Brandy Barnett

Service Date and Time: October 19, 2007 8:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
I stayed the whole day today but, I am only going to count three of the hours towards this service project. I wanted to see what an entire day was like versus just “popcorning” in for the same two hours each week on Fridays. Same routine: spelling test, and library. This is what I normally witness on my visits. After the library I usually leave. Today became much more interesting.
Today took on a new approach. The teacher told me that she did not have any work for me to do with the students specifically and that she wanted me to be able to observe the classroom. I thought that was a great idea. Today she said would be a little less instructional because the children would be having a fire drill, library time, a visit to see a fire truck, computer lab, and music special. So today was filled with a lot of transitions. I really enjoyed watching her morning routine. Normally I am working with one or two children so I miss what the class is doing at the time. In the morning she has them sitting in the front of the classroom in a large group. She goes over what the day it is, what day it was yesterday, a student checks the weather outside, and another student tells what shape comes next in the pattern on the calendar. They go over descriptive words, frequency words, money, phonics, and sing a song. All this is done in a time span of 15-20 minutes daily. It is very interactive. She calls on students for each of the activities. A boy has a turn then has to choose a girl, and vise versa. She explained that if that rule wasn’t in place the other gender wouldn’t get a turn. One of the children kept misbehaving during group time and he had to go back to his seat. I felt bad for him. He was moved after he had already put his name under the “sad face” on the board. She read to them a class book that she had bound for them of a previous activity that they had done. It was a worksheet displaying each child’s pumpkin face they had created. The kids lit up when they saw the book. They love to view themselves as authors and illustrators. The class has made five books so far. I noticed during the course of the day that during independent time she played music on a cd player and the kids would sing along. I observed that she gave out 3 worksheets today. One was on vowel sounds, one on what is safe and not safe to play with (in correlation to fire safety), and one about math. If today was so busy with transitions I wonder how many she normally gives out. One of my favorite times of the day was when we came back from the library and I read to them “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus”. They absolutely loved that book. Of course they all participated. It is a great read aloud. I had learned about it from Gina’s author presentation. (Thanks Gina). It had went so well that they were all begging me to read aloud their library books that they had just checked out. Secretly I wished that I could have. I love reading books to the kids. My second favorite part of the day was when the teacher and I went to go pick up the students from music class. The music teacher had four students singing karaoke and the other students were dancing. The teacher and I observed for awhile. The kids were just having so much fun, laughing and dancing. How I wish their whole day could be that much fun. During the second song four more students volunteered to sing while others dance. It was in that moment that I remembered what the author Mem Fox said, “Teachers need to let their students see them as human too with real feelings and real emotions”. I disregarded all inhibitions I had of looking stupid and silly and got out their and danced with the kids. I didn’t care what my service learning teacher or the music teacher thought, well maybe I did a little. But the look of surprise and excitement on those kids face was simply priceless. Some may say that it’s dangerous to cross that line, “be like them and you’ll lose your authority”. Maybe I will… or maybe they will respect me more because I take the time to enjoy what they enjoy, share in their laughter. I truly believe that you don’t always have to be in front to lead a child. I think you can also lead sometimes just walking with them side by side.