For my village project I got assigned with the Aldo leopold Daytime group. I was paired with Mrs. Amy Jones and two of her 7th grade math classes that were learning 8th grade math. I was really nervous because 1. I’m not the best at math, but I knew the basics of middle school math because I took it about 5 years ago. But 2 were the kids. I was worried they weren’t going to like me or respect me because they are middle schoolers. I remember when I was in middle school I wasn’t the best student sometimes. I would be disruptive in some of my classes especially in my Spanish class and Math class. But I was scared that it would be hard for me to be able to communicate with the kids. But to also teach them what they were learning. A lot of different items were going through my head during that time. My heart was beating very fast and my palms were very sweaty. But when I got into the class I was welcomed with open arms. Everybody was so nice to me and everybody was so curious why I was here when I was from Arizona. Where the weather is so drastically different. One is warm at least 11 months out of the year while the other is cold about 11 months of the year. As I made my way around the class I introduced myself personally to everybody and also to make sure that I got everybody’s name because I will be with these kids for a while and I needed to know the minimum of their names to be able to communicate with them. As I was going around the class this kid caught my attention when speaking to him. Now when I entered the classroom Amy gave me a roster of everybody in the class and told me some of the kids I should keep a close eye on and to help out the most if they are struggling. This kid was one of them. When I went up to the kid you could see he was a smart kid but he did not apply himself to the subject and would lash out to seek attention. So my goal was to help this child out to make sure that he is on the right track and doing the right thing when in class. ‘
One day in class we were going over graphing. This child was struggling during the assignment and was lashing out, being disruptive in class. So I sat down with him and walked him through the problems. Him and I both really enjoyed football and played it as well. So I made the connection to him that the graph was like a football field and that all these lines on the graph were wide receiver routes in a football play to help memorize the different lines on the graph. After that he caught on really quickly and you could see that learning was happening on and that he was finally starting to understand the assignment
