Volunteering at the Family Learning Center

After about 7 weeks of sessions with The Family Learning Center, I’ve found that I have developed a fond connection to the preschool students as well a better understanding of what a preschool means for the kids, in regards to what they are learning in the time they attend. I’ve noticed a change of my own perspective, from showing up and trying things out a little blindly, to actually seeing what goes into a daily session for the couple of hours that I observe and participate with the kids. I see that these children are receiving constant reminders of remembering the days of the week, learning how to count, introducing new foods, participating in joint activities with adults and peers, and each day expanding their semantic lexicons.

When I come to the preschool, the children are all sitting around tables enjoying their one o’clock snack time. I believe that this practice is a great introduction into the kid’s lives for developing functional eating habits and introducing new ideas about health and balanced snacks/foods. I like to ask questions about the kids’ snacks, especially when they are having trail mix, I ask if they know what kind of ingredients are in the snack, “Do you like the raisins? Or the cashews? What kind of nut is this? A peanut?” After snack I was given the position of being in charge of making sure all of the class brushes their teeth, another way of teaching and practicing personal hygiene outside of the home. After that we all participate in games before the whole class meets up in a circle for song time. I try my best to mix up my one on one interactions with all of the kids equally, I also notice that a lot of the girls are draw n to me and want to take my hand and say “Follow me, let’s play!”

As I mentioned earlier, every day the preschoolers practice with learning about the days of the week and counting, along with the basic skill of checking on the weather. Usually Manuela leads the kiddos as we all sit down together as a group and count the days of the week and name out the current day of the week in English and Spanish. One selected student gets the honor of running to the window to report to everyone what the weather is like that day. I find that this is a good practice for the age group of these kids because I know that the person who is going to check on the window must feel special in that they were the chosen one. I think it’s a classic way to teach individualism and brings a sense of community and value that each kid can bring to the group.

Lately Mona’s class has been participating in a lot of new activities! I mentioned earlier that they are introducing new foods. Mona uses the book about unusual foods that are good for everyone to know, so far the class has been able to try Gouda cheese and daikon radishes. Mona tells the kids that they should tell their parents next time they ask what kind of cheese to buy, to go gourmet and buy gouda. I am really learning that teaching variety of all things at a young age is good for a versatile palate as the kids get older and become independent with their own style and methods of cooking. We have also been playing with more hands on activities like dipping hands in water to play with plastic fish as well as blowing up balloons and learning how to make them float over a fan.

The preschool is so much fun and all the kids are little rays of sunshine; it’s awesome to observe each of their personalities. I find that I am learning myself about what goes into running a preschool with activities and routines and how basic things are really what these kids are learning to help their growth as independent and functional adults. I love being a role model for the students and I know how important joint attention is for kids, especially at their developing age range of 4-5 years old. Reading with them and playing games one on one always seems to uncover some new sort of knowledge each and every session.

Naomi Pederson #2

Wow, The last few weeks were definitely interesting. Youngsil just came in one day and decided that the 7 sentence story we had written last week was not good enough--she was actually going to seriously think about it! We finally had about 3-4 sentences per page, and about 9 pages :) She must've finally decided that this book would be fun if she just gave it a chance!--or so I thought. The next week she comes in, it's "I don't want to" and "If you want a book, you write it!" and even "This is boring, let's just forget about it." I got so frustrated, but I know it's mainly because she doesn't feel confident in her language skills yet. Every time she makes a mistake on a sentence or word, she tells me to take over. And that's expected -- she wasn't raised with English, and I know her parents are also not perfect with English, either. On one hand, I want her to have a fun experience, and don't want to push too hard, but on the other, she won't let it be fun. I really hope that this week will bring about some willingness, now that most of the writing is out of the way.

One interesting thing is that she has started to practice her writing -- in a diary sort of thing. She was embarrassed when her mother told me. I think it's great that Youngsil is taking the initiative to practice and improve her writing -- it helps with grammar, handwriting, and understanding of the language, and that's just amazing. But it also must be a little bit of a sore spot for her if she doesn't want other people to know about it. As a college student, studying is what we are supposed to be doing -- for class, for a test, to learn. As an elementary school student, yeah, studying is important, but few kids actually do more than asked of them -- if that (at least, that was me when I was 6). My handwriting still isn't very good, and off the top of my head, my grammar usually has mistakes -- that's why writing is one required class at almost every age, people can always improve. But I don't think she sees it that way -- she is probably very conscious that her reading and writing level is lower than many of her classmates -- but she's bilingual! Of course as a child she would have issues with juggling the two. As a child, my brother spoke English with Japanese grammar... my mother was the only one who understood a single thing he said (some words were also combinations of the two). He used to get so upset when people couldn't understand him. But just like my brother, Youngsil only sees that she's different, and she wants to be just as good, if not better, than those around her. I already know she is an overachiever -- she pushes herself to do better always (when she wants to, at least). I'm just waiting for her mindset to overpower her fears, and then the question will be, what can't she do?

Jeffrey Rice #1

In the SWAP program I have established a relationship with my "student" Maria Torres. We are in the 2B section for learning. Maria has lived in Colorado with her family for 15 years. She has two kids, one is in the 7th grade and playing soccer. Her daughter is in 5th grade, and they live together in Denver with her husband as well. I enjoy learning about Maria and hearing her speak in English. She says she knows "pequeño" English, but I have found that she can usually understand what I am saying. She enjoys writing the most, and she really wants to learn certain vocabulary for her job and life.

I am extremely excited to work with her this year, because I can see she really wants to learn. She doesn't want to do homework because she doesn't have much time when she isn't working, so I am going to make an effort to help her watch English television shows and interact more with English speakers. I have google translate on my computer up if we need to interact and can't understand each other, but we can usually just phrase words differently to accomplish the same thing. I hope to take her on a field trip soon so we can describe what we see around us. I want to mix up the learning environment so we can find which environment she learns English the best in. We make vocabulary lists and she uses them to look over. This is going to be an exciting semester!

Bridget

The little girl I was assigned to work with is a 6 year old named Bridget. She is a very sweet girl who loved ISPY books. She is the youngest of 4 children and her favorite animal is a tiger. Bridget is very easy to be around. She is always making sure that I like the books we are reading as much as she does and she likes to switch off who is choosing the books.

During one of our reading buddy sessions we had recently, all she wanted to read about was tigers. We used the library search engines to find all of the books in the children's library that were stories about tigers. After reading about 4 books or so, we decided to draw pictures of the tigers we read about in the stories. She decided that she wanted to write her final book at the end of the semester on a tiger named Cece.

Bridget grew up in Colorado and I grew up in Indiana therefore I have somewhat of a midwest accent. When I read certain words to her like mom, basketball, or apple for example she often times corrects me and makes me say the word she does.

Since her first session, Bridget has begun to show more interest in other types of books besides just ISPY. We would have to read a picture book and then do an ISPY book. She now likes to read only 2 ISPY books a session. She has also started to like to read some of the books on her own. When she recognizes the words, she likes to take over and read.

Bridget and I just started writing a book. So far, Bridget is writing the story about a tiger named Cece who became really sick one day. She then realized that she was going to have 2 baby tigers. When the babies were born they decide to go hunting in Africa. Once we finish the story, she will draw the pictures and we will bind the book. Every day, we begin the day by drawing name tags together. Bridget loves doing this and always has me write her name in cursive for her.

Bridget has begun to become more interested in reading herself rather than have me read to her. She has begun to choose simple books and reading them herself. I have taught her some words that she didn't know and it is so exciting when she figures them out and recognizes them later on.

So far, Bridget has taught me how important reading is to children. I have watched how certain stories spark curiosity in her or make her tell certain stories. Reading to her makes her want to know how to read as well. Reading makes her think and be more creative.

Sierra Kohlruss #1

My Reading Buddy's name is Atticus and is 6 years old. He has two brothers and loves to play sports. He is a very smart kid and loves to read. He has two geckos and discusses how he likes to feed them live grasshoppers. A session that went very well with Atticus was last Wednesday, the 27th of February, when we began to write our story. Atticus came up with an elaborate story because he has such a big imagination, about a porcupine inventor who invented machines to capture the bad guys who stole his food. It was really fun to brainstorm with Atticus and write down this magic adventure that Pokey the porcupine goes on. He also had a good time beginning to draw the illustrations for the story!

A connection between the course material and experiences with my student is how Atticus does not know how to read complicated words such as "awesome" or "Sonja" because of the silent letters within the words. This is similar to how a foreigner may not know how to read those words either because they have differing grammar and phonetics. Although Atticus is having trouble pronouncing some difficult words, he has improved on his reading. At the beginning of the semester he barely wanted to read, but now he jumps in on almost every book and can read through the pages efficiently. Atticus and I have really been focusing on reading mostly through the semester, but before we pick out books we write our names on name tags and draw elaborate pictures around our names that tell stories in themselves. The other day, each letter in our names had eyes and a smiley face! A few weeks ago, me and Atticus were reading a book and the sentence "The dad was more prone to letting Jimmy play if he took out the trash," came up. Atticus asked what prone meant and I described its definition, now Atticus knows "prone" along with many other words, so I think he is gaining knowledge every week.

This experience has showed me that sentences and words that I think are simple may be extremely difficult for those who have not learned them yet. I've learned to be less ethnocentric, and put myself in a 6 year old's shoes, reading the book from his perspective. I've learned to not take my knowledge of the English language for granted and challenged myself to learn more difficult words.