Khane and Wertheimer: extended comments

  For this piece, I used Mary Abby's post as the center of mine. 
I like how she used her personal experience to expand on the main ideas of the reading. The purpose of the reading is to provide students with a way to experience more then just teaching. They get to, as Mary Abby says, see how students who are less fortunate than themselves learn in a schooling environment that is in a poor neighborhood. 
  Mary Abby brought up the section about how some students were nervous about going into a school in poor neighborhood because of the "'rude, tough, noisy and very unfriendly' as well as 'mean, gang-related blacks'" stereotypes they have in their heads. 
These students changed their views after actually being with the students and working with them one-on-one. 
  I teach CCD to a fourth grade class. My service learning class is also a fourth grade from Providence, RI. My classrooms are extremely different! In my CCD class, they are predominantly white students who come from either Seekonk (Massachusetts) schools or Rehoboth (Massachusetts) schools both of which are better off communities. In my service learning class, the students are predominately hispanic and most need free or reduced lunch. It's very humbling working in my service learning class. The kids are so different then the kids I teach in CCD. Ive taught CCD for 3 years. It is strictly volunteer and I started off doing it for community service hours in high school. That was 3 years ago. 
  I love teaching. As a testament as to why I continued teaching, my first year, I had one student who didn't like to read. He was very shy and when he did read, he struggled with almost every word. I did't force him to read but I encouraged him and helped him with the words he was struggling with. He started to read more and more. By the end of the year, he didn't want to stop reading. He actually said to me that he didn't want to stop reading because he wasn't shy anymore. I almost started crying because it made me so happy.
Teaching CCD has done more for me then I think it did for the kids. 
  In my service learning class, the students have showed so much will to learn and want to learn. They all want to read and volunteer answers, and none are afraid to ask questions. I can not wait to see what these kids teach me the rest of the year! 
  Now, back to the reading and Mary Abby's post. I myself, have watched World's strictest parents and after seeing her make the connection, I made the connection myself. Like Mary Abby said, it is a different situation but the lesson is the same. Kids from different "cultures" are experiencing first hand the "cultures" of those less fortunate then themselves.
  It is more then just a way to humble kids. It is a way to get kids thinking. To get them to see and although, seeing is not always believing, in this case it is. The more these service learning experience's are provided to kids, the more knowledge they gain about groups of people who are different than them. Thus helping to educate people so that their may one day be less stereotypes about poor neighborhoods and their bad reps.