Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The Giving Tree
Almost everyday a kid asks me to read them The Giving Tree. Have you ever read this book? It is sooooooo sad. I am brought to tears every time and usually the kid looks at me funny and says "Ms. Laura why are you crying?" Maybe I'm just an emotional person, but this story breaks my heart. The poor tree, why you give all yourself to that selfish boy?? And then he just sits on your stump at the end and you're happy. "And she loved a little boy very, very much. -even more than she loved herself." Thank you Shel Silverstein.
My position
A quick overview of my AmeriCorps position. I am a member at a non-profit that helps to create affordable housing for low income families in my county. Specifically, I work in community life where I help organize the pre-school and after school programs for one of our sites. In the afternoons I am an assistant teacher for 1st-3rd graders.
Being part of their community and learning about their lives is really what makes this job so interesting. The community is predominantly Hispanic. Most of the parents of the children I work with do not speak much English and my Spanish is very much lacking. So the language barrier is difficult. I also do not know a lot of about their different cultures and only get an idea of their lives through the stories the kids tell me.
Another obstacle I face is not having a background in education. I'm not sure how to teach these kids or what's the right way to respond to their questions, but it's all trial and error and I'm learning everyday.
I do spend about 2 and a half hours with them daily and enjoy every minute of it. Our goal is to help raise their GPAs so we help with homework, feed them snacks and read to them. As well as do STEM activities with them , which all seems so simple but there is a much bigger picture here and so many obstacles. Working for the non-profit and seeing all the struggles there are in making an after school program work has really opened my eyes.
Not enough money in the budget for snacks, for example. 120 kids in the program 5 days a week, food goes so fast. And we want to give them healthier snacks like fruits and an alternative to potato chips, but that costs about $800 a month. Plus money for paper goods and all the supplies the teachers need. We need working computers. And it would be great to be able to hire more teachers so all the kids on the waiting list for our program would be able to join, but the reality is that money is the main issue and there just is not enough of it to serve our whole community. And it makes me feel like we still aren't doing enough.
Being part of their community and learning about their lives is really what makes this job so interesting. The community is predominantly Hispanic. Most of the parents of the children I work with do not speak much English and my Spanish is very much lacking. So the language barrier is difficult. I also do not know a lot of about their different cultures and only get an idea of their lives through the stories the kids tell me.
Another obstacle I face is not having a background in education. I'm not sure how to teach these kids or what's the right way to respond to their questions, but it's all trial and error and I'm learning everyday.
I do spend about 2 and a half hours with them daily and enjoy every minute of it. Our goal is to help raise their GPAs so we help with homework, feed them snacks and read to them. As well as do STEM activities with them , which all seems so simple but there is a much bigger picture here and so many obstacles. Working for the non-profit and seeing all the struggles there are in making an after school program work has really opened my eyes.
Not enough money in the budget for snacks, for example. 120 kids in the program 5 days a week, food goes so fast. And we want to give them healthier snacks like fruits and an alternative to potato chips, but that costs about $800 a month. Plus money for paper goods and all the supplies the teachers need. We need working computers. And it would be great to be able to hire more teachers so all the kids on the waiting list for our program would be able to join, but the reality is that money is the main issue and there just is not enough of it to serve our whole community. And it makes me feel like we still aren't doing enough.
"Experience is wasted because we don't record it"
A month or so into my AmeriCorps Project CHANGE experience, I have decided that I must record my experience. So here I am blogging, but I have no idea what I am doing.
Two weeks ago a man named Paul Costello came to our AmeriCorps group meeting to talk to us about the importance of storytelling. He helped us start telling our stories. So I have decided that blogging and sharing my story would help me, "shape the story that is shaping me."
I also have a terrible memory so writing this all down will help me remember all that I've been through during this experience.
He had us first think about our names... That was boring for me because I don't think much of my first name. I like my last name and my middle name was given to me by my birth mother, but that's a whole different story.
So back to this whole AmeriCorps business. He asked, "Why are you here?" Hmmmm "Why am I here?" that's a brilliant question. I wish I had an equally interesting answer. Answering "why" is always hard for me. Sometimes I feel like I just do things without thinking of "why." Is it because after I graduated from college I did not know what to do? I want to help people? He told us to think of one moment that brought me here to this project. The internet is technically what brought me here, but that's a boring story of me sitting on the couch with my laptop frantically searching for the next step of my life. So I just came up with a story of volunteering before and how it made me want to help people, but that's not really an answer. And I don't think the "why" is very important to me right now because I'm here and I'm doing it.
Two weeks ago a man named Paul Costello came to our AmeriCorps group meeting to talk to us about the importance of storytelling. He helped us start telling our stories. So I have decided that blogging and sharing my story would help me, "shape the story that is shaping me."
I also have a terrible memory so writing this all down will help me remember all that I've been through during this experience.
He had us first think about our names... That was boring for me because I don't think much of my first name. I like my last name and my middle name was given to me by my birth mother, but that's a whole different story.
So back to this whole AmeriCorps business. He asked, "Why are you here?" Hmmmm "Why am I here?" that's a brilliant question. I wish I had an equally interesting answer. Answering "why" is always hard for me. Sometimes I feel like I just do things without thinking of "why." Is it because after I graduated from college I did not know what to do? I want to help people? He told us to think of one moment that brought me here to this project. The internet is technically what brought me here, but that's a boring story of me sitting on the couch with my laptop frantically searching for the next step of my life. So I just came up with a story of volunteering before and how it made me want to help people, but that's not really an answer. And I don't think the "why" is very important to me right now because I'm here and I'm doing it.
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