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.

Service Hours 3 and 4

Not as anxious this time, I arrived early and began my lesson plan for my next student. S.H. was also from Egypt like my first student. He was a very nice man. During our chit chat period I learned that he worked at the Tyson meat factory. His wife was actually being tutored at the same time across the room. Afer I learned that he had been in the States for about 7 years, the conversation died off once again. I could tell he felt a little uneasy because he started to open up his book when he had ran out of things to say. The tutoring session went great. He was a hard worker and he took notes and make corrections. He strugled with some vocabulary. He kept getting words mixed up and he would forget the definitions of words. What was cool though is he understood some humor.For example, like I mentioned earlier his wife was across the room. Our story was about a couple. The man liked to watch tv and didn't talk very much and the wife was described as a very talkative person. One of the queswtions for comprehension was asking the reader (S.H.) if he is talkative or quiet. He responded I am quiet, but then he pointed at his wife and with a smile on his face told me that she loved to talk and made a hand gesture that was conveying a mouth opening up and closing. We had a good laugh about it.

Once again for the second day in a row, my second student did not show. I learned later that he was a clerk in a small grocery store and it was robbed while he was there. He had to talk to police that day about this incident.

Service Learning Hours 1 and 2

In my first hour I arrived to the site early to fully prepare for my lesson. I was feeling anxious waiting on the student to walk in. Finally H.S. came in and sat down beside me. We shook hands and began to talk. I learned she was from Egypt and worked at a gyro stnd in the Green Hills Mall. She was a very sweet lady probably in her early to mid forties. The lesson plan said to chit chat for ten minutes, but it stalled out after about five. It's funny the things I take for granted. I could have talked to her for an hour about Egypt, her culture, and what she thought about America, but the language barrier made every aspect of the conversation difficult. I was not only having to listen, but I was also trying to add words to supplement every sentence so it made sense to me. She knew she wasn't making a lot of sense and I think this embarrassed her which is not how I wanted her to feel so it was a little awkward. Trying to get her to understand the questions I was asking was an even harder task, but with that said we flew throguh the lesson. She could read very well and comprehended fairly well. She had problems with listening for comprehension, but as I found out later that is very common. H.S. took notes on words she didn't understand and even brough an Egypt to English dictionary for words I had difficulty explaining to her. I enjoyed working with her very much.

Unfortunately my second student did not show.