Today was my first day of service learning at Gearity Preschool, and I was very nervous about it. When we arrived we were each assigned to a classroom, my classroom was for children with social problems and only some of them could talk. There were about 7 children in the classroom along with two teachers and an aide who was only there for part of the time. When I first got there the children were in gym class, I'll admit that I was very unsure what to do at first and that I did feel very out of place, but then I began to talk to the other teachers and play basketball with the kids. After Gym they returned to their classroom and had circle time, this was a little difficult, as the children had trouble sitting still, and it was also hard for some to transition to snack time. Recess was the time when I really got to get to know the kids, I pushed them at the swings and played with this one little boy for along time. Back in the classroom there was an incident where one girl jumped on another and tried to bite her, the teacher had to react very fast, it was a little scary to be honest. The rest of the day was dommiented by art time and play time, this ran pretty smoothly but the kids where defiantly getting tired, so I was happy when it was time to walk them to the bus, as they were ready to go home. I felt very nervous for the first part of the day, some of the kids were kind of violent and other were always trying to touch me, but as the day went on, I had to let go of my insecurity's, remind myself that they were just little kids, and enjoy my time with them.
A current event that relates to my service experience is that the Rosa Law passed senate, which means that the words mentaly retarded and mental retardation will be removed from federal laws and replaced with intellectually disabled/disabilities. I think this is great because I have always thought that retarded was a rude and inaccurate term. After my day on site, I was again reminded of the movie Waiting for Superman, because I know that many kids at Gearity come from low income families and while the school is nice, I thought that with more funding they could have better equipment and provide even better experiences for these special needs kids. My elementary school also had a program like Gearity's but we had more resources and nicer classrooms, so it really is sad to see these gaps between schools that are not even that far away from each other. I wonder if these children are getting the best education possible? It kind of seemed to me that they just did a lot of playing and not much learning went on. But it was just my first day, so I don't want to judge anything. In short I feel that I will learn a lot about the education system and about children from the experience and I am looking forward to next week.
(We did not get a journal question this week, but I think we will next week)
No comments:
Post a Comment