November 2007 Archives

Weekly Project Journal

Each week of the project, student must submit a project journal entry. The journal entry consists of three parts:

1. Description. What happened in your project this week? What did you do? Experience?

This week I worked with children at the childcare center. I taught the children how to recite the alphabet and we did some puzzle work that required the children to put the alphabet blocks in the right order. The blocks contained pictures of animals along with the letter so as to teach the kids by association. One of the girls brought homework from class which required her to connect numbers up to twenty by a certain interval E.G. connecting numbers on a line by two's. I helped her with this and she seemed to really grasp the material well. I then read the children a story which showed little children from all different countries. The main precept of the book was that all children sleep at night but I took the opportunity to show the kids the pictures in the back ground as well as where the countries were on the little map the book provided. It was fairly basic. I taught the kids that Egypt had many deserts and was quite dry and that Brazil had many rain forests like the Amazon in which all sorts of animals live. I taught them that parts of Norway like Svalbard were quite far north and that there is a University in Svalbard where the students carry guns to protect themselves from polar bears they thought that was neat. I then sat aside with two students in particular and showed them an encyclopedia of different animals.
My main experience this week was a feeling of accomplishing true service. I think at the end of the day I made sure that the children left with more knowledge of the world than they came there with. I thought if I was able to do that, I could make the problem of immigrant marginalization less of a problem by narrowing any possible education gaps.

2. Interpretation. What did you learn from your project this week? About the project? About the issue? About yourself?

From the experience I gained the knowledge that all kids, no matter what their background is, have the ability to learn, it just has to be brought out of them in different ways depending on the individual. This gave me major insight into the problem of immigrant marginalization in that it showed me clearly that the problem of immigrant marginalization is not caused by a lack of ability of immigrant children to learn and prosper, which I always suspected, it is about the opportunity to succeed or the lack thereof that immigrants have.
I also learned that my role as a child educator at neighborhood house must be not just be about learning about immigrant marginalization but also about narrowing the educational gap between immigrant children and children whose parents have been situated in America for a long time.
In addition I learned that I personally can educate small children fairly well. They take a genuine interest in the things I teach them and seem to have a lot of fun in the process.

3. Evaluation. How would you evaluate your work on the project this week? What grade would you give yourself? Are you accomplishing the objectives of the project? Your personal objectives?
I think this week went fairly well I am keeping in contact with my supervisor at neighborhood house about various opportunities helping the immigrant community in St. Paul and I think I am on my way to getting some of these things set up. I should be getting a very broad experience of the problem and not only am I accomplishing my scholastic and personal objectives in learning about the problem of immigrant marginalization but I am also making a marked difference in the lives of those I work with. As a result of this project so far I have made life a little better for some individuals hungry for food and education and in the process I have gained many things for myself. I have gained knowledge in interacting with people, and I have gained immense pride in knowing that I am successful at it. I give myself a B+.

Weekly Project Journal

Each week of the project, student must submit a project journal entry. The journal entry consists of three parts:

1. Description. What happened in your project this week? What did you do? Experience?
In this week's project I worked at the Neighborhood House food drive at Kowalski's. I handed out slips of paper listing what the food shelf needs in terms of items and food and told people where the donation bins were located. I also loaded the food in the Neighborhood House van and thanked the people who donated. I was able to do all this because our organization had several individuals each working in rotation.
Our group managed to collect quite a few Kowalski paper bags stacked to the brim with food. I figure in all we collected 55 bags all stacked full, but I would have to check the official figures as I worked the 12:00-2:00 shift and have no idea how the donations picked up from 2:00-4:00.
I gained valuable experience in administering food drives which is important in working with the poor and will certainly have given me experience if I choose to do this again in the future. It also gave me basic experience in working in a group administrative setting which is good experience for any occupation. Most importantly, in relation to my topic of immigrant marginalization, I gained the experience of how best to get people to donate to the food shelf as well as the experience of what materials and products low income families really need.

2. Interpretation. What did you learn from your project this week? About the project? About the issue? About yourself?
In relation to my project of learning about immigrant marginalization, I gained a definite understanding of what products and materials are most important to low income recent immigrants and perhaps even more fascinating, from a psychological and philosophical view, what people themselves choose to donate which reflects, in some way, on how they perceive immigrants. The food on our list included, cooking oils, sugar & flour, noodles, beans, Rice, pepper, Cereal, Peanut butter, canned meat, Coffee, soup, and tea. The non food items included Deodorant, Cleaning products, tooth brushes, sanitary products, diapers, shampoo, toilet paper, and Bath, Dish, and laundry soap. That said, no one was limited to donate exclusively what was on the list and we all made that fairly clear to the shoppers and the results were interesting. A few older gentlemen in their 80's were really happy to donate quite a lot of oatmeal for the kids (which wasn't on the list) on the pretext that that was there favorite food as kids, from what they told me. Other individuals many of whom were middle aged, and many of whom had kids with them, tended to donate a lot of diapers and child care products. We ended up with a lot of these. The most often donated food however, at least at the time I left, was tomato sauce and noodles. What I found interesting is that most people whom I talked to, as was reflected in many of the products I saw, showed that people who donated thought primarily of the children. Of all the non food products Diapers and other child care products were the most abundant and when people donated food it was food they thought the kids would like. This was true in the older men who donated the oatmeal and in many of the cereals that were chosen like TRIX. This made me wonder if more people think along the same lines as I do. Though I support private voluntary charities in any form, I have always viewed the capitalist idea that man must earn by means of his own effort as paramount, with the necessary corollary that those who can't earn money by means of their own effort, namely the too old to work, the too young too work, and the too physically and mentally disabled to work, always deserve compensation from private and federal social programs. Perhaps the view that these three groups should get priority in social services, with emphasis on the too young, is a more popular one than I initially thought.
I learned about my project insofar as I realized that Neighborhood House actually goes out in public and in supermarkets to get food for their food-shelf. Prior to this assignment, I thought they got everything from second harvest, but in reality their food collection system is more multifaceted than that.
In terms of myself, I learned that I am really quite good at getting people to donate various items. I was able to explain to each person who came in how to donate in no time and the majority of the people who donated were the people I had handed sheets to. We had a good collection day from what my colleagues were saying. I ended the day a bit discouraged however, when one of my colleagues told me that 800 lbs of food lasts barely a week, which made our total donation seem a lot less plentiful.

3. Evaluation. How would you evaluate your work on the project this week? What grade would you give yourself? Are you accomplishing the objectives of the project? Your personal objectives?
I would evaluate my work as a B+ because though I was sick and couldn't make it to my regular job the kids on Wednesday, I made it up by working on Sunday which accomplished the goal I set last week of diversifying my experience and my contribution to the agency. I also told my superiors to contact me if there are any other opportunities aside from working with the kids and we discussed potentially working at the Hmong New Year and things. As a result I am well on my way to discovering many facets of immigrant marginalization thus accomplishing my goal in a far more substantive and broad sense and thus I am accomplishing my personal and professional objectives of gaining a broad range of knowledge on the problem of immigrant marginalization and providing necessary services for those that need them.

Weekly Project Journal

1. Description. What happened in your project this week? What did you do? Experience?

This week I worked with children. Most of the children are with the Mujheres program and are from countries in South & Central America as well as Mexico, however there are three girls, all sisters, who are from Africa, but I don't know exactly where partly because two of the girls are quite shy and do not talk literally at all and because there are a lot of children there, all of whom I am slowly getting to know. The oldest of the three sisters, whom I teach is more talkative and is doing quite well with her English homework. She is learning to read and write and is currently working on packets that help the kids work with English on a variety of different levels like matching, fill in the black and things of that sort. In addition, since it was Halloween I got permission from my two supervisors to bring candy for the kids and they learned some different arts and crafts projects.
My experience consists primarily at this point of the knowledge I gained on how important educational childcare is for immigrant children to their assimilation into society and how important it is for parents, so that they also have time to learn how to assimilate and integrate themselves into their new setting. The importance of having access to affordable childcare is something which is often overlooked.

2. Interpretation. What did you learn from your project this week? About the project? About the issue? About yourself?

The main things I learned this week from this project were how to act around people of different cultural backgrounds and how valuable educational childcare is to immigrant children and their parents. It is often understated how important access to childcare is to the integration of immigrant families. If parents cannot have access to childcare, it is difficult to find the time to take English classes and to learn how to use modern amenities that they may not have had before and if children do not have access to education early on, the future might look rather bleak.
I learned that the issue of immigrant marginalization is about more than just providing optimal economic opportunities in the work place for immigrant families; it is also about private sector initiatives to provide affordable childcare and education services and a slough of other services prior to an immigrant's entry into the job market. It is fair to say, after my experience, that even in a condition of the ripest economic opportunity, an immigrant would be disadvantaged without the benefit of these pre-occupational services.

3. Evaluation. How would you evaluate your work on the project this week? What grade would you give yourself? Are you accomplishing the objectives of the project? Your personal objectives?

I would evaluate my work as fair (B), I did my best and I took from it what I could, but in order for me to have a great performance at my work I think I will have to broaden my horizons. I hope I will be able to work at the food shelf soon.
Ultimately though, I am achieving my objective of learning about immigrant marginalization for the project, and gaining knowledge that I can always use personally in the future if I am ever in a position to act.