Day 2

So today was my second day of service learning and I am somewhat disappointed.
When I first arrived I was discovered the Special Education classroom empty.
After finding the students in their English class I set about helping them with their poetry assignment.

They were working on finding poetic devices in popular songs. This was easy and I moved from group to group explaining some of the terms and helping them locate examples. After about ten minutes of rotating through groups, it was time for the students to head to math class.
Once they got to class, they worked on a new chapter of math while I sat observing for the next 50 minutes. By then of the period I was annoyed that I had sat there for that long, doing nothing.
The students themselves were unruly and a few had to changes seats. One student had his mother called for being inappropriate. The class period seemed to be full of interruptions and students wandering from desk to desk.
There was some level of authority but it seemed to me that the students had no respect for it. When asked to settle down they talked back and ignored their instructor. Both teachers in the room had difficultly keeping 14 students under control.

I guess this was a learning experience because I learned how differently I would handle classroom disruptions. Also, ff I had a college student coming to work in my class, I would have them go around and help students instead of having them sit there. Hopefully next week will be better.

Day 1

My first day of service learning was a huge success! I had a great time getting a tour of the school and an overview of each program. The students and staff were all welcoming and happy to have me there. On specific assignments the students I worked with are pulled out of their general math class and placed in Special Education to get extra help.

Today during their pull out session, the instructor had me go around to each table and assist the students with their math assignments. This proved to be a difficult task because of the differences between how the students were taught to solve a particular problem and how I would go about solving the problem. Currently I am taking a College Algebra class and the steps they needed help with (basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractions) I usually work out in my head or skip because of my past instruction. However they needed to write out these specific steps that I have learned to skip since my freshmen year of high school. After a few minutes I finally worked it out and it began to come back to me. Other than that today went very smoothly.

On multiple occasions the students became unruly. Each time the teacher had to count down from three to keep them in line. However they still kept talking amongst themselves and finally calmed down when the instructor threatened them with detention. I felt as though she was not firm enough with her first attempts to keep them quiet. She was quiet herself and did not seem very authoritative.By using a loud and firm voice, instruction will be taken as a command not a question. If I was put in the situation, I would make sure that my authority is well established so the students understand that they need to pay attention and keep quiet while working on individual assignments.

Today was a great leaning experience and I am already excited to go back next week!

Service Learning Prequel

Tomorrow I start my service learning at the Duel Immersion Academy in Salt Lake City. I have really been looking forward to this because I get to begin developing my teaching skills by observing the classroom and participating in activities. Im hoping to learn a lot from the instructor and the instructor's methods. Im nervous to start because this is the first time I have ever worked with this age group. During my service leraning I hope to see a number of classroom situations that most general educators deal with on a day to day basis. This would be very beneficial in creating and implementing my own teaching strategies.