Well, I think my class for the Teach-In went well.  It was good for what we had to work with and I am satisfied with the results.  Most of the students were entertained by the activity and seemed to learn a lot from out power point/movie in the beginning.  Some students seemed very enthusiastic, one group of four even managed to make 60 pencils!  Another element that seemed to go well was the quiz in the beginning.  The students were asked to fill out a simple quiz without pencils.  It was effective in showing them how children in schools with little supplies must feel and also really jump started the whole lesson.  It was interesting being a teacher for a while, much better than some lessons we taught in science.  One child was particularly difficult but with the help of our supervising teacher we solved the problem quickly and efficiently.  I think it would have been better if we had less people to teach though because some people did not speak much while others like me were forced to take the initiative.

If I were able to do it over I would have had less people in my group which had been a big problem during the creation of the lesson and the presentation.  Also I might have added the logo or website of Getting Tools to City Schools somewhere on the pencils because  the message and way to help might be clearer.  Not speaking strictly about not what I could have done differently but more about he structure of the project I think it would have made a huge difference if each student wrote a separate and different from the other members in the group and then the teacher would select one after edits were made to be used as the class.  Also if this all happened before the actual teach-in started it would be less stress full and actually be a proposal.  The last thing I think we could have improved was our presentation.  If we had time to run through the whole presentation a second time the day before the teach in we could have made some last minute changes and been better rehearsed.

What really stuck with me after the project is that to some of these kids school is there only hope.  It is all they have.

Well the best par of my set up group is we actually managed to finish.  I was assigned the PSA slide show and at one point it seemed like nothing was going to work.  But then out of no where one of my classmates finished the whole thing (Thank You Nora).  For next year smaller groups, better background checks on the organization (Some of the organization we volunteered for did not except volunteers from NYC), what I said before about the proposals, and lastly instead of just giving the people who work less bad grades I think they should be forced to help more because if they don’t work it brings down the groups performance.

Here is the link to the PSA sideshow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya076fVxWDM&feature=player_embedded