Reflection

2. Respond to the following question; Who benefited more form the 2+2=5 program, the Bentley students, or the children? Explain why.

            Doing the program 2+2=5 was defiantly more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. When I first heard I was going to have to go to an elementary school to work with kids I was not exited about it. I thought the kids were not going to enjoy the program and that that would then make the program impossible for me to handle. After ten weeks with the kids, I was defiantly surprised at how much I liked spending times with the kids but that the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. Now looking back at the entire experience, I realize that not only did the kids benefit a great deal from the program I did as well.

            

I was assigned four kids to my group. They were all intelligent and were exited about doing all of the activities. They were also very competitive with the other groups and worked hard from week to week to beat the other groups and be #1 in the class. On the first week, however things were different. I believe that the kids were still a bit disappointed that they were not going to be a having a “normal” gym class and they were not really exited when they found that the program was going to be there instead.

            

During that first week’s activity, I think my group did not really know how to respond to each other and the activity. There was still a bit of confusion as to who was going to be the leader of the group. They all knew that in order to be successful in the group that they were going to have to pick a leader but nobody stepped up. I did not want to assign a leader because I felt that this was their program and in order for them to benefit the most from the program then they would need to make all of the decisions themselves. They did ask me a few times for suggestions and I of course gave it to them, but I wanted to make general suggestions so that they could just take what I said and applied it to the task. That first week, we were the last one to finish the task and I could see the disappointment in their face. Before they left, I told them, this is a long program and we are going to have a lot more opportunities to get the task right.

            

The nest week they all came in the group with a more sense of purpose. After the task was assigned and we got together in our smaller groups they told each other we are going to do this correctly and we are going to win. Now instead of there being no leaders on the group we had to strong leaders and two that had the potential to be leaders. They really started to work really well as a group and every week there would be small but significant improvement in their skills. There would be a task were they weren’t really communicating right and they would stop the entire task to remind themselves that they were not communicating correctly and that therefore they were never going to finish the task. Every week, before we even started the task, I would try to have a very small conversation to remind them what works and what does not when you are trying to work in a team. They usually did not want to have that conversation because they wanted to get started on the task to beat all the other teams. Every time that we worked in a task we beat all the other teams, except for that first week, something that they were proud of.

            

I was worried, however, that they were not getting the point of the task however and they just wanted to do them to beat the other teams. I did not want to get it in their head that the only reason of the program was to beat other teams at games. M not really worried about that anymore however because when we divided ourselves into bigger groups I saw all the kids applying different sets of skills to the other members of the new groups.

            

This program also helped me grow a lot. Since I am a freshman in college there are a few things that I needed to learn or relearn in order for me to be successful at this school. I always considered myself a good communicator, but throughout the program it made me see that I was comfortable communicating to people that I was comfortable with and that I needed to grow out of that. I learned a bit about trust and about other people's perspective.

            

I also enjoyed working with the kids more than I thought I was going to. I like playing with kids but the thought of knowing that you are doing something with the kids that might potentially help them, or hurt them, in the future was a bit overwhelming. Now, though, I know that I can work with kids and really try to make a difference in their lives. I am not saying that I did but it is good to know that I might have made a difference, even if it was a little one. Taking this experience and knowing that I could work with kids has made me realize that I could work with anybody. It made me see that if I could handle a bunch of fourth graders than nothing should surprise me when I am working with people my own age or older. 2+2=5 was really helped both mine and the kids way of looking at things.

Comments

[kamas]

Reflection and kamas, that it is.

[gaiaonline gold]

I also enjoyed working with the kids more than I thought I was going to. I like playing with kids but the thought of knowing that you are doing something with the kids that might potentially help them