Beneficial Chaos

02.25.08
As I was walking into the school, I figured that the day would be a normal day of working with younger kids. I volunteered at an elementary school, teaching advanced math to first graders, so I thought that this would be easy because the students were older and more mature. In some cases I was wrong. My first group of students was awesome. They took the camera and led us, me and my two partners, on an actual tour of their school. They would not stop talking about certain areas they liked and disliked about the school. It was incredible to see how their though process was and how they loved their school so much. We had no problem getting them to stay focused and take pictures. In fact, it was hard for us to keep up with the students around the school. Once our first session was over, I figured that the rest of the day would be just as easy and actually fun.
The next two groups were vastly different than the first. All the students that participated in all sessions were good students, it just so happens to be that the second and third batch of kids were a lot to handle. The second group was very shy about the activity. It was hard to get them to explain why certain things were their favorite. They were interested in the activity, but were not as enthusiastic as the first group. The third session turned out to be the hardest. It was extremely difficult to keep the kids on topic and focused on the activity. The hardest part about this third set of kids was that they were mostly all Spanish speaking and my partner and I did not have a clue on what they were saying. They new English but because they were with their friends, they mostly spoke Spanish. Once that group went outside, it was chaos. Although this group was very rambunctious, it made me realize one very important thing: we are here for them. We are not there just because it is an assignment that our teacher signed us up for. We are there to help them grow and gain knowledge. It is a privilege that we get to actually get to go and hangout and teach middle school kids about sustainable design. We must not forget that they need to have fun while doing these activities; otherwise there will be no learning.
I thought that the photo activity was a success for the most part. It was good to have a soft opening of the activity before we implement it into the after school program. I feel that we need to make the activity more individual based. For example, we should let each student have a turn with the camera to narrate their journey to their favorite/least favorite spot on their campus. I also need to learn more from what they are saying and base questions on their comments to engage them into putting more thought into their places and pictures.

Steinmark