reflection

Reflection

            I was a little skeptical about what the Boys and Girls Club was and how it would be beneficial to the children in the program or me.  I soon realized that the program not only would help me but also was a very productive in teaching the children.  This therefore was a very beneficial project for the class to participate in and for the community.

            I think this project helped me to learn more than I even expected.  I was able to gain many skills when it comes to working in a group.  For example as a group we had to agree and come up with lessons for the days when we went to Boys and Girls Club.  By doing this I was able to learn the different methods of getting everyone to agree on a single idea.  Also I was able to see exactly how a group of people could make an idea from one person even better.  This happened when we were making our lesson plans and I had presented an idea about what story to start with, “Hansel and Gretel”, and then from that the question would be what could we do with that story.  The first response was drawing.  After that I remember the great idea of making ginger bread houses with the kids so that they can be creative, stay connected with the lesson and can even learn from it.  That is how I realized that this project could definitely help to teach me about how to interact with a group to come up with great ideas together rather than as an individual.  That is the first time I noticed how this project would be able to help me learn.  Also I was able to see how this was going to help when we began teaching the first lesson. I could see that in order for them to really understand what we are trying to teach them we had to know about what we were teaching in very great detail.  This how I realized that in order for people to know to know what your trying to support they need to take in all the information about this topic before hand so that they really demonstrate what they are trying to say.  Therefore, before each lesson I made sure that I would read over the story again and really analyze it so that I had valuable information to share.

            I think this is way better than an original type of final because it does a better job at making sure that when you leave the class you really learned what was supposed to be taught in the class.  For example, when we teach the children we have to actually have knowledge of the stories and know what the meaning behind the stories are.  This grantee that all of the students, in this FYS, have learned the material.  It is guaranteed because the children are expecting to learn something.  Therefore, no one is walking out of the class without taking in some form of knowledge.  Also while this form of a final helps the students in the class it is also doing community service.  While we are benefiting our grades we are able to help the children at Boys and Girls Club learn about the same knowledge that we have gained from the FYS.  

            There were not a lot of problems that I have noticed with this project but there is at least one that I can think of.  I realized that if not all the group members participate it could be very detrimental to the one student that is actively trying to participate in the project.  For example I remember that one day we did not have any group members but myself.  Andrew had football practice and informed me that he would be a little late and Natarsha had informed me that she was stuck in New York due to the bad weather.  Therefore I had to find a way to teach a lesson designed for a group of three but it was just me.  I was lucky and was able to join another group that was short on members.  Another example is that our group was always a person short because it was supposed to be four.  Although these lessons were able to teach about what to do in situations like that and taught us how to adjust when things are not going the way they are supposed to.

 In conclusion I believe that this type of final is a better way to test the knowledge of the students compared to the ideal traditional style.  Also this is very beneficial to the community and can help the children gain more knowledge to spread to others as they grow up.