My senior project is working at E-Prep, a charter school in Cleveland. Today wasn't exactly how I thought it'd be. I began the day at 7:30 am (BLAHHHHHH.) I was assigned to do some office work, which was boring and consisted of cutting out construction paper with some 60 year-old man (he was volunteering for the morning) to use as teacher appreciation water bottle labels. We had nothing in common, and as a result, nothing to talk about, so it was fairly lame. Then, I walked cupcakes and cookies around to different teachers for teacher appreciation. It was kind of annoying and I felt unproductive, but I got a cookie out of it, so whatever, I guess. Then, finally we started getting productive at 1 pm, when I learned how to do DRA testing with the kids. DRA testing stands for Developmental Reading Assessment. In these assessments, first graders read simple picture books, and we count how many words they pronounced wrong, couldn't pronounce, etc. When a student moves up a level, they get really excited and it's pretty adorable, so that was fun to watch. I attached a picture of me doing DRA testing with a student. I'm hoping I'll get to work more hands on with the students as time goes on, because I feel that's most rewarding.
Awwwww the pic is so cute! I mean you got a cookie out of it so that makes it all worth it right? hahahah MISS YOU
ReplyDeleteI have no idea if this is true or not, but i have this feeling that lots of seniors will get less meaningful work to do at the beginning of project, just because people might underestimate us since we're high school students. But hopefully once they see that you're invested and that you have a lot to offer they'll give you more hands-on things to do!
ReplyDeleteI used to work at the JCC's after school care project and I had a similar experience at the beginning of the year there. It felt like I wasn't really doing anything interesting or making a difference. But I second Moriah - I'm sure in time you'll get to really connect with the kids and do some meaningful work. In my experience, it just took some time to connect with both the kids and main teachers, but once I did it was a great experience.
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