The Boys

     I know I've already wrote about my Service Learning, but we experience new things every week and this week was much different than the last.  It is also one of the only hands-on experiences you can do as an education major.
     Just learning about education through written/spoken sources is much different than actually experiencing it.  The books and articles may tell you that you'll be faced with difficulties in your classroom because all children learn differently but you won't fully understand that you experience it in a classroom.  This past week, I taught four boys a math lesson on mean, median and mode.  Every boy new what we were talking bout, but didn't know how to find the answers.  On top of them not knowing how to find the answer, one of the boys didn't know how to add, one needed a huge amount of attention, otherwise we would get upset, and one of the boys didn't want to learn; we just wanted to talk.  Because of all these different elements of obstacles, the math lesson was hard to teach and therefore, we didn't get as far as we were supposed to.  Only getting through 4 problems in 2 hours seemed like I failed, but I was soon reassured by the teacher.  She told me that I had done an excellent job in staying patient, calm, and collected as I dealt with the caos the boys presented.  Getting through 4 problems with each boy was a miracle because they were all on different levels of learning.  Even though they were all in the same grade, there were certain things they struggled at and certain things they excelled in.  
     This isn't something you can read in a book or article and quickly pick up on.  This is an experience you have to come face-to-face with to understand what you are supposed to do.