English 2089: Intermediate Composition
This course was not merely and English class confined to 50 minutes spent in room and assigned readings outside of it. It was a combination of service learning, social awareness, and improvement of writing skills. Though at first these three subjects may seem like they could be their own classes, together they proved to help me learn in a "real life" setting. My service project for the semester involved documenting the Zoo-Mates program that I was volunteering with. Meanwhile, in class we discussed the influence that our projects had on us in addition to discussing material to support our three essay topics-literacy, learning communities, and our service projects. I think that the professor really put effort into providing a wide variety of resources that we could connect, from a memoir of a man with Asperger’s to an autobiography of an escaped slave. Reading these pieces alongside our individual service projects in the community helped me to write essays that were personally and rhetorically meaningful. Taking this lesson with me to other classes will help me to relate to the audience that I am writing for. Also, I know that my growing awareness will be very important as I hope to spread it to others while I continue to extend into unfamiliar situations throughout the rest of college and beyond. For the documentation of this experience, I have provided my first and last service reflection journal entries and my capstone essay. Reflection Journal 1 Zoo-mates, a pre-existing partnership that I have had experience with since this past September, is a program that works with Project Connect to help a number of potentially homeless children at Rockdale Academy by matching them with a mentor and a group made up of other mentors and mentees in the program. The upside to already being involved in this is that the mentors have a lot of freedom this semester to work with the supervisors to arrange events that we feel are more beneficial to the children. I am sure that this service program is well planned for the purposes of meeting course goals, as mentors spend time creating memories for their reflective journals with mentees at Rockdale Academy, UC, and the Cincinnati Zoo. As of right now, my most prominent concern is keeping the connection that I slowly developed last semester with my very young and shy mentee. I hope that this semester I can work to help her to express herself more through the activities that we participate in, mainly, the journal that we write and draw about our activities in, as well as through group interaction with her peers. This is something that lets us relate to each other outside of daily life pressures that we each have, so I believe that I am going to be able to come out of this experience with a better understanding of what it means to be a source of reliability for someone. Hopefully, by the end of my service-learning, I will have gotten feed back from mentees and supervisors so that I can ensure this. I know that the staff members from Project Connect, the University of Cincinnati, and the Zoo already realize the importance of orienting the program towards the kids, as noted recently by my supervisor Kathleen Brown, as they ask us for input on strengthening the program. This show of teamwork encourages me in pursuing the long-term impact that I would like to make on Zoo-Mates and all of its participants. I plan on showing everyone through dependability that their resources are definitely worth it and needed. Reflection Journal 10 Throughout my service-learning experience with Zoo-mates, I do think that I have been able to complete all of the learning objectives that I stated in my service plan. I have built a meaningful relationship with my mentee by listening to anything that she wanted to tell me on a particular day and really enjoying the activities that we did together at the zoo, Rockdale, and the University of Cincinnati. In addition to being with my mentee, I interacted with other mentees in the large group and the Project Connect supervisors to realize how different education was at a place not too far from my school. This put me outside of my comfort zone in order for me adapt to situations in societies that I was not very familiar with. I was also able to witness what goes in the organization side of things, and I have a deeper appreciation for the people who are involved in non-profit work. These first hand experiences, along with discussions in English class, lead to the stance that I support that literacy, all types of it, are vital from a very young age in order to be impactful later in life. I hope that I was able to encourage my mentee in this direction because of this. Finally, I also helped to improve the Zoo-Mates program with suggestions that the supervisors asked for on times for meeting, new activities, and new platforms for the program’s purpose. I know that this has all had a positive impact because my supervisors from the Center for Community Engagement and Project Connect have told us as a group that they have really seen the program move forward this year in building better connections with the mentees due to our reliability, as well as in our connections to places like the Zoo and Taft Museum, where we can do interesting things that provide common ground. |
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