While most of my friends were in Florida, Cancun, or just sitting at home for our spring break I was in New Jersey doing service. I participated in Alternative Spring Break through ISU and had the experience of a lifetime. At first my trip was supposed to go to Georgia to do Habitat for Humanity but when we were told we were going to New Jersey to work with underprivileged kids through Camp Vacamas I was ecstatic.
We were "stationed" at Camp Vacamas, a wonderful place for children from inner-city NYC and all over New Jersey to spend their summers, but it doesn't stop there. They host after school programs throughout the school year that we got to witness. On Monday half of us traveled to the Bronx to volunteer in one of the school's programs for the afternoon. Wednesday afternoon we were on the road again to Newark, New Jersey for another after school program experience. Both of these afternoons were eye-opening and life changing.
While interacting with the fourth-grade students at the school in the Bronx I began to have flashbacks to my experience as a Golden Apple Scholar student teaching over the last two summers in Chicago. The topic of where I was from came up and I explained to the children that I was from Illinois. One girl replied, "Oh so you live in the Bronx?" while another said "No, she lives in New York." At first I found this funny but soon found myself laughing at what really was innocent unawareness. These children had no idea what Illinois, another state in our country, was and if they did not know that how do they know about the rest of our country, or even our world? There was a huge carpet map on the ground in their classroom so I began to show them where Illinois was, the fifteen hour trip we took to get to New York and where they were currently. When they finally expressed their understanding I was happy, but this was still all too familiar to me. Two summers ago I student taught in a school in the south-side of Chicago in a sixth-grade classroom. All the students were hispanic and were in awe of my white skin. One day a young boy asked me if I was from Chicago and I replied "No, I am not." Sadly, through the Golden Apple Program and am not allowed to disclose where I am from to the students so they continued to guess. Finally, one student stated, "Well then she must be Polish" and I replied "No, I am Irish." Even at twelve years old these students did not understand that there is a bigger world out there outside their neighborhoods and this deeply saddened me. I grew up traveling with my family and continually learning about different states, countries and continents in school never realizing that other kids did not have it as good as I did. Now as I train to be a teacher and have seen the other side first hand I know for sure I want to open the worlds of the children I have in my classroom to show them what is really out there.
I thought about this experience for a long time after my trip and reached towards blogs that I have been following for resources on how to created a classroom full of information about our entire world. I kind of stumbled upon a little bit different of a concept on Lisa Nielsen's blog, The Innovative Educator. She posted about why she allows her children to have an internet presence and this caught my eye. My parents barely allowed me to get on the internet, let alone allow me to reach out to strangers on it. However, she got into the fact that the internet can show kids the world around them and just how amazing and vast it is. Not only did she mention how their family has met people from all over the place on the internet but also how she sees it as a tool to help people from far away. This is exactly what I was looking for. A tool that I can use to not only teach my students that there is a world outside of our perspective and to just believe me, but actually show them.
After noticing students struggle in this area for two years I cannot wait to get into my classroom and set up an environment that expands our little piece of Earth to encompass the entire world. Ideas are already floating around in my head and I will rejoice the day I see them be implicated.
Partially unrelated: I also came across Lisa Nielsen's post about service learning, which is such a passion of mine and what I did last week as well. Such a great resource to look back on later!
See ya next week!
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