Name: Olivia Propp
Social Justice Group: Race and Education
Date of Fieldwork: February 24, 2018
Name of Organization: GO Project
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Olivia Nunez
Type of Fieldwork: Direct Action
What I did:
On Saturday one member of my group, and I went to LREI to visit the GO Project organization. The GO Project helps kids who are falling behind in school, but their parents can’t afford tutoring for them. They meet every Saturday at LREI and other schools, and is like a half day of school. They start at 9:00 and end at 12:30, with math classes, writing, and more. We sat in on a class and also helped the kids if they needed help with their work.
What I learned:
I learned that even though several kids have an access to an education, they can still be very behind. This mostly happens in less affluent neighborhood schools because the school can’t afford as good teachers, and there aren’t as many PTA (parent teacher association) meetings. Since teachers can’t always focus on one kid in large public schools, kids may not be able to ask the things they need to learn, or get the extra help they need to understand things better. The GO project helps these kids catch up in school, by reviewing the things that their grade level is studying. The GO Project also has a lot smaller kids so the teachers can pay more attention to the students.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Through this fieldwork I learned that having many people involved makes a big difference. When I went in the classrooms with around 10 kids, I noticed that still, the teacher couldn’t focus on a specific student the whole time. So that is why the GO Project has volunteers who help the students, like the teachers. Without these volunteers these students may not have been able to get as much help as they needed. With the volunteers, the kids could get the help they needed anytime they couldn’t figure something out because there were 2-4 volunteers per classroom. I learned more people there were, the more the students could progress.
