It is so crazy that this Wednesday was my last day! I feel like we just started volunteering at the Hispanic Center. It was nice being back with Becca and Autumn on my last day at the center because being without them last week was just way too quiet!
Well, on Wednesday I met another full-time volunteer who works with the GED program and helped her with grading those pre-tests that I had made copies of the week before....putting my hard work to use :) Becca and I worked on correcting the math packets for a while and then when she was asked to help another girl write a paper I continued correcting english and social studies packets and defining the areas that the students struggled with the most. Even though this doesn't sound too exciting, I was happy because I felt like it was good practice for becoming a teacher! Then I had to go make some more copies because of the GED students using them all.
After making those copies, there wasn't much to do so I just walked around asking the kids if they needed help. Most of them told me that they didn't have any homework, or they had already finished it, and were on Facebook instead. Sounds oh so familiar! We waited around for a while and tried to help the girl that Becca was working with by adding a few suggestions when we could and we talked with some other volunteers.
Then finally a boy came up and asked us for some help! He had to write a journal entry as if he was a person going through the Holocaust. He was 17 years old, a junior in high school, and told us that he didn't know what the Holocaust was. How does that happen? I feel like I learned about the Holocaust pretty much every year in school! As we explained everything to him, he said that he remembered parts of it, like that Hitler was they guy with the funky mustache and so on. But he just kept telling us, "tell me I'm stupid. I should know this stuff but I don't so I'm stupid". It literally broke my heart to hear. Is that what people are telling him? Even though he says that he doesn't pay attention much in school because he doesn't think it is interesting, shouldn't the teachers notice that and try to do something to change it? Just a thought. Well after telling him about the Holocaust so he at least knew what he was writing about, he didn't quite know where to start so we made an outline and helped him through the paper. He was so embarrassed when I asked him to read it out loud to me that I had to read it myself. I felt bad making corrections on his grammar because every time I would try to help he would just say something like, "yeah I know it's horrible...I'm so dumb". But I would just keep trying to encourage him and help him realize what the mistake was and how he could fix it. Hopefully he does well when he talks to his teacher about the journal entry!
Lastly, Autumn asked me if I could help her out with the boy she had been working with. She asked if I could help with the probability sections they were struggling with. Sadly, I wasn't much help with that. Ooops!
I can't believe how fast this experience went by! Even though I wasn't tutoring every minute that I was there as I was expecting, I learned so much! I absolutely love working with the Hispanic community and volunteering at the Hispanic Center made me realize how impotent it is to be familiar with that community if I want to be a teacher. It also made me realize how important Spanish is in today's culture. I definitely plan on continuing my education with Spanish! I would love to continue volunteering with the Hispanic Center in the future if my schedule allows because it was such a great experience and I would love to dive more into that culture and develop relationships with some of those students.
No comments:
Post a Comment