Teaching the ABC's

In my field experience I was able to work with two students that were behind the rest of the class. My first was a boy who started school school very early because his mother did not want to have three children at home all day so she fought to put him in kindergarten. The problem is he was not ready to be in school all day and did not have the skill the other students did. I could tell that he was younger because he was very clingy and wanted to be attached to me all the time. My other student was a girl who moved from Alabama. She had no since of anything that was going on because she has a language barrier. Her mother speaks a form of Guatemalan but it is not Spanish and can not communicate with anyone at the school. We have tried to test the girl in Spanish, but she did worse than in English. Twice a week I would take both of these students out for an hour and a half. During this time we would go over our alphabet. After about four weeks my little guy was really getting the hang of recognizing his letter but the girl was not. I could show her the same letter right after another and she would say a different letter each time. I could not relate the alphabet to anything she knew. At the end of the semester the boy could recognize each letter and its sounds. My little girl on the other hand never got her letters, some of them she did get but others never happened. It was rewarding working with these kids.

Power Down Day

My power down day was a funny experience. The first part was finding out what day to try this experiment out on. I pick 24 hours that started on Friday February 11 after class and went until Saturday 12. The first part of the night was not that bad. I have choir practice and went to a comedian and did not miss my phone one bit. The problem stated when I was in my room and had nothing to do. At first my roommate and I were just talking which became deep and fun. It was good being able to talk to someone without having a text message come up and ruin the conversation. It felt more real and genuine in that since. After our conversation I had nothing to do so I just went to bed. I slept all night and most of the morning. When I woke up I went to lunch with my friends that I found once I got there. They had wondered where I was all night and day because they couldn’t find me. After lunch I just slept until my time was over. When I finally checked my phone I have 22 text messages, 10 missed calls, and 15 Facebook notifications. The experience was a memorable one and one I would not like to do again.