Service Learning Paper

Henry Adams once claimed, â€Å"A teacher affects eternity; [she] can never tell where [her] influence stops†. Although Adams’ word choice only pertained to the male teachers, it can only be assumed he believed any teacher could achieve this. In order to be a successful teacher, accomplishing a lifelong affect on a student’s life is a necessity. Adams’ quote describes my belief in teaching quite perfectly, and my experiences during service learning provides evidence for his statement. These experiences have only added to reinforcing my decision to choose teaching as my profession.My service learning took place at two different schools. My very first experience was through Sherman Elementary School. Unfortunately, only having one day there constricted me from gaining the full experience of the school. However, the school’s principal amazed me with his determination for improving their academics and environment. The school seemed fairly new, like most of Toledo Public Schools. His passion was contagious, and his heart was truly in it for these kids. The environment at that school had a very welcoming vibe, and the students were all eager to work with us.It seemed like all these schools, who were struggling to keep their academic level at an acceptable status, just needed someone to be confident in them. Teaching at a less developed school like this one definitely appeals to me. I sat in a sixth grade classroom momentarily that day, because the principal had taken up most of our time with a tour. The teacher was very sweet, and had good control on students who liked to test her patience. Although I believe that I could have benefited tremendously from that experience, I accepted my move to another school.I am currently fulfilling my service learning hours at Keyser Elementary. The environment at Sherman Elementary and Keyser differ dramatically. The staff at Keyser was usually very disorganized and seemed unprepared for our visit each week. The Bowling Green students and I would file into their cafeteria, find a spot on one of the folding tables, and wait for students to be sent down to be tutored. The first student I had was a third grader named Marcus. Although on occasion he would be absent, he was my main student for the first part of our time at Keyser.Marcus is a very quiet boy, but once he warmed up to me I learned all his favorite activities. Each week, Marcus and I read a story. Reading is the only thing I have done with Marcus. His reading skill was below average because of abundant reading issues with inconsistency and vocabulary. Up until a few sessions ago, my second student’s name was Keivon. He is a second grader and has the opposite personality as Marcus. He looked at his trip to the cafeteria as an escape from his classroom. Getting him on task was my first job, and then reading came after that.We also never strayed from the subject of Reading. It was the same thing every week. Keivo n had an excellent reading skill, and always comprehended what he read. However, the past few sessions I have been sitting in a Special Education classroom, to help me decide if I would like to specialize in that area. I was very excited to get the opportunity to work in a classroom. The students and teacher were very welcoming to me, and seemed eager to have a new face in their room. These students were easily distracted and had definite behavioral problems.The teacher barely got through her sentences without an interruption. I never worked one on one with students until my most recent experience. As a result of my experiences at Keyser Elementary, my expectations did not match the reality of my situation. I expected to be in the classroom throughout my whole service learning. I was expecting to be able to absorb the everyday experience of teachers in their classrooms and learn from them. If I would not had asked to be placed in a Special Education classroom, I never would have exp erienced the environment of the classroom.Although I feel as if other sections were more fortunate in their experiences, I still thoroughly benefited from mine. Furthermore, I believe no experience is an unpleasant one, always a great opportunity to learn. In my first experience with Marcus, I helped him review the Reading section of the Ohio Proficiency Tests. He struggled with having a fluent reading pattern, along with confusion on numerous words. I encouraged the technique of breaking up the word and sounding each part out, and then putting the whole thing together.He seemed to benefit from this technique, and his reading fluency evened out. Reading and Language Arts have always been my strong point in school, so I felt I had the proper knowledge of the content to help Marcus understand the test. Kauchak and Eggen (2009), report that having a detailed understanding of the content one will teach improves the quality of how the teach it and how the student learns (p. 15). In my mo st recent experience, I helped a few students with dependent and independent clauses. Again, this content is very familiar to me and I have a detailed understanding for the clauses as well.This also demonstrates Ohio Standards for the Teaching Profession’s (OSTP) second standard, which states being familiar with content is a responsibility for the teacher (Standard 2). Additionally, I felt my overall experience at Keyser gave me a side of teacher collaboration that I did not expect. Whenever the Bowling Green students arrived at Keyser, we seemed like more of a burden than beneficial for the school. There would be times when the administrators would forget we were coming, and it was evident the school had a lot of communication problem.With Sherman Elementary, I felt the principal and the school all collaborated really well with each other, and they all had positive energy that promoted student learning to the maximum. Additionally, the principal made the effort to reach out to the community and keep everyone involved. Both schools demonstrated how they collaborated and communicated, which aligns with standard six (Standard 6). However, Keyser Elementary failed to meet up to the standard, whereas Sherman Elementary succeeded it. To further expand upon Sherman Elementary School’s excellence, I believe they created a very encouraging environment.For OSTP’s standard five, the main idea is that â€Å"teachers create learning environments that promote high levels of learning and achievement for all students† (Standard 5). In my one-day experience at the school, I felt that the school implemented a very productive learning environment. In past years, the school had been categorized as an â€Å"academic emergency† school. However, they have been creating programs like â€Å"Parents Power Hour† where they allow the parents to come into the school and learn about their students’ progress in school.The principal also shar es some news about the schools progress and this helps the parents get a feel for what their child is learning. Additionally whenever the principal shouted, â€Å"What’s that smell,† the students would shout â€Å"Sherman pride! † The environment and school spirit in that school was contagious. The sixth grade teacher I encountered deeply cared for her students, and in the ten minutes I spent with her I already knew she promoted a successful learning environment. She led her students through a greeting activity where each student was greeted properly and in a mature manner, and then they also shared something they were proud of.This made the classroom climate very positive, which is an essential key to a productive learning environment (Kauchak and Eggen, 2009, p. 236). The students were all supportive of each other’s proud moments, and I believe that was a good start to a productive learning day. As a result of my experience within an actual classroom be ing very limited, I lost the opportunity to witness the teacher delivering their instruction. My hope was to learn about how a teacher effectively instructs her students, which fits in OSTP’s standard four (Standard 4). However, I did encounter an effective instruction within the Special Education class.On my most recent experience, the teacher was reviewing Christopher Columbus’ journey to the New World. To limit the lesson to her lecture would not have given the students a full understanding of the journey. Therefore, the teacher brought the globe to the front of class and physically explains the journey by tracing his journey on the globe. Having the lecture along with the demonstration on the globe proved to be much more effective than the lecture alone. As previously stated, all of my experiences have only reinforced my decision to continue on the path of becoming a teacher.I witnessed a positively charged environment and one that did not have such delight. Howeve r, when I am a teacher in the future, I will be positive no matter what type of school I am in, and promote the learning environment my students deserve. I plan on continuing my expansion with the content I intend to teach, therefore my students will gain the ultimate learning experience with me as their teacher. I believe encouraging, teaching, caring, communicating, and believing in my students will benefit them tremendously. As a teacher, it’s all in a days work.

Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Struggle

The book Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for Racial Uplift was affectively written by Jacqueline M. Moore and published in 2003. This book review will look at the following themes, Washington being a gradualist while Du Bois wanting confrontational immediacy, and the idiom, â€Å"if you can’t beat them join them. † What is also great about the book is that it starts with telling us about both philanthropist’s childhood to effectively reveal where each got their philosophies and unique characteristics and traits.The injustice of racism and its evident role in some of Americas most prominent political and social aspects have perpetuated rigorous and squalor lifestyles for those of non-Caucasian ancestry. Jacqueline Moore clearly states evidence how white people have such a long history of being the dominant group and why it is so hard for blacks to assimilate. In the book the writer simply told us a story of 2 men’s journeys for racia l uplift and wanted us to decide the theme for ourselves, telling both sides of the story in order to let us choose which of them we might agree with more.The author did a good job letting us know Washington and Du Bois’s goals. The style of the novel is interconnected with its themes. In the novel, not only does Moore convey the ideas and concepts of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B Dubois, but Moore also illustrates the theories of which consists of gradualism and immediacy. â€Å"Washington was a gradualist, and Du Bois favored immediacy. Washington advocated economic advancement and self-help; Du Bois favored political advancement. †(p. 7) Washington tries to possess the concept that, if you can’t beat them join them. This is one of the examples in the novel that Jacqueline Moore clearly and affectively states as evidence to one of the themes. The tone of Moore’s Novel is optimistic and assertive, which is evident when she says that â€Å"†¦ alt hough it was true that blacks had to make efforts to help themselves, without the support and encouragement of the white community and the elimination of discriminatory barriers, progress was not possible. (p. 72) Moore’s writing proves its effectiveness for it essentially explains Dubois’s theory of what blacks need to do too pursue a better life and achieve self-actualization that promotes higher possibilities and is free from lowering standards as he addresses his purpose, indicates his broad audience, and infuses a unique writing style that employs an in-depth point of view and an optimistic tone from Du Bois. â€Å"The difference was in the emphasis each man placed on his preferred method.Washington argued that industrial education should come first so that southern blacks could gain basic schooling and useful skills with which to make something of themselves. Du Bois argued that without higher education for blacks there would be no black teachers for the industr ial schools and therefor no chance for blacks to improve. † (p. 61) Again, the writer states the goals of the 2 men to make sure the readers are able to convey the information to their own understanding.Moore fills the readers with the knowledge that the white society of the past was philosophically corrupted and degraded the worth of black individuals due to white supremacy and the lack of cooperation from the whites, which depressed black’s motivation to instill within them their goals and expectations. The key to eliminating discrimination was to get the government to take initiative to end discrimination of the black race, but as time progressed, rebellious natured individuals presented their disapproval for this racial uplift and started clans like the KKK in order to discourage blacks from earning political rights. As their situation grew increasingly desperate, many poor blacks lost faith in the possibility of integration that both Washington and Du Bois held out as the ultimate goal. †(p. 94). Supporting my thesis, many blacks have lost faith for racial uplift and started to think they couldn’t beat the white supremacist. â€Å"Eventually, after many struggles, the International Migration Society did send a group of 200 emigrants to Liberia in 1895 and another 321 in 1896. (p. 100) The book also did a good job stating statistical facts. One of the class discussions that we had was â€Å"Was it too early to migrate back to Africa? † We asked ourselves this and had a big debate over it, but the novel states that only about 1,000 black people took the ship back to Africa while the population of blacks at the time was somewhere around 8,000,000, that is not even 1 percent and most couldn’t even afford it.It was important that the book stated facts showing that although blacks tried very hard to become part of the dominant group, they did not have the tools and money to do so as the whites were very powerful when it came to black rights. They did not understand how hard the standard of living was for blacks, so the people of color continued to be ridiculed by the army of brainwashed drones, who stood tall at the pinnacle of ignorance. Overall the book did a good job adding to my understanding of the subject.A lot of what I read in the book was learned in our in class lectures giving me a head start. Moore wishes to guide her readers out of their blind state of mind and use the perspective of the two philanthropists in order find their way through the often dark and bleak aspects of racial uplift. Before reading the book I knew little to nothing about Washington and Du Bois, but affectively it has managed to reveal all I need to know about the two and all that they have done in their efforts to achieve justice.

Teaching in a Diverse Society Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Teaching in a Diverse Society - Term Paper Example In addition, ethnically diverse students, within the US social landscape, have been known to perform much poorer than their white counterparts. Hispanic, Asians, American Indians, and Blacks are some examples of student groups with problematic learning experiences. Within the diverse cultural setting, it is observed that students of different races or ethnic groups are referred not with their names, but with their ethnicity. This, according the Terry and Irving (2010), is a factor that shows obvious differences within the class and therefore a student is unable to deliver his best performance in such an environment. The article presents the problems associated with cultural diversity and their influence on performance of the individual student. Article 2: Cultural Competence guidelines and protocols According to the Ethnic Communities’ Council Of Victoria (2006) culture is a set of functions that shape the lifestyle of an individual as it reflects behaviour, knowledge, beliefs , values, and customs. With regards to the article at hand, culture is described as the lens with which people view and perceive the world they live in. For example, the culture of a Chinese and the culture of a Russian differ immensely in that an individual from either culture cannot view the world in the same sense as the other. Therefore, while the article is a guideline to achieving cultural competency, various considerations are included on how one should acquire cultural competency. Firstly, the article takes a holistic approach in presenting culture as a personal factor that influences the individual at a first-person’s perspective. Therefore, a person must be self-aware of his her culture. Secondly, the article suggests that empathy is a major instalment when establishing relationships and dealing with the outside world. It is suggested that an individual must be able to understand that his/her point of view on to the world differs with that of the other person, there fore, an understanding should be cultivated to help one decode signs and elements of dissatisfaction. The influence on diversity is characterized by factors such as cultural identity, perception of time, ethnic identity, language, sexuality, education, gender, family configuration, class, literacy, social history, assimilation, religion and spiritual bias, political orientation, and acculturation. These factors are supposed to be integrated into an individual set of consideration when cultural competency is sought. Article 3: Cultural Competency According to the National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Centre (2009), children in the United States of America differ from the rest of the population in that they need to be protected from a variety of factors. For example, children are easy to bully, easy to offend, easy to convince, and require more time to comprehend things they are taught or things they observe. In this case, while children need the protection of parents from bad societal influences, they also require social support from their teachers and the government to provide policies that set their rights straight within the community. According to the article at

Answer the following questions in one paragraph each Assignment

Answer the following questions in one paragraph each - Assignment Example special and that the United States wanted to show their might over the Soviet Union in that only one atomic bomb could have caused Japan to surrender and advocate for respect of international law by all (The New York Times, n.d). According to â€Å"Morality Reduced to Numbers† by Holt, the doctrine of double effect allows the use of methods that can bring harm to a small number of people for the purpose of saving many lives. This doctrine applies to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where many innocent Japanese citizens lost their lives. Although the bombings caused some deaths on the military, most of those who died were innocent children, women and men. This was the United States’ decision to end the war which could cause more deaths than what was witnessed in the two cities. It also is explained that the attacks made Japan to surrender and this prevented further destructions of lives as it has been explained that the Japan military had organized to invade the United States. However, many people have had different opinions whether that was the only way to stop and make Japan to surrender (Holt, 1995). In â€Å"The Biotech revolution† (2012), Dr. Michio Kaku explains the negative future developments that are going to be encountered by human. Kaku explains that technology causes some problems on human health that can be long term. The health effects are as a result of the impact of the Atomic bombs. Kaku explains that the elements from atomic bomb chemicals are going to cause future problems that will affect the children born. The New York Times. (1995). HIROSHIMA; Justified Bombings? A Survivors Reply. Retrieved on 16th May 2014 from

Sri Lankan travellers needs and expectations about airline websites Literature review

Sri Lankan travellers needs and expectations about airline websites - Literature review Example Increasing demands of the customers have forced almost every business to have their own website. Similarly the airline industry has also been actively participating in this race and many airlines now maintain very attractive and eye catching websites (Weeks and Crouch, 1999; Morrison et al., 1999). The recent years have seen many studies and researches in the field of website assessment (Liu, 2000, Olsina, 1999 and Barnes and Vidgeon, 2001). Although there is a great deal of variation in the website design and content amongst different industries nonetheless quite a few assessment tools with precise excellence criterion have been made (Kim, Shaw and Schneider, 2003). The flowchart regarding the website evaluation is given below: Figure: 1 Website Evaluation Flowchart (Park and Gretzel, 2007, p.48). Website evaluation methods used by different authors As the internet has developed very rapidly there has been a number of websites available now. This vastness of information and types of websites makes it a necessity there must be some sort of criteria for the evaluation of these websites so that a proper level of quality can be maintained and junk material could be avoided (Seoyoung and Jinwoo, 2004). In order to carry out this evaluation a study was carried out and the characteristics were collected and analyzed. The contents were divided in to a number of categories so that it becomes easy to evaluate each one. The 4 Ps category division by McCarthy (1976) was adapted as the initial division criterion These 4 Ps were â€Å"product, price, promotion and point-of-sale†. It has been argued by some researchers that the above mentioned 4 Ps fit properly with the internet related stuff especially websites (Chaffey et al., 2003) however some other authors recommend total substitution of these 4 Ps (Constantinides, 2002; Kotler, 1998). A model for the adaptation of internet commerce has been developed by Burgess and Cooper (1999). The model is composed of 3 point s i.e. endorsement that relates knowledge regarding the corporation provision regarding interaction dispensation linked to online communication Ho (1997) uses an approach for website evaluation that is based upon the approach of phases. According to him the structure of the evaluation criterion is based upon 2 dimensional matrixes. First dimension is of â€Å"purpose† which is divided into 3 further categories i.e. Promotion i.e. data regarding the services and products provided to the clients Provision i.e. presence of information in order to attain the exposure, good will, and credibility. Processing i.e. commerce dealings. The 2nd dimension is called ‘value-created’’. This dimension is also divided into further categories named i.e. well-timed worth, custom significance, logistic worth and amazing value. Wan (2002) projected a tool for evaluating and ranking the international websites for tourists. He used 3 categories i.e. diversity of knowledge, user interface ease, and online reservation facility. â€Å"Airline Site Evaluation Framework (ASEF)† The website analysis of an air line usually address the requirement for ASEF i.e. a â€Å"client-oriented Airline Site Evaluation Framework (ASEF)† in which the assessment techniques and instrumentation methods developed previously were used with particular

Legal Issues of Business Organizations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Legal Issues of Business Organizations - Essay Example The leave is only given because of three reasons; First, in case of birth or the employee has to take care of the employee’s eligible child or, when the employee has to provide foster care or adopt a child. Second, if the employee has to offer care to his/her immediate member of the family, including child, spouse and parent whose health condition is serious. Third, if the employee has to take care of own health condition that is serious according to the physician. During this period, the employee is not eligible to get his salary, but entitled to group health advantages. Considering the provisions, the twins were eligible children of the Employee A; he was entitled to a maximum leave of 12 weeks. As well, employee A’s spouse gave birth to twins prematurely, meaning that, it might have caused serious health complications. Therefore, he was obliged to stay with her as she recovered from her health condition. Since the Act provides for an employee to take care of spouseâ €™s health, the leave was justified. According to the Act, the leave is unpaid. Therefore, Employee A was wrong to request for the withheld salary. The manager acted within the legal requirement for not approving payment to the employee who was granted leave under such circumstances. In situation A, the act was not violated. Section B Analysis of situation B regarding the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 According to the provisions of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), the employees who have reached 40 years, or older than that age are protected in the workplace (EEOC, B, 2008). It prohibits all forms employment discrimination in relation to the employee’s age. Under the act, it is illegal to discriminate the employee about his/her age from enjoying the privileges, terms and conditions of employment, such as hiring, compensation, firing, benefits, promotion, job assignments, layoff, and training (EEOC, B, 2008). The Act also provides that , the older employees should be favored with such employment privileges, terms and conditions, even if the practice would affect the junior workers, below the age of 40 years (EEOC, B, 2008). In addition, the Act prohibits retaliatory actions on the employees who are opposed to the discriminative practices on gender, or someone who has filed a discrimination petition on age factors, testified against such discriminatory acts, and investigating such practices (EEOC, B, 2008). Considering situation B, it was illegal to discriminate Employee B on employment promotion simply because he/she was 68 years. From the situational analysis, Employee B has been in the company of 42 years and his/her performance record was above average. This might be as a result of the long experience that he/she had in the company. Indeed, the employee seems to have mastered the ways of doing the work effectively, which resulted to exemplary performance. Therefore, promoting a younger worker whose performance was only adequate, because he/she was 32, years contravened the provisions of the Act. The management of the company should have favored the older employee because he was above average and the law protects them from all forms discrimination regarding the employees age. Precisely, the law

At the Benihana Restaurant Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

At the Benihana Restaurant - Essay Example We got so curious that we set out on a task to see the different types of kinemes. The analysis we did was in a restaurant called Benihana restaurant. Being a social space we had an excellent chance of making appropriate observations on the various forms, emblems, illustrators, regulators, adaptors, and affect displays of kinesics. Emblems defined as a substitute for words and phrases. Illustrators are gestures that accompany verbal communication. Affect displays defined as gestures that show emotion. Regulators are gestures that control the pace of the conversation. Adopters are the gestures that reduce the tension between two people conversing. On entering the Benihana restaurant, the waiter ushered us in and we noticed that he had put on a broad smile when he was greeting us, and when directing us to the table the waiter used his hand to show as the location of the table reserved for us. We saw nods directed at us by some friends that were present in the restaurant, and this we as sumed was a form of greeting. As we had made an observation of illustrators, the waiter pointing into the direction of the table, the smile he directed to us on the entrance of the restaurant was an affect display and the nods directed to us by our colleagues’ we took them for emblems. ... The welcoming, smile by the waitress is an affect display, and the nod is an emblem. The restaurant was playing jazz music in the background; I could tell that a lot of people in this place loved this genre of music since most people were swaying their head to the flow of the music. A look at the people carrying on with their conversation we could see a lady who from time to time, kept rolling a strand of hair that kept falling on her face, this we assumed was her way of making herself comfortable. Looking around for other gestures, we came up with people tapping on the table, others continuously rubbed their hands together, while others took in deep breaths from time to time. These expressions are what we call adaptors. The affect displays we observed in the room made us know that most of the meetings in that room were romantic dates. We could tell this from the smiles exchanged for couples they were not just ordinary smiles but affectionate smiles. We also observed a couple holding hands from time to time, exchange of different kisses, peck on the cheeks, forehead and the back of the hands all served as affection displays. We also; had a look at the regulators which included people shaking hands before they departed while others exchanged kisses and departed. Some people glanced at their watches signalling the end of the meeting. Among the emblems that we observed in the restaurant included, nods that most of the time we interpreted as ok, a swaying of the head from side to side in a continuous motion meant a no, a lift of the shoulders with the hand spread meant a maybe, waving of hands continuously to say bye. In addition, the thumbs up sign to show agreement could be spotted. We came to a