In Pursuit

 This week I hit my 20 hour mark in my service learning. I have been having an... interesting time, but with finals coming up Im not sure I will schedule any additional days. Looking back at the few different classrooms I've sat in, it is based on my assumption that the largest area of diversity in the Jr High in general is a very large Latino student population. Almost every day before class starts the conversations I overhear tend to be in Spanish. I think it is difficult to teach math in a... diverse way. There are some things I've noticed that I assume just to be their teaching styles, but in hindsight may be ways to cater to a diverse classroom. For one thing, every single math teacher I've sat in does demonstrates problems via a projector. This could allow students that don't speak as much English still able to follow along and learn by example. Another interesting accommodation I noticed had nothing to do with language diversity, but in my opinion was still the t...

This week was definitely... eye opening as far as my service learning goes. I did that big project I mentioned in my last couple posts. Basically every math student at Lakeridge had to take this math test for the district and then I had to transfer their answers to a bubble sheet. I think I filled in thousands of bubbles over two days of volunteering and I would NOT call it fun. I enjoyed being able to do that for the teacher though. Because the process was so long, I was there for a lot longer time. I got to sit in on a few classes I hadn't met before and the unique students that came with them.  Because of that, I got to see something that sort of tied back to our classroom learning. In one of the teachers last periods of the day, her class is (based on my assumptions) predominantly lower income. I asked the teacher what kind of challenges that posed and what she had to do to address them. She told me one of the biggest problems is that the district is moving more and more to hom...

This week was a little out of the ordinary for my service learning again. I will be helping the entire math department at Lakeridge with a big student project next week that I've been told involves filling in hundreds of bubble sheets. I'm excited to help those teachers out with the busywork, but in the meantime I cut back on my hours there since I will be spending so much time next week. That being said, I will have to go off previous week's experiences.  I have exclusively been volunteering with math teachers for my service learning. When one teacher doesn't have anything for me to do, they offer me up to the rest of their department. This wasn't exactly planned, It was just who was willing to have me. Math, in my opinions, is a very hard subject to use engaged learning in. Especially at the higher levels. In fact, the teachers I have been working with told me that "Engaging students in math" is their district focus this school year. In texts shared with...