TFA Chicago Day 6 (last day)

On the last day of school (Friday), when I arrived at the school, I was already feeling pretty sad because I had just started to really know the students. They would confide in my with their opinions on the teachers and look forward to working with me. They seemingly had an unlimited amount of questions about not only college life but also my home life since I didn't live in Chicago. Apparently, they didn't really even know many people outside of their neighborhood and teachers. When I told them about Kansas, they immediately thought of the Wizard of Oz and basketball. As a farewell gift, I personally handed every one of them a Jayhawk sticker. I honestly thought 12 year olds were too old to even want stickers but they were so excited to have them! Some of them immediately put them on their binders and backpacks so hopefully we were able to create some future Jayhawks!
We played the jeopardy game I had personally designed and made. It was really funny seeing how competitive the students were, because they really liked playing games rather than just studying straight out of the book. They cheered and gave each other high fives when their team won. On the other hand, they also showed lots of sportsmanship as they clapped whenever another team got the right answer.
When I was working with students on memorizing the constitution, the main technique I was focusing on was breaking down the complicated wording into much easier phrases. When they were studying on their own, they were easily bogged down by the unique and old style of writing used back then. I helped them use smaller words to paraphrase the amendments into simple phrases.
At the end of the day, the teachers could not stop thanking us on how much work we had done. They were really appreciative of the time we were able to spend with smaller groups. By simply being there and interacting with the students had the strongest impact on me. I learned so much about their lives and how drastically different their childhoods were from anything I had grown up with made me become more aware of my very fortunate circumstances. Even though ultimately we as a group did not make a huge impact on the schools in Chicago, I think that if we just convinced even one student to go to college, I consider that a victory.