Franklin Elementary School:
I have actually had the opportunity to work at this school for 2 years now as an instructional assistant. I am not surprised by the info I found online about Franklin. The school is quaint and old and the surrounding neighborhood is mostly low income housing and older housing developments. This in turn has given us a student populace that is highly affected by poverty, malnourishment, and language barriers. 85% of our students come from low income families. More than half of our students are Hispanic and many of them do not speak English very well. This creates a certain amount of challenges but I have found it more rewarding. As you can tell in our 4 out of 5 star rating by our parents and students we are a school that tries our best to help these children. We have a relatively low student to teacher ratio (20:1) comparatively to the state average (23:1). This allows us to try our best to work with the kids one on one and really assess the issues we are facing. Our low income students are below average in their test scores but we have a lot to compete with and they are just barely below average. I think this school is great to do my service learning at not because I am comfortable with it, but because it presents me with new challenges every day and the teachers are very innovative in their efforts to better these children's lives. I am learning valuable strategies at this school for my future teaching career.
My understanding of service learning is providing my time and services to better understand teachers and students and their roles in my chosen field. I am taking time out of my regular job here to really apply my skills and relate them to teaching practices that I observe. I hope to learn and experience even more than I have already. I also hope to view the different ways the teachers incorporate the tech we have at the school more closely. I do not have that opportunity as much as I would like to. This will give me field experience in the lessons we just learned. But from what I have seen it does make an improvement for the children. The kids I am working with will be a challenge and watching the different ways the teachers face these challenges will be valuable. Despite the difficulty of the task of getting these kids up to curriculum standards, and the seeming insurmountable odds against us with these children's backgrounds, I think I will truly learn how to make a difference in even the most hopeless of student's lives. Plus, even after completing my 20 hours outside of my job, I will get to go back and help these children that I have observed and worked with even more.
