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School
Is Fun When Learning Relates to You
By Hilario, Melissa
“Are you excited about making a book?” asked the sixteenth and fifteenth
graders
“YEAH!!!”
yelled the second graders
“Is
school fun?” asked the sixteenth and fifteenth graders
“YEAH!!!”
screamed the second graders
–
excerpts from our second visit to Ms. Son’s
2nd grade class at Wilton
Place,
November
6, 2001
“What’s your favorite subject in school?”
asked the peer advisor.
“I don’t know.
School is just okay. Kind of boring,” replied the sophomore.
–
excerpt from a peer advising session with
a Belmont High school student, November 6, 2001
Wilton Place Elementary School and Belmont High School are only a couple
of minutes away from each other.
The second graders and high school students I work with are
ages apart. I look at the
high school students I work with and their perceptions of school
and I wonder what will become of
Ms. Son’s second graders
when they enter high school, if they’ll carry the same enthusiasm
and excitement for school.
School is fun when
learning relates to you and you feel like what you’re learning is
valuable. I can relate to high school experience to those of the
Belmont student. In most of my classes, I felt
like I would never need to use the information I learned, nor could
I find a use for it in my life.
I kept this in mind for our Tuesday Team’s activity with
Ms. Son’s class. We gave
each student a numbered strip of construction paper to build a chain
link with. The link had to
be arranged in numerical order so students had to work with their
classmates. Afterwards we talked about what the chain represented.
Students said it was “like a rainbow” and they had to use
“teamwork” to build it. Everytime I see that
chain, I will remember how they worked to help the students who
did not speak English to contribute to the chain and their pride
after they had finished.
From that visit I learned
the importance of making our tour, reception, and booklet creating
process relevant and fun. Our
memories of our short time with each other can make impacts on how
we will regard our education in the future.
It
is also important for us to realize our roles as mentors for the
second graders. They make
keen observations and it is important that we carry ourselves in
positive ways when we interact with them, whether it be
on their campus or our campus.
My
goal for next week’s breakout is to facilitate teamwork by listening
to each other. Students get
very excited about sharing their stories and oftentimes they interrupt
each other. The dynamics need to change. The students direct their stories to me, not
with each other. I will ask
the students what they learned from their classmates
stories or their opinions about their stories.
Hopefully, this will lead to more collective interaction. |