Week 15

Weekly Project Journal- Week 13

1. Description. What happened in your project this week? What did you do? Experience?
This week the main thing I did involved teaching kids what to do in case of a fire and coordinating a coloring activity along with it which had a sheet of a man stop dropping and rolling. The other main event included a very rewarding activity which was started because of work that I did with the children prior. I have been working quite heavily with children on geography and teaching the children about other countries. My superiors and fellow co workers observed this and liked it and so they started formulating lesson plans that have the focus of teaching these children about other cultures which I think is great especially when this is done at the young age these kids are at which is from 3-6. Last Monday we taught the kids about Mexico, on Tuesday we taught the kids about Laos and more broadly Hmong culture, and on Wednesday the topic was South Africa. Every one of these sessions is started by teaching the kids where the country is on the globe (The globe was actually brought in when I mentioned that it would be a good idea) and then it is followed by a story which teaches the kids on the particular country that is on the globe. It makes me so happy that my co workers were able to help me incorporate this program into the curriculum. I think it will really benefit the children.

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

This week I learned the power of what an idea can do. I had an idea and it was implemented. The children love it and it benefits them and gives them great knowledge and it really gets at the heart of what Neighborhood House is trying to do which is to encourage cross cultural understanding which is not limited to dialogue between U.S. citizens and non U.S. citizens but is open to all cultural groups and though the program started by highlighting the culture of groups directly represented in the Neighborhood House community it is not constrained to that model. The goal of this form of lesson plan is to learn a wide variety of cultures and countries. To be sure the children learned about the Middle East this week and had a Camel project to complement it.
In short I learned about my ability to come up with an idea and implement it. I learned that one of the best ways to help children of disadvantaged economic situations is to help them with a simple educational model that children can valuably learn from and I learned that the issue of immigrant marginalization can be combated by simply caring about the intellectual future of children and having a small idea to back up that concern.

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?

This week I give myself an A because I came up with a plan to help children become as knowledgeable as they can about world issues at their age and it worked. I have every reason to conclude that the lesson plan that I devised with the help of my co workers and superiors improved the knowledge of the children especially since the same children have come back the next week reciting everything they have learned. As I reach the last week of my service I am overjoyed that I have accomplished my personal objectives of helping, in some small way, to improve the lives of those immigrant children that I work with. I am also successfully accomplishing my goal of fighting immigrant marginalization by helping immigrant children learn about the cultures of each other and about the culture of others. Knowledge like this is crucial for children to work with people later in life especially in this increasingly globalized world.