Learn and Serve Nov 3

I felt that this Learn and Serve was not a very productive one for me in dealing with my content area. Being in a resource room, you have different kids coming each day and they bring different work with them each time so the chance of getting a student who needs math help is very high. The teacher does try to tell them that on Tuesdays they need to bring math but somedays there is just no students who need help. Welcome Today!! There were no students who needed my help in the two hours that i was there so the teacher had me orghanize and create a binder full of all her attendance sheets. I had to fill out a sheet for each student with theri name, student ID number, parents name, home phone number grade, teacher name, classroom number and extension. For all 25 students she has throughout the day! What a bore. I then had to go through attendance sheets and record what days each student was absent and then the teacher will go back in and record exactly why they were absent.

Learn and Serve Oct 27

This Learn and Serve was a great experience for me in my content area. I had a chance to actually work with some students that actaully needed help in Math. I had one student who was new tp the resource room and she really grasped the ideas that i was telling her. It was so rewarding to hear her say how much more she understood the way i explained it than when the teacher explained it. I was so happy i could help her. I also helped a student out with his test that he needed to take. i sat with him and helped him out through some little knots that he came across and voerall he seemed to do quite well with the test. i felt really well when i left this placement today and like i had really accomplished something and really helped out these students and there lives! It was such a rewarding experience to feel!

Learn and Serve Oct 20

Today i was very reluctant to get up and go to Learn and Serve. Just had no ambition and im sure we all know the feeling quite well. When i got there i was very upset to find out that Mrs. Mauro was out sick and there was a substitute teacher. ughhh talk about upsetting lol. But anyways i stayed so that i could get my hours in and not be behind. The sub did give me an option to leave but i decided on my best judgement to stay since i had already gotten up and driven that far. I really had nothing really to do seeing as how the teacher had no clue what was going on. I helped a few students here and there and basically that was my day! Pretty easy and i got my two hours that i needed in!!!

second week of learn and serve oct 13

This week instead of being scared of what to expect i was really excited to go and see what new students to work with. When i got there, she was shocked to see me becasue of the fact that it was columbus day weekend and i had no schoo0l! she was very impressed that i had come! :)This week Patrick was again there and trying to get out of doing all his work and Mrs. MAuro had to keep him on track. She said that they had finally had a meeting with the school and have actually enrolled him in some normal classes and that he isnt with her all day anymore in the resource room. She said that he is in an art class that he loves and that he is also in some sort of acting class which he is doing awesome in! this was suc great news for him. Again i worked with him with some of his math and with another girl named Danielle. She is such a gorgeous youung promising girl who has so much potential! she is in 11th grade and was working on trigonometry...my favorite math of all! we worked on some problems together and really hit the ground running on her assingment! after some much needed explanation, she really understood it and was just completely overjoyed! Mrs. Mauro also had me work with a stident named elias toward the end of my time. he had a test that he had missed bnecuase of being absent and she wanted me to just sit and observe what he was having trouble with andd try my best to help him out. He is technically an 11th grader as well but he knew none of the basic math skills at all. He finally gave up and told the resource teacher that he was not ready and needed to study more and i told her what i had observed about his math skills. We will see what happens with him next week!

http://www.math.com/

First Day of learn and serve!

Today was my first day of learn adn serve and ive got to say that i was suppppper nervous!! i have been placed at Niagara Falls High School before and i liked the teacher i was with but i didnt relaly like the atmospherer of the school itself. Going in for my frist day i was expecting that it was going to be really crazy, especially since i was in a resource room that was for all the special education students. The teacher that i was assigned with is named Mrs. Mauro. She was over and above so nice to me and made me feel so comfortable in her room! i absolutly loved every minute i was there and it flew by so fast. In this room she had about 3-4 kids in there at a time. One of the boys that was there was named Patrick and he was a ninth grader which she said that the school didnt know what to do with him so they just put her in her classroom for the day! he seemed like a very sweet boy but has a lot of difficulties. He has ADD and OCD and a lot of other challenges that my pkacement teacher did not tell me about. His mother also has IDD and is not really apart of his life when it comes to schooling. I got the oppurtunity to help him out with geometry assignment and get him through the class assignment that he had missed. He retained the knowledge really well but just had a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. This is a really fun placement and i reallly look forward going back next week. My teacher is a sweetheart and is so much fun to be around. She introduces me to the students as a "math specialist"lol. It made me laugh but it also made the kids really respect me and think that i knew everthing! lol this will be a really fun placement and i look forward to going back next week!

http://www.nfschools.net/nfschools/site/default.asp

today in class weee

Today in class we got to interact with the adults from oppurttunities unlimited. WE took them around campus and took pictures that represent good and bad work habits to have. Once we did that we came back to calss and did different stations. We had one station where wefilled oput a form about different level of intelligences. WE also had a station to build a fort and one that we played with play-doh. We also had a station that we wrote a story as well. I personally did not get to that station. i feel that we did this because each station had a differnet intellegent. The building the fort was something that was more bodily and makes you get up and move around. The play-doh station was a good one to try to look into your self and try to make a model of something that represents me. The intelegence station helped you to maybe realize what inteleggences that you may be stronger or weaker in. I dont know what we were supposed to do in the story center but im pretty sure it was a way to try to show things through writing and storytelling.
i had a great time during this experience. It was great to be able to interact with these people because a lot of us have not had a lot of interaction with adults who have special needs. At first i was a little reluctant to participate but my group all felt very comfortable which in turn made me feel inturn secure. We were partnered up with Melissa who was extremely quiet. She hard;ly talked at all but we kept on her trying to make her feel more comfortbale and wanting to interact with us a lot more.