Final Blog Summit

Summit Park is over and with it community service at Boyd comes to the end. For the last day we make the kids play games and gave them candy. It was sad to leave them after building  a nice relationship, I will always remember the kids at Boys; Cody, Antonio, Jairik, Jonathan, Carlos and Keandre. All this kids made an impact in the group life and create new experiences that in my case never thought I could experience.

Since the beginning of the semester people have give us the support necessary to keep this project up, people such as Courtney Swan and Andrew Foley were major contributors to make this project a  success. At Boyd elementary school there we difficulties with the kids behavior because the kids are very young  so they dont have alot of manners and they want to be playing most of the time.

With time the kids start building more trust in us and start behaving better and telling them their experiences. At the end of this community service we create a strong relationship with kids. I think the project was a success because every member of the group learn new experiences and became a better person.

Danny Loza

Issues in our Boyd Community

It is perhaps in luck, that I am writing this post late and I am now able to form a more profound and updated conclusion on what sort of issues are going on in our community at Boyd. I would first like to say that our community partners have been excellent, the change from last semester is very noticeable and we could not be happier with Andrew. The response from Boyd has also been satisfactory, the school has openly shown support to us helping with the kids and have facilitated the rooms we need and all of our "demands".

However there is a large and at the same time invisible problem that I see in the public education system. And it is just that! The fact that is public make both the kids and the teachers have attitudes that are perhaps not beneficial to either. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but I do see how the teachers on an overwhelming level did not seem to care about the development of the kids and often make comments in front of them that in my opinion were hurtful. For example, one of the teachers once said in a very loud and carrying voice: "Oh they are the ones working with Kyandre and Carlos, they should get paid for doing that!" right in front of the kids! Needless to say Carlos and Kyandre were troubled kids, but at the same time they are 6 years old so they can hardly be blamed for their behavior. Everything they know they learned from their teachers or parents at home. Schools should be about making the kids live in a happy and productive environment and if a teacher doesn't have the patience to deal with 6 years old then maybe they chose the wrong career. I also remember a rather rude lunch lady that talked to the kids as if they had no intelligence and did not recognize their presence unless addressed to directly. I am no psychologist, but if a child is ignored then he will develop troubling behavior. The kids seemed to dream about when they would get to hang out with us because we engaged them in conversation and actually listened to what they had to say, unlike any other adult around them.

Since day one are group has repeated that we are in no way trying to change America's Public Education System, but without a doubt this was a very interesting experience because we got to see the root of many issues we see in teenagers today.

Issues in the community

It almost end of the semester now and the group is happy to be working with the kids of Boyd educational center. Even though the experience has been wonderful there also have been several obstacles and issues that I will like to address. The children that we work with have come from not common families, they have come from difficult situation in their parents life or just with problems that any kids should have. I have learned from the kids that their life is difficult and still they smile and enjoy life. I admire the kids because of the way they think, some will say is selfish and other will say that is unconscious but the think I take into account is that the kids are happy.

The problem I want to address is that most of the kids parents don't care for their kids development. Once we got to teach in boyd we never receive a letter back from the parents, our partner in the project, Andrew was the one who convince all the parents to sign the sheet required us to teach there. If the parents would put more effort and attention for their children most of the children wouldn't have problems. 

Community issue and Community partner

There is an issue in education and backgrounds in the community. There is an issue in how we take care of our households. There is an issue that affect our kids. There is a big issue that needs to be resolved. The issue is not having control of what goes on in our kids lives and not paying attention to their childhood. Kids are growing out without any parental attention. They are having trouble with learning, they have no role model, they don't receive this from school. They have problems in their outer parts of their house-holds. With this broad issues, we could learn more stuff about this community. We could learn that the community is eager to work with us. We are able to work with the community thanks to our community partner. This community doesn't want any help from people they don't know. Our community partner helped us interact and work with families so that we are able to work with their kids. The community families don't want strangers helping their kids. The problem with this kids was that they need permission from their families so we had to deal with that. This was a community issue that we addressed to our community partner, and he helped us by talking to them and making the families more secure about what we are doing.
We learned that even thought this community has many difficulties, we can overcome them by working with our community advisor. He deals with their families so that we can deal with their kids. We can overcome the overall problems and we can understand what is what we are working with. We know there will always be problems and struggles in the community, but the output will be more important than what we have to deal with. My group and I learned about the community, and we learned how to solve the issues. We also learned what are the good things of working with them. This as overall is a good experience and now we know what we will deal with in the future.

Communication as an essential tool of society (Juan Franco)

The Summit Class we had with Ed was perhaps one of the most insightful evenings I had in a long time. For me the "What bothers Me" page was extremely vital because it really gave me a look into what really bothered my roommates. I was under the impression that I did nothing to bother them, but indirectly I was with some of the things I said and my attitude towards problem solving. I normally take on a very strong approach towards everything, I often take a leadership position even though it is not handed to me and this can be intimidating for some people. I learned from Ed that communication can be both physical and verbal, something I normally don't think about just concluding that everything is verbal; but physical in some cases is even more important. Crossed arms are an indication of denial or rejection, even when you are not wanting to give that impression or communicate that feeling. Overall this experience provided me with essential insight on who I was and what I was perceived like in the community

Communication Monthly Blog

This blog will be reflected on the presentation that Ed Derr gave to us on Friday, February 17, 2012. He talked mainly about communication and how it can make a difference by communicating in the right way. He gave us tips and he made us do activities to see what kind of animal we are. It was really interesting to see the tips and how it can all help to us to have a better connection with the people who surround us. All of this tips were helpful for me to understand how communication works with my friends. Since he gave us those tips I felt that I can understand and they could understand me better. All by a simple tip by just asking them the right questions and paying attention. I have tried with my roommates the communicating tips, and it totally works. We now tell what bothers us and what we need to change. That way we avoid having problems and discussions between us. Also the conflict solving sheet helped to see what really bothers us. We noticed that in everyones sheet we had something that bothered from someone of us. This make us realize that we were not communicating right. From then on and with the tips he gave us we were able to communicate better and now we tell what bothers from the rest of us. Overall it was a helpful experience that by small tips can help everyone of us.

16 march homework

17 February presentation

The presentation of February 17th the presentation talked about conflicts and in what way can we solve them. Conflict is not always something bad, it can be a chance that improve relationship or know better the other person. The presentation was really interesting,in this case they teach us that the best way of solving problems is talking and learning from the other person.

My group in the day of the presentation wrote about the strenght and conflict of each individual. In these strenghts we discuss that each one get alone and with maintain a good relationship with each other. Also we havent had any conflicts in the passed months, the first semester we learn of each other and we discuss what we like and dislike of each other. In this conflicts was the dishwashing and how loud is each other.

A way I can improve is by improving the relation with my friends more and continue to be friendly, fortunately there havent been any major problems and everything is going well.

Danny Loza

January 22th Meeting by Juan Franco

• The meeting of January 27th was perhaps one of the most insightful and powerful experiences I’ve ever had, not only did I learn a lot about myself, but also about those who live in my same environment (Summit Park). I connected too many people while we were doing the “step to this side of the room if…” exercise through common experiences or ways of thinking, but I also realized how diverse our group is. Most Drury students cite Summit as the place where the best students are, but I learned that night that we could all be the best students in hundreds of different ways. It takes a lot of courage to undertake projects like we all did, and even more to discuss them with our class and teacher. What I take from that night was that I should never be quick to judge. Most people in Summit I thought I had figured out, but after that eye opening experience I can humbly say that I was wrong and that I want to get to know a lot of them better. “Excellent teaching and learning for all” is the motto of Pipkin Middle School and I can say that I couldn’t be more proud of working with an institution that promotes learning for everyone no matter what education level you may have. Although our project is limited to only Summit, I know the school hosts a Reading Club and I’m almost positive that they take on volunteers.
  Community website link-https://sites.google.com/a/pipkinpirates.org/pipkin/
• Pipkin Middle School

  sites.google.com

Juan Fernando Calderon Monthly Journal Blog about Community Partner

On the class from 1/27 there were several points that could be taken to consideration of making connections and diversity. In this class we made an activity that was called "cross the line", were the speaker made questions to the group and either you needed to cross the line if the answer was yes, or stay were you were if the answer was no. This activity helped to me and I believed to my group because I could understand more about my summit peers and their backgrounds. Also this helped me see how a diverse group of people we had in our class. It was a hard activity were some questions were compromising that sometimes people didn't want to respond. This showed me it takes value to cross the line and to accept what the reality to what the question is. The key point I took is that with a simple activity like that you can get to know a group of 40 people. Thats what we can do in getting to know our Pipkin students with simpler activities but get to bond with them with simple activities like this. 


Our community partner does not have a link but the Springfield Public Schools does have information about Pipkin Middle School. 


http://springfieldpublicschoolsmo.org/relocating/pipkin.htm


Mission Statement: Excellent teaching and learning for all.


You can get involved with our program by visiting the school and working together with us so that we can gather a bigger group to work with more kids instead that only 15. This also could raise awareness in Springfield Public Schools so that the school system can be changed and there will be better education and easier access for college. By gathering more people we can show the society that kids are our future and that we need to work with them. Thats why we need to gather people who is interested in joining our program or could join us in the weekdays that we go to Pipkin to work with the kids, one hour a day, Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

Community Partner key point

So during the meeting that we had last week I observed and learned a lot about my teammate’s experiences and personality. A very important key point that I took away from my community partner in this activity is that he is very organized with his schedule. I will like to implement this to my leadership since organization is very important to do things right and maintain a high level of performance. Organizing my time will allow me to do more things and even get a better communication with the people that I'm working with. I excited to start my Pipkin help and organization will be fundamental to fulfill the goal of this group. For this semester our goal is to teach our boys success is achievable and that a great future is waiting for them if they make good decisions in their lives. 

Danny Loza