What are your hopes for the service-learning project?
- I hope to gain a new insight on what it is really like to come to America and face all the challenges of starting a new life; the language, the fast paced life, and homesickness. I also want to make a lasting impact on my refugee family – I don’t just want to teach them a few words that they’ll soon forget for my grade, I want to find ways to help them learn and retain information in an interesting way.
What are your assumptions about your service-learning site?
- I don’t really have any assumptions about this project, I kind of feel like I am going in blind to be honest.
What do you
know/assume about the population they serve?
- I know that they are fleeing their country for a number of reasons, political and religious being the most common.
What
connections/interests/passions can you make to this project/population it
serves?
- I have always enjoyed being able to help others, and I also enjoy sharing things I have.
- Kelly
asked us to teach our refugee family how to play Uno, and some confusion
followed before they got the hang of it.
- Our
refugee family went in to this game with no knowledge of how to play. We did not share the same knowledge, so
we needed to figure out a way to explain the game to them based on the English
they already knew. I found that the most successful method was using nothing
but words and numbers that they had been practicing with us before the game
begun. I didn’t babble on and on about every rule, I started very simple and built up from
there. First I did colors, then added Wild Cards, then same numbers changing the color, and finally things like skip, reverse, and draw 2/4.
- I learned that teaching new things
should be as simplified as possible, and should build off of what they already
know or confusion will ensue.
