EXP201.Davi.Fall05

What A Rush!! 2

I wish that I knew that even the teachers would find something fun out of the projects that we do with these kids. Every Friday that we get to the Fitzgerald eairly there are always these teachers there that always ask us about what we are doing with the kids this week. When we used to get there eairly I wouldn't say that they would wait for us but everyday that they we were there their faces brightened up and found that what we are doing with these kids are working. Not only do they see that these activites are working but I also see it as well. The basics of teamwork is really being shown and can't wait to see how they finish the remaining session.

Another successful Friday

Chesterbrook again seem to be the place where I am most comfortable being. The students seem to have become attached to me.  The students are very respectful as long as they are entertained.  You treat them with respect and they will give you the same you give them. Each student has their own talent.

I was speaking to one of the older students, which was a sophomore in high school. He told me he went to the afternoon program because of his sister. He also told me that all these kids were young and most of them just wanted to play around and do not respect much.  I told them that they would respect me because it is all about how you treat them. I started asking him questions about what he did in school, if he was doing okay in school.

He was a baseball and basketball player, he was getting good grades and he was just trying t look out for his sister. He was a t the ROTC program in

Waltham

high, and he told me that he was going to the Navy or the army after high school. I asked him why and he said that it was because of the money and if he went into the service they would pay for him to go to college while he was with them. So the service is for some people and not for others. This is my student of the week.

The activity that we did on Friday was the mine- field.  This activity was good because we had to do it outside. What a crazt thing it is to tell children the activity id out doors they love outside for some strange reason. So then we had to lay the numbers down and that took us a while because we ahd to do it while the kids were running outside and all. So after a while we set one of the fields and the students did not want to play.

So Jeff and I went and did a field so we could control. Our field was the best because it was like a chain reaction. One kid had to do it so we had the students participate. Me having all of the sound affects that I have I started yelling and screaming “You bombed” you lose. Then other people started coming.  After a while more and more were going. Very time I had a different sound to make I looked at the person and I already know that they did not want to lose.

The object of this game was to get to the other side hitting the mines that did not blow up. Hitting the correct number.  So the team had to think what number I was going to chose. So every time I would give those different numbers and they could not figure it out. What I found out was that every person at first was just trying to do it by themselves and not have the team help them. So they found out for themselves that, the strategy was not working and they had to try another way. So I had this 6 year old kid be my helper he would tell them where to step and the kids being that they did not listen to him, they would chose the other number and I would tell them “ you should have listened to HIM” They would get mad and they chose the correct number.

I knew that the best way to get the kids motivated to play this game was by being a kid. What do I want to play and how.  On this game I changed it so I would have fun being the leader of the game and explaining it to them. I really do not know how to play the game but my rules worked so I think I did a good job explaining the game.

After we ended the game, we had to pick up the papers and that was a blast. We started to throw the papers at each other and that was how we spent our time the last half hour. I had a good time this week and I know next week will be better. Every week Chesterbrook gets better and better.

Peace

Edison

Attachment and Control

    This being my fifth week at the Chesterbrook, many of the students are becoming more comfortable with being around me.   The students are really starting to change.  My presence seems to make an impact on them.  Many of the kids now play tricks on me and joke around.  The good thing is that if I'm serious about something then they will stop messing around and do what is required which is nice.  Once the kids become comfortable with you it is very important that you set boundaries on what's OK and what's not.  If you don't set those boundaries then the kids will completely disrespect you and you will lose your control over them.  At the same time this is a very challenging task because by what I have observed many of the students like to rebel authority and try to do things that go against the authoritative figure.  A trick to gaining the student's obedience once they become attached to you is to disapprove of behaviors that you don't want them take part in and encourage the good behaviors.  It may be hard to do, but it is well worth it in the long run.  I've used this strategy a couple of times and it has proved to be useful.  I hope this helps everyone out who may be in the same situation.  If you have come across this issue, reply and tell me what you think.

Finally my Survey!

Finally I have recieved my link to my survey.

http://atc.bentley.edu/resources/perseus5/surveys/classsurvey.htm

Chris LoDolce

Remote Detonator

"Alright, jump squares...HURRRY...I'll push it, and don't think I won't," the crazy 2+2=5 exclaimed to the danger-zone stepping children. This past weeks activity, Mind-Field, had teh children scrambling to make their way across a Proxy-Land mine infested 15x10 area. Well, at least that is what if felt like. The object of this activty is get all participants from one side of the floor to another via stepping on numbered sheets of paper. Unknown to the participant, several of the innocent looking sheets are bombs. When a player steps on a "bomb" they are to return to the starting point, and try again to get across without becoming scrap tissue. The other members of the group are then mean to remember exactly where the danger spots were and compensate accordingly. Innitially, the excercise seemed a bit simple in setup, for if a student who hits a bomb is allowed to try again, then they alone would figure the whole path out, thus giving an easy ride to the rest of the students. What myself and Alicia decided to do was to make each student who stepped on a bomb go the end of the line and allow the next person to take their chances at the mine field, thus adding an element of surprise and challenge for everyone in the group.

Even with this innovation, still something was missing. Duh, for the first two rounds, we had forgotten to put the kids on a timer. While the excercise was challenging, kids seemed not the take the time penalties seriously-and much of that was due to my not keeping it consistantly-I had no clock, no watch, nothing. Even when I began using my cell phone as a time keeping device, time penalties still had no bearing on the strategy/speed/or effectiveness of the group. All of the sudden when a child was contemplating which numbered sheet of paper to step on, I shouted, "Do you know what this is?" pointing to my cel phone.

"Its a cellular communications device," said the little professor. I returned with an enthusiastic,

"Wrong again pal, it a remote detonator, and if you don't get our rears-in-gear, then I will just lose it and this whole place is going up in flames," I shouted with a smile. My thumb danced on the detonator (End Call button) trigger, and with a combination of my unusual physical mannerisms, my cell phone, and constant verbal pressures, I got the children to start believing that their lives were on a time limit, and all of the sudden, the activity was not a game, but a quest for survivial. One child even said,

"Careful, don't mess up, or he'll hit the switch." A few of the children were sweating as a result of my verbal pressures, and some shook a bit too. But at the end, they all had a blast. I debriefed first with my group and asked them what was the most challenging piece of teh excercise. Little Proffesor responded,

"In this high pressure activity, and with the threat of being destroyed, it compelled us to use our team building skills learned in past weeks to formulate a better plan than we started with." As a result, my and Alicia's group were the most efficient group.

Hello World

I guess last week was a fluke!  This week the children of the Chesterbrook After school program were back to their normal wild and crazy ways.  Although, to the reader it may seem as not a friendly work environment, but the “out of control” setting is pleasing to me and my fellow classmates, who work there.

            This week the children played a memory game which required them to work in teams and help one other decode and then memorize a pattern.  Eddie, our group leader, broke us off into two different teams who competed against one anther.  The first group was led by Eddie himself, and the second was directed by me and my fellow classmates Hitesh and Edison.  I don’t mean to brag, but our group outperformed the other.  We raised the intensity of the game, by not allowing the children to stand on a block for more then five seconds and exaggerating the noise of the “explosion” when they didn’t land on the right square.  This got the children into a frenzy, allowing them to be more focused on the game, because they viewed our behavior as somewhat challenging them.  This of course is exactly what we were looking for and we played it to the best of our advantage.

            Although, the children were not as cooperative as last time, the enjoyment was still there.  Both the children and my colleagues had a good time, and hope the experience stays the same next week.

Hard Times At Bentley College

I’ve known I was going to attend Bentley since I was 14 years old. I worked hard to get the best grades possible in order to be able to attend. The first few weeks were easy enough and I was having a good time.

Last week my first year seminar class were having a discussion on racism. Most of them seemed to agree that racism was no longer an issue.

That same night I was in my room doing my homework while my roommate was doing her homework with another student. They couldn’t figure out how to say a word in Spanish and my roommate asked the other student to ask me (I had my headphones on). They other girl got my attention and she said “Jessica I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” I said of course I speak Spanish I’m from the

Dominican Republic

.” She said, “I didn’t know you were Dominican” so I asked her where she thought I was from.

She laughed and said, “I don’t know I just though you were regular.”

But racism is no longer and issue.

(The girl by the way said in another occasion that is she ever said anything offensive to anybody is because she is from

Maine

and she doesn’t know any better.)

On another note, my service learning was canceled again. :(

Oh Bentley

This first semester of my second year has raised some questions for me. For starters the food. Its the same as last year. They did the "improvement survey" and for about a week or maybe two the food improves. Yeah they listened and are giving us better variety and food. But not quite within a week or so the food selection is back to its original bland repetitious varieties. The thing that got me even more was that when they started acting like they were listening to our requests the surveys had not even been sent out yet for data analysis.

Now on to the CP. In my first year at Evey chance they had to get freshman in trouble they would. They were unforgiving and would really get intense, making it sound like people were going to jail for minor things. It was of course fun to be an onlooker but never the one on the other side. This year they have been extremely nice in comparison and have done anything but get us in trouble. Upon talking to an RA on this subject he mentioned that freshman year the "break us in" so in future run-ins we will cooperate fully.

One more note on Bentley for now. What was with that Halloween dance, finally people come to an event and the school is unprepared. They had to shut down the dace over an hour early and close Harry's corner. Another note on the dance, they make this big deal about the bar and drinking but Only if your 21, what about role-models, setting examples, Bentley personnel wonder why minors drink on weekends, could any part of it be they hold events where drinking is I dare say encouraged.

Edison's survey

This is the link that the survay will be on.

C:\Program Files\Perseus\SurveySolutions5\Temp\bul1g94e.htm

East L.A., What A Place Not To Be!

As I was reading Chapter 5 of Lives on the Boundary they started of talking about East Los Angeles. It got me thinking about what I see L.A. as now compared to how it was summarized in the book. The Chapter 5 it makes East L.A. look like nothing more than an oversized version of the projects. Talking about how the windows are cracked and the people sitting on their front steps and the old man in overall, it all just crazy.Then they mention the house that the Police don't even want to go into unless they have the backup that they need.They talk about the stores either outside or inside apartments and everything. Explains how the kids would be playing on the dirty grass and wouldn't even care as long as they are having fun. To think that they called this project Maravilla, which the book says "means the marvelous place". The fact that it would be called that must have symbolized how this area used to be held as a place of beautiful buildings and stores, but over time they seemed to get more and more wasteful. Also, it talks about how people wanted to move to the beautiful parts of East L.A. and start their lives all over.

This remind me of the world today. A lot of people may live in the projects and all they care about is saving  their money to move to a better neighborhood. I would always here my friends and their parent say, "Man, I can't wait till I could get out of this ghetto. If I only had enough money". What I just struck me as i was reading was why dont they fix up their neighborhood themselves. Instead of saving money to move and then have to save money just to stay in that area, just fix up your own area. Have everyone in your neighborhood start saving money and eventually you would have enough money to fix up your area and still keep the house or apartment that you may have grew up in. Yes that is asking alot but it can be done. Fix up the outside of your house yourself and make your hoouse stand out. Things like this can be done it just a matter of someone actually "taking the bull by the horns" and going with it.