Social Justice Teach-In Reflection

I was really surprised about how well the Teach-In went for my workshop group.  We were pretty on track time wise and the workshop members were occupied most of the time.  After we brought them downstairs to Louise’s Kindergarten (this was the first workshop), the middle schoolers began to read to their small group of kids.  Fifteen minutes into that, Naomi and I realized that forty-five minutes of reading for both Kindergarteners and Middle Schools is A LOT.  So we decided to change things at the last minute.  We talked to Louise about what other activities we could do, drawing a picture about what happened in the book, or something else.  Louise told us that before we came in, the Kindergarteners were already working on their own paintings, so we had the workshop members do that.  Some might argue that painting, has absolutely nothing to do with illiteracy, but there is some relationship.  During our visits at LINC, only a little bit of time was spent reading.  Getting to know the child is also very important.  In order for the child to be more comfortable asking questions and being more engaged, they have to get to know the reader. During the second workshop, we gave middle schoolers about twenty minutes to read to Gina’s first graders and then we had them switch.  We had the first graders read to the 5th-7th graders.  It was really interesting to see that because all the kids had different reading levels.  Some of them were reading the most basic picture books, but then there were others who were already reading chapter books.  It made me think back to our social justice issue (illiteracy) and how many kids in the world weren’t reading at certain levels because they didn’t get read to enough at home.  Could the amount of reading at home affect a child’s reading level even right here at LREI?

Being a “teacher” for two hours wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be.  During all our social justice visits, Kyla, Naomi, Nora, and I had to work with kids that were really young and not so well behaved, so decently behaved 5th-7th graders were no big deal.  Plus, there were two teachers in the room the entire time.  However, it definitely wasn’t all easy.  At the end, when we asked workshop members to complete the reflections, two 5th graders were trying to be funny (it didn’t end up being funny at all) and wouldn’t write anything down.  For example, when we told them to write something, they would literally write the word “something.”  This went on for 10 whole minutes.  Now I understand that being a teacher can be really hard sometimes.

If I could change anything about both workshop sessions, I would make sure we introduced ourselves during the first one, and most importantly actually plan a back-up activity if people got tired of reading.  I liked the idea of the assemblies because it gave groups a chance to share what they were doing with the whole Middle School.  And as for suggestions to making the Teach-In better for the whole middle school next year, I’d suggest not doing that final reflection with the found poetry thing.  Many workshop members/leaders thought it kind of took away from the Teach-In.