Service Learning Prompt #4

As a middle class white American, i find myself somewhat at odds with large portions of the student body. Many of the students seem to come from relatively poor, minority group, and this makes it somewhat difficult to understand and interpret how some of these children function and react to situations. In many ways, i feel like seeing first hand how younger students of this type function in a school setting is enlightening to me in many ways. Being able to see how other members of society function in a school system that i once went through helps me to see things in a completely different cultural standpoint. Having to see what these kids go through, as opposed to how i know i went through everything is interesting to see. I feel like there is much i can learn from them, and conversely there is much i can teach them in return. I feel as though both myself and the students can pull something of importance out of this experience. In many ways, i feel that i would be somewhat ill-equipped to teach students in this setting, simply because i do not have much knowledge in reference to what their life at home might be like. As a member of the middle class white American group, i find that i have no idea what life might have been like growing up in a home where my parents did not speak the same language as i did, or perhaps didn't have much parenting foundation in general. In general i feel as though in many ways i could try to help some of these children, by attempting to give them something that i always had and appreciated as a child, which is some sort of structure, and a caring, gentle hand to guide me through the institution of school. In many ways, this experience has opened my eyes to these young children of a completely different culture, and shown me how different they are from whatever misconception i had conceived of them. Until now, i had always saw minority groups to function in a much different way, even with children. I had the predisposed bias that because these children were brought up in different cultural situations, that there overall attitude and behavioral attributes would be significantly different. In the end, though, my service learning experience has shown me that these children are just that very thing, children. It was heartening to see that even though these kids come from such a different background, that they were still similar in many ways. Realizing this has helped me to understand my children more adeptly, and has shown me that these children are not so different from the kind of person i was during elementary school.