Chelsea Nygaard Volunteer Reflective Essay #2 10/18/13

In the fall of 2011, I joined the Paxson After-school Enrichment Class Program. I designed a Spanish class for fifth graders and co-led with a friend from the Education Program. Four to five students attended our class that was held once a week for 6 weeks. I started learning Spanish when I was in seventh grade and fell in love with the language. I hope to one day teach my students some Spanish no matter what grade they are in. That is why I thought of designing a simple Spanish class for Paxsons Enrichment Program. I thought it would be fun to teach basic words and simple phrases to students who are interested in learning another language. Since the length of the program was so short and the time we spent together was an hour per week, my partner and I were not able to teach very in-depth lessons. We introduced the alphabet, the numbers 1-100, the months of the year, the days of the week, body parts, animals, food, colors, and members of families. We also introduced phrases such as, My name is __, Its cold, I am hungry, and I like to __. In order to make the learning fun for the students, we played games and sang songs. We learned how to sing the alphabet and the days of the week songs. We played a matching game, Simon Says, and drew monsters when they learned the body parts. Once the students were comfortable with numbers, we played Bingo. This was a great experience for me because it was the first time I had a classroom to myself. I desperately needed to become more comfortable in the teaching role and to start practicing my classroom management skills. Not only did this experience provide practice for me, but it also provided a way to learn from my peer. She had had teaching experience before this so I was able to learn a lot from her. One thing I learned was that the students were more focused and learned better when asked to repeat things. Also, we both quickly learned that the students needed to be actively involved in the lesson, which meant, in addition to repeating after us, they needed to answer questions in Spanish (which meant they had to be listening to what we were asking) and join in with the whole class when we sang songs. I also learned that I needed to have the whole class attention before I moved on with the lesson, otherwise I would be repeating myself more than I should. Student conflicts were another area in which I gained some insight. I learned that it was important to learn both sides of the story before placing blame on someone. Even though this experience was intimidating in the beginning, I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to develop my own class and work with students.

Volunteer Reference Rebecca Jasmine, Coordinator of Paxson Elementary After-school Enrichment Class Program rebeccajasmine.paxson@gmail.com