Thursday, October 8, 2009
APPLES -- first day!
Tuesday was my first day as a School Reading Partner at Scroggs Elementary for APPLES. I expected to go to Scroggs and read and discuss books with one or two students. After reading the books to them, I planned on going over main ideas, letters, and punctuation with the students. Basically, I figured I would be doing most of the talking. Instead, I found out that I would be listening to four children read—two first grade students, Ben and Price, and two second grade ESL students, Mae Ria and Isamar. I feel like the experience will be so much more interesting for me to be the one listening, rather than the one reading. Ultimately, I will be able to see first-hand what they are having trouble with and where they need to improve. All in all, my first day went extremely well. All of the children were so adorable and their faces lit up with excitement when they found out they would be reading with me! I am so excited to see how they progress over the course of the semester.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I just started with the school reading partner program this week as well. My ESL second graders jumped in and read for me, too. Since this is a ten week program, we'll be able to get to know the kids and form a friendship, which is awesome. I think they will enjoy reading and discussing books much more when it's with a familiar person that they are comfortable with. Just some advice- if there is a fire drill, try not to get locked out. That happened to me today.
Hey guys. Chelsey Watson and I have been working with Habitat's Anna Schmalz doing a little Community organizing/development in the East Cornwallis neighborhood of Pittsboro, NC (Chatham County). This particular habitat community had their entrance-way sign broken after a storm caused a tree to fall on it. This was a big deal because the sign gave the people a sense of togetherness and legitimized their place as a neighborhood community.
Our responsibility is to facilitate the rebuilding of the entrance-way sign by reaching out to members of the community. We have contacted a shop teacher from Northwood High School who is going to utilize his students to help with the rebuilding. Our goal is to hold a meeting at the community house in East Cornwallis next week and get input on new design possibilities as well as the general community vision. By having the neighbors vote, it makes it more of their own. After completion of the new sign we plan of having a celebration in the East Cornwallis neighborhood and inviting local officials (Mayor, Media, etc.)Our tentative time-line is as follows:
Oct 15 - Large group neighborhood meeting to discuss
Oct 23 - have old sign out. Get rid of debris
Nov 2 - have new sign in place
Nov TBD - Celebration
We would love to have as many people as possible come out to show support to the community. Its not until November so mark your calendars. Ill keep you posted on the updates.
We are going to be working at Franklin Porter Graham elementary school in Carrboro. Wednesday is our first day but we have talked with the people at the school and they are excited to have us help tutor the kids after school and play games with them outside.
I wanted to post about my APPLES project thus far because I find myself devoting a significant amount of time each week to our project. I am working at Leaflight with Isabelle and Lauren as well as 3 other girls from a sustainable agriculture class in the Anthropology Department. So far our job has been to create a database of farmers' markets in NC. This task is MUCH more daunting and time consuming than one might imagine. The key to this project is accuracy. This database will be what Leaflight use in their overall larger mission in connecting farmers' markets to citizens who use food stamps. The process however of getting markets to even be allowed to accept stamps is heavily bureaucratic involving applications that farmers do not have time to fill out and investments in capital and credit card swipe terminals that farmers do not have money to invest in. So the goal of Leaflight is to gather as much information as possible about the markets via the internet so that Leaflights own employees can fill out the applications for them. We are helping the organization by finding this information and putting it into a spreadsheet so that is accessible to the staff. The second step in the process would be to conduct phone interviews with the markets which our supervisor Robert tells us we will also be a part of. But back to the first step, the spreadsheet--it is overwhelmingly large and I have learned a lot thus far. There are a lot of technical skills that go along with researching and using excel that I believe our group has achieved in doing thus far. There are also a lot of group dynamics that we are starting to understand. ANd there is an element of communication--especially between the group and our supervisor. Overall the experience has been positive thus far. I believe issues and topics we discuss in class will become more relevant as we get more into speaking with the markets and understanding the complexity of perspectives that go into Leaflight's undertaking.
I am working at Franklin Porter Graham Elementary School in Carrboro in their after school program. Wednesday will be my first day with the kids and I am very excited! Last week we stopped by the school to see the kids and talk to the administrators who are all eager for us to start!
This is an update to Joe's comment posted above...last night the two of us met with Anna to talk about the project thus far. We are still trying to work with a teacher at Northwood High School to create and build a new sign for the East Cornwallis neighborhood. I have also contacted a local carpenter in Pittsboro, who was very interested and had a very charitable attitude, about helping us with the sign. Next week Joe and I are going to work on the area where the sign will be, and do a little cleaning up, sanding, and landscaping. After that we plan to have a neighborhood meeting to discuss the community's vision for the new sign. That is where we are right now...
I am doing an apples project with an organization called KONINOIA. I go on wed. nights and tutor and mentor two girls that recently moved here from Burma as refugees. One little girl is in the sixth grade and the other is in the ninth grade; it is so challenging to work on their english and still make sure they are understanding their school work. I had no idea how challenging it would be to tutor, but the girls are so eager to learn that it makes the service completely gratifying.
Post a Comment