EDG 4410 Service Learning - Rachel Gray

Yesterday (October 5, 2007) I did Junior Achievement. I was nervous on what to expect. Several students in my class had expressed bad experiences with the JA volunteering. I had gone through the JA packet to prepare and saw that we were suppose to be coordinating with the teacher prior to the presentation. I made initial contact with my teacher just to introduce myself and get a little information about the class. The teacher informed me that she was not to familiar with JA in a day (as they call it) and that she looked forward to seeing me on Friday. Well you can imagine that I basically took that as brush off, especially since my classmates had not so good experiences. I contacted her two more times to finalize what I needed to do but I did not ask her to do anything.

Friday came and I went to class. The teacher welcomed me and to my surprise was already impressed with the fact that I had contacted her. It turns out that a lot of the teachers hadn't even heard from their JA person and didn't know who was coming. Unfortunately, I found out later that some didn't even show up. So what I thought was initial brush off was actually just her not being use to being contacted. My session went well. We did two activities before they left for specials. The teacher was impressed and asked if I was going to graduate soon because there was a job opening. I was very flattered. The second half of the day went good but not as well. I think because it was a lot of information to do in one day. I would suggest anyone doing JA in a day should plan something to give a boost to the afternoon activities. My class was well behaved under the circumstances.

The teacher initially said the class was good but chatty. She had broken them down into small rows which seemed to help. I noticed that when I stood in the middle of the room I would loose a few to side conversations but if I stood at the front of the room I had their full attention. I did have one student that had attention problems. The teacher cautioned me about her and said that she would assist. Overall, the student stayed with me. She didn't participate as much in the activities but I tried to bring her in when possible. This was a great experience for me. I was there the entire day. I ended my lessons about 1:45 and stayed the rest of the day to observe the class and looked through lesson plans. I also went to recess with them.

I felt overall that the school supported the program. They even provided lunch for us. I did hear one or two teachers say something that could be taken slightly negative but overall everyone was very accomodating. My teacher was excellent. She was so great, I went to Wal-Mart when I left school so I could buy her class a new mechanical pencil sharpener because theirs is about gone.

Here's to (hopefully) many more positive experiences!