Service Learning (Post 2)

After volunteering for about nine hours so far, I am feeling more comfortable working with the students at Escuela Vieau. Most of the students need help with math, which is the easiest for me to help them with, but I have also helped them with social studies, science and writing. It’s interesting to look at the difference in their textbooks, since the math books are all in Spanish, yet the other books are not. In one of the fourth grader’s social studies books the students were learning about Wisconsin’s history, which was interesting to me, since my mom teaches fourth grade at Blakewood in South Milwaukee and a lot of the stuff they were learning about was familiar to me from what she talks about at home.

For the arts and crafts part of the day, the students were done making the quilt squares, and were working on coloring pictures for Easter today. Mrs. Ramirez and I were finishing up writing on the squares that were not quite done yet. It’s funny because whenever I’m with the students they quiz me on the Spanish I know, which isn’t much, and today Mrs. Ramirez told me that the kids speak mostly Spanish at school and I should learn it. I have noticed that pretty much all of the signs in the school are in Spanish, while some have both Spanish and English on them. Today a couple of girls were asking me if I knew a lot of English, which is funny because that’s pretty much all I know, and they were telling me that their parents only knew Spanish, so I asked them if they helped translate for their parents and they said they did. I have found that this happens a lot of the time, since their parents were not born and raised here and still haven’t learned English, yet their children go to school where they either learn English or speak only English, so they know it and end up with the responsibility of translating for their parents.

Service Learning (Post 1)

When I first went to Escuela Vieau for the service learning orientation I was excited to volunteer, and to learn more about the Hispanic culture. During orientation we learned about the Boys and Girls program and all of the activities they hold for the children every day. We also got introduced to the staff that we would be working with, and got a tour of the school. It was nice to see the place where I would be volunteering, but it was still hard to know for sure what it would be like.



Once I finally got to work with the children, I got a better understand of the program and the people in it. It was a little difficult since I haven’t had to do elementary school homework in a long time, but the fact that the textbooks were in Spanish made it even harder for me to understand, and the students were not able to fully translate what they said. So I’m still getting used to that part of the tutoring.



For the second half of my time there I’ve been working with arts and crafts where we have been making squares that will be used for a quilt. Each student gets to help design a square with puffy paint and then write a reason that they admire their family, or a particular member of their family. The arts and crafts teacher speaks mostly Spanish, which makes communicating a little bit difficult, but she is very nice and has been overly thankful to me for helping her with the project. The students that I have worked with are similar to kids that you would find at any elementary school, the only difference is their ethnicity and the language that they speak. So overall, I would say that I have learned a little bit more about the Spanish culture so far with the quilt project since the art teacher was very enthusiastic that it emphasized the importance of family.