Advice

Be ready to take charge and work hard if you are planning to take English 311. This is an awesome class that will help you bring out the creative ideas that you may be hiding inside. Great work takes time and dedication, so don't wait until the last minute to complete your work. Have fun with your projects and look at them all as a challenge and reward yourself when you complete them on time. I did say on time. Put all of you in your projects, but make sure you follow directions. The projects in the English 311 course help get you ready for your career and just help you out in everyday life. I learned so much, my favorite part of the course was the online identity and the service learning project. I liked the online identity project because it really helped me understand that I needed to be aware of what potential employers may see on the Internet about me. The SLP was truly a blessing, I was able to give some of my time to an organization who really appreciated my hard work. I also learned about activities and clubs in my community that I will be having my children participate in.

New Skills

I have learned to truly listen to people stories. While doing my SLP I had the opportunity to speak with students, staff, and parents of New City Academy. The conversations with the students taught me so much, we sat and reminisced about their experience while at New City Academy. I really enjoyed speaking with the younger group about what they will miss about New City Academy, for many of them this was their first school. Some of the students have been with the school for 3 or 4 years and they talked about the previous teachers and school leaders that they had during those years. My service learning experience relates to profession writing, because it reminded me of having a professional image at all times while with my partner. I had to collaborate with my partner, to make the project work. I want to be able to give back to my community by being involved when I finish my studies. While I am employed I will have to use some of the same qualities used to complete my project such as working with others, creating and sharing my ideas. I also took the leadership role and worked on my project solo, because I was pretty ill and when I felt better the school was on spring break.

Small Group Projects

I enjoyed working with the teams on the small projects, it gave me an opportunity to see my classmates ideas. I usually prefer to work alone, because of my take charge attitude. With these projects I was able to provide my creative ideas and also some of my leadership ability and constructive criticism. My group worked well together on the collaboration project, because we all had the take charge attitude and were all very creative. That was one of our strong points, but it can be viewed as a weakness as well because we all could not be the boss so we had to just agree to disagree at times. It worked out well once we sat down and talked about our strong points and what we had to offer the team. That everyone needs to participate, and present every idea that you have. It may seem small to you, but it could make a big difference and could unleash more creative or innovative ideas that the team could benefit from.

What I learned during my SLP

I learned that I am a very patient person while completing my SLP. I had to contact area schools for information to put in my newsletter and some of the people were rude. They treated me as if I was a reporter or private investigator. There are so many activities going on in the community that I did not know about. I have children and I would love for them to be apart of the activities instead of being outside or just sitting home watching television or playing video games. There are activities and people in my community who actually care about the children and the community itself, that surprised me. I also never thought what I would do if my kids school closed or every had a plan for them to get acquainted with their new schools so that they would not feel so out of place on the first day. I learned that it is important to have a plan or some idea of what you are going to do to complete a particular task, rather than going in blind or being shocked or caught off guard when things don't go the way you planned. Before my service learning project I really never had this much interaction with the community and now I plan on spending my summer helping out the South Side Community Center.

Service Learning

I am partnering with New City Academy, a public charter school. The school is pretty small, it goes from kindergarten to eight grade, but the classes are small. This type of environment is key to being able to have more one on one time with students and is desired by many parents. New City Academy is a full of great students, staff, and parents, who love their school. The school has been in its location for 10 years and will be closing at the end of the school year. They are focused on nurturing and giving their children the attention they need. My project will be to complete an end of year newsletter that will include poetry from the students about change and transition. I believe the most valuable service I can offer to New City is to be committed to completing the newsletter to their satisfaction, because this is the last one the school will send out. Some students may want to keep the newsletter for memories and I will be excited and honored to be apart of the memories of the good times at New City Academy.