Friday, May 14, 2010

Final Project

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

bibliography

Images 1-8 taken on March 29, 2010

Images 9-18 taken on April 23, 2010

Samantha Hyde –“Beauty in Other Cultures”

final paper

Taking film 150, multicultural America, students were required to do volunteer work, or as the course called it, service learning. The students were assigned to an elementary school on the south side of Milwaukee called Escuela Vieau. With the south side of Milwaukee being predominately Latino, the students at the school were mostly all Latino as well. Growing up in a suburb of Milwaukee, I was never exposed to any other culture or race. The city I grew up in was predominately Caucasian with some of the population being of Asian decent and African American. So I was not familiar with the Latino culture and figured this would a great way to learn about their culture. Going to orientation was a little frightening; you hear stories from friends saying that I’m going to a bad neighborhood. When I walked up to the door it was locked and a fellow classmate helped me out by pointing out the doorbell you had to ring to get into the building, this just kind of justified what my friends were talking about, but after going to the neighborhood so often, I realized for myself that it was not the bad neighborhood that I hear about before and actually found out that the little suburban high school I went to installed a doorbell to gain access into the building as well. Anyways, after meeting the staff of the boys and girls club and Escuela Vieau I thought that this would be a very enjoyable experience. They were so warm and welcoming, just a trait of the Latino culture. Being assigned to sports and fitness I would play sports with the kids for about an hour and a half every Monday. The children always wanted to play soccer, which is probably one of the favorite sports of the Latino culture and I love playing soccer, I’ve played it all my life so it was fun to play again. I had a class that started on Mondays half way through the semester so I had to switch to tutoring on Fridays. I tutored Brian, a third grader at Escuela Vieau. Brian and I would usually work on math, science and his scholastic reader assignments. Brian did not like to do his homework; instead he liked to talk about his family and friends. Brian did well speaking English, but had trouble reading it. I tried to help him pronounce the letter and piece the word together. I hope he gained some knowledge from be because it was very rewarding to help him out and also learn about his culture and this whole experience helped me to expand my

Thursday, April 29, 2010

tutoring

Since I started a class halfway through the semester, my availability changed a lot. I used to be able to go in and to sports and recreation on Mondays from 4:30 – 6: o’clock, but since the class had started I’ve been going in on Fridays from 3:00-4:00 o’clock. So I know I tutor a young third grader named Brian. The subjects we usually work on are science, math, English and a scholastic reader. It is interesting to go back and see the things I used to learn as a child. The math especially because I’ve never been good at math and sometimes I have to stop and think about the problem for a second just to make sure I’m helping him the correct way. Usually its pretty standard math like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division so most of the time it is pretty easy to help him out. Science was another subject I was not great at, but was not awful. Most of the time we have to read a few pages and then answer questions about what we had just read. That’s also the same about the scholastic reader. We’ve had to read about volcanoes,tornadoes, and meteors then answer questions about the readings on the back of the magazine. Even though he wants to play more than work, we still get his homework done, and it’s a rewarding experience helping him learn.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

soccer and Fitness

After orientation, I was assigned to sports and fitness on Mondays. Sports and fitness was the first of my choices so I’m glad I got it. I’ve always been an athlete and enjoyed all kinds of sports so I knew I would have a fun time playing different sports with the kids and teaching them some things and maybe even learning a few things from them. The first day of service learning, myself and another student were suppose to report to the gym to start the sports and fitness with Ms. Jeanette. The first day the kids chose to play kickball, which was fun since I had not played kickball since I was in middle school. After the first day though, everyday I had done sports and fitness the kids had chosen to play soccer. Which was fine with me, soccer is and has been my favorite sport to play as well and I have played it since I was about six years old. Some kids chose to do other activities, but no matter what every day there was a group of kids who would play soccer, whether it be half of the gym or the full gym, either way the kids wanted to play. Also, one nice day outside, we took a younger group of kids out to the playground, which was fun since I haven't been down a slide or across monkey bars since I was a kid.

Service Learning Orientation

When I found out we had to do service learning for film 150 class, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I grew up in a mostly white suburb of Milwaukee, so I was never really exposed to diverse cultures throughout elementary school and high school. I was somewhat hesitant to continue to take the class, just because I had no idea when I would be able to actually show up and do the volunteer work since I go to school full time and work two jobs and we had to complete fifteen hours of community service. When I arrived at the site, Escuela Vieau school was where we would do our service learning, for orientation, fellow students and I met up in the cafeteria basement to meet the Escuela Vieau and Boys and Girls Club staff. I was relieved to find out that the staff was so welcoming and all very nice people. It was also very reassuring that they would work around the students schedules so that we would still be able to work and attend all classes. It was also nice of them to provide us with beverages and pizza while they conducted the orientation. I think this will be a very beneficial experience.