Service Learning Reflection Paper

During my service learning I worked with students of all age groups. I worked with a fourth grader the majority of my time at the Plymouth Renewal Community Center. When he didn’t show up I worked with other students around his age. At Waggener High School I worked with numerous seniors, and at Olmsted Middles School North I worked with numerous seventh graders. The focus of all my students in my service learning was in tutoring in math and reading and writing. The physical context of Plymouth Renewal Community Center is nice for what it is. It is on the West side and many of the students come from an extremely hard socio-economical background, and the school reflected those conditions, but the students still had a positive attitude with me

At Waggener High School and Olmsted Middle School I never tutored the same student, so I didn’t see much growth with them like I did at Plymouth. I felt a real connection with my student at Plymouth, but unfortunately I feel he learned more in our hour together than he did in a whole week at his school. They give him a work sheet to work on throughout the week, and when he finishes the worksheet I guess he is free until the next week. I tried to focus on math, reading, and writing with him. He was weak in all the areas, but that was not his fault. With a little scaffolding I was able to teach him how to solve many math problems and how to spell and read. We were able to go through the worksheets in no time, so I eventually started bringing my own worksheets with me. I focused on solving word problems, because he was able to work with just the numbers pretty easily, but when words were used it seemed to confuse him. We continued to practice them throughout the semester and his ability to solve them improved every week. I used Vygotsky with my student, because I found his Zone of Proximal Development the first week, and used scaffolding to guide him to the right