Support Services Reflection

My experiences at two different GISD campuses, Steadham and Pearson, this year have been distinctly different. At Pearson we were treated with the utmost respect by Dr. DeVantier and her staff. The assistant principal, counselor, diagnostician, and teachers worked diligently to resolve all issues and to provide top notch services. However, the opposite was true at Steadham. Ms. Culpepper was not only of no help whatsoever, but actually exacerbated the student’s problems and was dismissive and rude to parents. Perhaps if she and her staff had exhibited the same degree of professionalism as the other campus this issue would have been solved long ago.

I teach first grade at Lowe Elementary School; my class is made up of twenty-four very diverse seven year-olds; they come from all over the city of Louisville, from a variety of socio-economic situations. Each student brings a unique personality to our classroom community, and they all work hard to become “smarter and smarter” and to “go to college”. Thirteen students are boys and eleven are girls. Of these twenty-four students, three of them are English Language Learners. Additionally, eight students receive tier two interventions and two receive tier three interventions in reading. In math, five students are tier two and four are tier three. I also teach one student who receives ECE services for a developmental delay. Within my class there is a wide achievement gap.

Currently, I am student teaching at Alfred E. Zampella PS #27 School in the district of Jersey City. The school is located in a busy city, next to John F. Kennedy St. which is especially busy in the morning and during rush hour. This results in several late students on a day to day basis. On the other hand, this school is also highly accessible and as a little over a thousand students. The school has grade levels from kindergarten to 8th grade, and has a mix of general, special, and inclusion education classrooms. Typically, families that enroll their students into this school are of lower-middle socio-economic class, and tend to be majority Hispanic, Indian, and African American, with few Caucasians and Asians. This school provides a variety of special programs for their ESL students and special need students. Students may be offered speech language pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, ESL programs, reading recovery, and counseling.

I interviewed several service providers in my school, Stephen Knight Center for Early Education, that included the psychologist, special education teacher and a general education teacher. I interviewed Ms. Iris, the school psychologist, Ms. Kathy, the special education teacher, and Ms. Hilary, a general education teacher. Ms. Iris’ responsibilities include working with students who have social emotional needs. This can include behavior challenges, learning new social skills, managing grief, etc. She works directly with parents and teachers to provide resources regarding the child’s well-being, and ensure good attendance by setting up plans. Ms. Iris works with children in general education, counseling groups, and one-on-one situations, including special education minutes. Ms. Hilary is a general education classroom teacher. She is responsible for the well-being of her students academically, socially, physically and developmentally. Ms. Hilary also advocates for families and students to receive the support that they need to feel successful in their first years of school. Finally, Ms. Kathy is the staffing

The recent Great Recession has caused many lower and middle income families to have problems with their children graduating and having academic achievement. More funding is going towards academic achievement in lower income schools rather than dividing it up among extracurricular activities like clubs, art programs, and all athletic programs. With more and more pressure going towards test scores and graduation rates, athletic funding is dwindling at rates higher than ever seen before as the funding is going towards improvement in the classroom (“Elliot”). Extracurriculars are beneficial to the student as they keep them out of trouble and students are able to form new friendships while demonstrating their passion or ability (“Smith”).

1). How do you believe service learning (SL) is utilized as a tool for fostering civic engagement?

Throughout the day working with each student I noticed myself stressing quality service with their patients, therefore the leadership principal I utilized in my role as team leader was “Build a Culture around Service.” Every patient has different needs and those needs should be addressed through the care we provide as student nurses. Our service applies not only to the patient, but to the patient’s family and friends who are there visiting too. Working with the students I tried to stress how important the little things are. For example, one patient was tired of being in bed and she wanted to look out the window at the snow falling. Together with another student we got her out of bed and extended her oxygen, IV lines, and pulse oximeter as far

For my Community Service Learning placement, I am volunteering for PAAL, which is a program for children and youth with physical and intellectual impairments. Their vision is to offer individuals who otherwise may not get the chance, an opportunity to participate in a wide variety of physical activities.

As kids get into high school, most parents hope that their kids will join some kind of club or team. A question parents might ask is, “How involved should kids be in extracurricular activities or should they even be involved at all?” Extracurricular activities can be both advantageous and unpromising depending on what the student plans on participating in and also how many activities the student plans participating in. Many studies have been conducted trying to find the answer to those questions.

I found that the materials presented in this course definitely helped to connect with my service learning project. When I first read about this course, I thought it was going to be a difficult task to relate the coursework and the 20 hours of service time to a final paper. However, once I started doing my hours of work, it was almost eerie how the course material was spot on. In addition, if I did view something that was different from the course material, it would motivate me to research the topic further. I really enjoyed the hands on approach to this course. I am a visual learner, so having readings, power point presentations, videos and then conducting the service hours was very beneficial for me.

In my pre service learning reflection I talked about that when I go to my service learning classroom I want to be invited with open arms and be included into the classroom. This was very important for me because I know that it is hard to include someone new into your classroom. When I actually went to my service learning class I was welcomed by the teachers and by the students. I became a very helping hand because I was included in teaching lesson and helping get the students to use their words when they wanted something. I also became very close with not only my mentor teacher but also with her aids. I felt so loved and happy to be in my service learning classroom. I remember om my last day that they asked me are you going to miss us and would

I evaluated the patient care practices and effects of WNY Center for Survivors of Torture. My responsibilities included developing a hypothesis, establishing a data collection protocol, conducting in depth interviews, and analyzing collected data. I was supervised by Dr. Kim Griswold Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Psychiatry, and Public Health & Health Professions, at JSMBS. I helped prepare an oral presentation in July 2015 for the Primary Care Summer Research Program Mini Research Conference at UB. We submitted a full-length manuscript which is currently under review for

One example of how I grew as an ESOL educator was through another professional development provided by another of the refugee resettlement agencies. The topic of the in-service was story telling, and letting the students using their stories as venues to not only develop their English proficiency, but for them to feel at ease when completing writing assignments. The story telling topic was interesting and gave me diverse ideas of ways I could incorporate the topic in my lessons. However, the best part of the training was when a former student of the school use his own life story to explain to us the diverse things he had done since he came to the country to now that he is a student in Georgia State University, while working in television/movies

Though many students, and even their parents, view participation in extracurricular activities as a waste of time, many important life skills can be learned through being involved with clubs and organizations outside of school. For example, the Butler County High School Science Club offers many special opportunities to its members. For those interested in teaching, the science club offers a Super Saturday outreach event that allows high school students to plan the event and curriculum, then teach third through eighth grade students various science topics that are not covered normally in science classrooms. For those interested in engineering and rocketry, the science club offers Rocket Team, a student-led model-rocket building team that competes

We accomplished this by using a classroom that had the student’s seating arranged by their zip codes at each school, then using an odd/even count 1 to 15 in one high school, then 1 to 15 at the second high school (Even Group A, Odd Group B). While the students who were assigned to the study’s Group A could participate in the program’s in-school activities: workshops and field trips, over the next four-years, they would not have access to Community Partner resources, and no longer be eligible to participate or have accesses to any summer services in the program.31-32 They could, however, seek out some other types of the school district academic service programs or summer job employment. Thus, via this 4-year program design, both groups were exposed to: