Blog Post #3

I do my service learning at the Windlake Academy, working with a 6th grade class for 30 minutes and a 5th grade class for the next hour. I was a little nervous getting there the first time as I had my orientation at a different site. I really didn’t know the neighborhood that well and I was a little concerned about getting back to my next class on time. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing when I got there.

I observed a math lesson when I first got to Windlake. I enjoyed it and I actually had to remember some math that I did in elementary school when I helped some students. At 10:00 I helped out in a 5th grade classroom with reading. I ended up working with a small group of boys who had a very hard time focusing for more than 15 seconds. We were able to get through a few pages of a new book, as I attempted to make the book interesting for them. The kids that I worked with were some of the lowest readers between the two fifth grade classes, so that was a major challenge. I enjoyed the challenge and was able to be a good role model for these students.

The book that we were reading was about a teenager who had to shoot a bow and arrow and hit a target. When I asked my group of students why they thought he would have to hunt, they thought that it was because he was poor. They were connecting their experiences coming from a low income community and I realized how hard it is to leave some of the baggage that we face at home. In Warriors Don’t Cry Beals has a hard time facing the academic challenges because she has to deal with all of the attacks and harassment of the other students. It has to be difficult for these students to deal with all their problems going around them with the neighborhood that they are in.

When I first went into the class a lot of students wanted to know where I was from. I explained to them that I was from Marquette University and they thought that was the coolest thing. I hope that I will be a great role model for them and that maybe in the future there will be a few Marquette students out of that class. I absolutely enjoyed my time at Windlake and this experience may get me to reconsider my finance major or at least consider Teach for America.