Peter Paul: Day Five

DAY FIVE

Wednesday / March 21, 2012

I woke up this morning exhausted, but ready for yet another day of hard work. It was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed day, with the fog slightly billowing over the ground and the morning mist gently caressing our skins as we went on our way to Glen Lea Elementary School at 9:00 A.M. When I arrived at the school, I signed in, as usual, and headed into the classroom that I would be helping that day.

Today I was assigned to help Mrs. Carrigan, a first grade teacher at the school, with her class. The size of the new bunch was similar to the class I worked with yesterday of around 18 students. When I first arrived, I was told that they actually just started Physical Education with Coach T, so I mosied my way over to the recreation building where this was taking place. As I stepped foot into the room, the kids were playing a game called the “Clock Game” where the music would play and the kid would match the position of what the song said to the floor mat that they were standing on. The game was relatively simple, but the kids were just too wild to be controlled. Coach T, who was taking care of all the kids on his own, approached me and spoke of how there is little exercise time for these kids with kindergarten to first grades only attending once a week and second through fifth meeting twice. He also told me of how there are requirements such as running the mile, pushups, and many other physical tasks to be completed. While this is true, he also spoke of how every kid, no matter what, got an “S” for satisfactory. In a way, it was a class just to bypass the time and wasn’t really being taken seriously by the school system. I believe that many schools view physical education in this way and even in a broader scope, view education in general as an easy task just to let kids get through without actually challenging them and allowing the kids to foster their growth in knowledge.

After P.E., we returned back to the classroom where Mrs. Carrigan gave me papers to sort, objects to cut out, and things to pass out to the kids. After I got these simple tasks completed, I was able to help the kids during their homework time and walked around to help wherever I was needed. Mrs. Carrigan taught them the importance of contractions, as well as the different vowel sounds. She did this by playing many various games with the kids, which I believe is a useful tool to gaining their attention to aid remembrance of key terms. During the vowel game, she whispered to me that a certain group of kids were her “slower” kids. As I watched I noticed how evident it was as I saw how they responded to the words and how difficult it was for them. She even told me how one student is already going to be held back from the first grade. It was extremely disappointing to hear that, but at the same time it is completely understandable. I think more time needs to be placed into each individual kid, by breaking them up into smaller classes. I think this is the main problem with why children can’t actively learn, since they are constantly getting distracted by their peers with the teachers being limited.

 

After we got done at Glen Lea, we then took a brief break to visit the St. John’s Church, which is near the Peter Paul Development Center.  St. John’s Church is well known for being the place where the famous speech “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” was presented by Patrick Henry in 1775. It was cool to see a piece of history that I only read about in textbooks and how it has impacted America and most importantly the city of Richmond.

Not long after this, we went back to Peter Paul. Dominic, who I had helped on Monday, was back again for today and I helped him do his math assignment covering arithmetic and geometric sequence orders. Following this, we went to the garden and helped dig up the different plants and vegetables that were not growing correctly. It was amazing to see how quickly time flew by when we were working in the garden and it was an absolute blast getting to hang with Dominic and do something hands-on work with him.

Soon after, we went back to St. Stephen’s and they provided us a lovely meal. They made spaghetti pie, which I had never heard of before, but let me tell you that it was absolutely delicious! We also were able to talk to a few of the different church members about our experiences so far and about what Alternative Breaks is. It was great to see so many smiling faces and people that support what we are trying to do. Just simple things like a “good job” from the pastor and the smiling faces from the kids are the reason I get up each morning. It really keeps me in perspective and allows me to see that what I am doing is really making a difference, even if it is small. I truly have had an amazing experience so far and I’m excited for the next two days that I have left.