SPRING BREAK 2013!!!
…During Spring Break, Paige, John and mysel will be going to Philadelphia. While there, we will be helping out with creative writing workshops for K-12 students and building playgrounds. Being able to be a part of the trip is exciting! However, after class on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but think and reevaluate the goals I have made for the trip. During class, we established that fixing a problem only veiwing the surface level issues related to it is not really fixing the problem.
“Give a man a fish and he will be hungary…teach a man to fish and he will be fed…”(I think that’s how it goes…). Although this quote makes sense, you have to think about the other factors that go into fishing. For example: what if the fish in the ocean/lake are endangered; what if the man, you have been teaching, has had a traumatic experience with a fish and does not fish because of that? There are plenty of other reasons that could have inhibited fishing in that particular community. If different factors such as these, may play a role in fishing, I have to think that there are other reasons that may contribute to learning progression.
Rethinking Philly Goals?
… I had to reavaluate the goals I made and what kind of impact the group plans to make in Philly, within the matter of a week. Although we probably cannot bring about a massive change to education and playground construction, it is possible that we can impact the students’ lives in a positive way. Before going on the trip, I have begun to rethink what I should do before going in order to achieve this goal of positivly impacting the students. Besides packing, I should also research the community we will be wolunteering in. Another good idea, would be to relearn some grammer and creative writing techniques. Because there is a range of ages we might be working with, it might also be helpful if I revisit what a 3rd grader may know (as far as writing techniques go) versus a 7th grader in middle school.
Although I am sure we cannot change the entire landscape of education, I do believe that if we follow through with the afterschool teachers’ guidelines and make our own efforts in positively impacting the student’s perspective on learning we can make some change. Whether it be a little or a lottle change is possible.
February 17th, 2013 at 10:21 pm
‘Give a man a fish, feed him for a day! Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime!’ -Confucius!
This goes for school as well. Give a kid the answers to his problems, fix his problems for a day. Teach a kid to solve his own problems, teach him for a lifetime!
Don’t merely teach the kids -how- but teach them -why!-
Why put a period at the end of a sentence? Why capitalize the first letter? Why become a ~writer~?
At those ages, kids don’t care much about the world! They merely do things to have fun! If the activity isn’t fun, they’re not going to do it! Teach them how to write poetry or short stories and how to upload them to a blog / website so others can peer review their stories!
‘Knowledge is perception!’
February 18th, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Thanks for the quote correction 🙂 and that’s a good idea. Instead of thinking about how to write a sentence with proper puctuation marks, I should teach them why they need those marks. Why is this relevant to making a story? Other questions centered on–Why will really help in while tutoring. It’s funny that you mentioned making things relative to children, because we actually talked about this during one of our Philly AB meetings. We also re-hashed the things we talked about a few Wednesdays ago.
Thanks Megg