savage Inequalities was all about the education of poor inner city school systems. There was a lack of funds present so the education and facilities suffered as a whole. These are examples in America, the wealthiest country on the planet. I can only imagine how bad it can get in poorer countries throughout the world. Usually at the top of each lesson plan, it says to chit chat with your student for five to ten minutes. I usually ask them how long ago they moved to the United States, how many children they have and their ages, and then I try to ask them all kinds of different questions about their home country. When I ask this question, I usually always get something about the financial shape of the country. “I had to come here for money,” or “Jobs were not good over there.” I usually ask a question or two about the schooling system in their country too and I usually get a negative remark. I think to myself it’s funny that they are coming here for work with the economy here the way it’s been. I have not worked with one student that has had anything about a high school education. They all get manual labor jobs or minimum wage jobs like a cash register worker at a gyro shop in the mall, a store clerk, or a maid at a hotel. Where the money is put into schools is where the highest learning will be achieved. Money controls almost everything. It’s sad, but true. That’s why No Child Left Behind is a detrimental plan to our education system, but that’s for another blog post.

Final Service Learning Reflection #1

I believe that there a few similarities in the way student learn literacy at NALC and the typical formative literacy experience of an American. A similarity I can think of is the instruction material is constructed in a similar scaffolding manner. They introduce the most basic concepts and examples and build on top of them more complex ideas. Also in the books I have worked with at NALC the lessons are structured similarly. For example, the lessons start out with recalling and building on prior knowledge (Sometimes this is subtle, for example they throw in a few vocabulary words from past units with the new vocabulary words). This also happens when they ask students to tell about the picture at the first of every lesson. Then, they introduce the new vocabulary words and have practice pronouncing these words and learning the meanings. After that, there will be a short story where students will work on reading and pronouncing words and comprehension. Finally, there will be some sort of closure to the lesson depending on the level of the student. This is the same structure most schools use to teach elementary students English, and other things. In contrast, they are learning one on one instead of in the classroom setting. This might increase the efficiency of learning, but one of the best ways to learn is from other people. The students lose this affect in a one on one setting. They lose the advantage of other students asking questions. Granted, they can propose questions to the instructor, but sometimes it’s hard to ask the right questions that make that light bulb come on, especially when the students are of limited English proficiency. Also all of the students are not learning from professional instructors. I have felt semi-confident with the students I have worked with because education is what I’m in school for and I try to apply concepts I have learned in class with my students to make learning optimal. I believe there is a difference in ways that you can go about instructing people even on something as simple as short vowel sounds.  

NALC Serivce Hours 6 and 7

Hour 6

I worked with a woman from Laos. She was very nice and flew through the lesson. We ended up completeing almost three whole lessons. She was very smart and picked up on things quickly. She was a little slow listening and comprehending what was said and she also had a little trouble pronoucing some phonetic sounds.

Hour 7

This time my second student actually showed up! He was a man from Egypt. The lesson was going great until about halfway through he proposed a question. We were learning about school supplie vocabulary and counting money. One of the questions was, "How much money does Tomas need?" This man asked me what does meant. Whoa. I sat there stammering and stuttering all over the place trying to think of how to explain it to him. The only answer I could come up with was it just sounds right. Sometimes it's hard explaining easy things to people that speak limited English. I got up out of my seat and approached the man and woman in charge of the Antioch NALC. They pulled some books from shelves, a few English to Arabian translating dictionaries, but could not come up with anything. We even used Google translator. Still, we could not find anything to help this man. It was very frustrating, but at the same time it made me think deep about our language and also, being an education minor, it made me think about the process of teaching English in schools and how these issues are overcome.

Service Hour 5

Today I helped a woman from Ethiopia. She could speak and understand the language ok, but she was illiterate. I found out later that she was also illiterate in her native language as well. We did basic things like work on short vowel sounds and words that started with these sounds. Then, we practiced writing some lower case letters. She had a hard time reproducing the letters i would make for her; she even had a hard time tracing the letters. But, with all of this in mind she was a very hard worker and a very nice lady. It's inspiring to see someone struggling that much, but to have the determination to go on and keep trying.

Final Service Learning Reflection 2

The first thing I noticed about the materials used at Nashville Adult Literacy Council, were the arrangements of the learning materials or books. As noted in a previous blog post, I arrived very early to my first session to prepare. After I prepared I flipped through several of the books. They are all arranged in a scaffolding manner, where every book builds on itself. Then the series of books are tiered in a way to build on it even more. Just by looking at how these books are arranged and structured, I would guess that this would enhance learning to the fullest potential, instead of teaching somebody the language without as much structure. English is a complicated language with idioms, homonyms, and other things of this sort so to have a learning regimen that is so structured makes sense.

 I have completed all of my tutoring hours at the Antioch location. It’s a small portion of space with a wall to divide the area down the middle. On one side there is a reception desk, two offices, a conference room, and a bathroom. On the other side if the tutoring area, along the back wall there are tables with chairs that face the wall. These workspaces for two or three people are divided by cloth covered plywood on wheels. There is one area sectioned off for a small group I would assume and another area at the opposite end of the room that consists of a round table, probably once again for small groups. There haven’t been very many people there when I tutor. There was a time or two when there was another one on one tutor at the other end of the room. It may have been a little distracting, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome fairly easily. NALC does well with the space they have there and makes learning as efficient as possible in my opinion.

M.A.D. Artifact

I could not figure out what I wanted the artifact to be for this project. I could have talked about a baseball, or a bat or glove, but that seemed to general. I started thinking about what was really important to M.A.D. and it was not just baseball, but helping the players start to progress towards becoming a man. I have a shirt from M.A.D. and on the back there is a few things. The first thing is a bible verse: "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith." - 2 Timothy 4:7. Under this verse in quotations it has what M.A.D. stands for. . . Making A Difference. This shows where the emphasis is for this program. Yeah, they're training the kids to play baseball and they had a lot of success last year, but there is a little more to it than just baseball.

Digital Short

My thought is to show the class the facilities of the M.A.D. Baseball Program and to show some action shots from the young players in games. I might supplement this by taking sme pictures of the players training in the facility and show the direct correspondence to outcome in games.