Peter Fairbrother
10/9/11

Service Learning Week #2

This past Tuesday we went back to Shea High School in Pawtucket for our second week of service learning. From everything that I had heard about Shea I was expecting only those students who were present last week, so imagine my surprise when I walked in and there were at least 3 or four new students. So we had to go through another name game to try to learn all the newcomers names. After we learned names we discussed what kind of learners people are.
When I was in high school I always heard what kind of learners different people are. Outside of the classroom I never gave this minute’s thought. It was always drilled into my head you could be visual, auditory, kinesthetic or a combination of the three. I never really cared about it and after a while it actually became a nuisance to go to all of my classes and sit their listening to the same lecture over and over. Although this annoyed me back then now I realize that it has truly helped me. By knowing what kind of learner I am I can approach my classes differently to get the most out of the class. This subject also seemed quite familiar to my fellow volunteers. The ones who did not seem to have ever been taught this and how to utilize your self-knowledge was the students. They did not seem to know that there are these different ways of learning even thought they are in ninth or tenth grade. Then once we discussed the skills the students did not seem to know how to apply this to their different classes. My point was that if I know I am an auditory learner I would excel in a class with a teacher who only lectured and when I got into a visual teacher’s class I would need to focus more mentally to try to get the most out of class. The reason that this sticks out the most from our past week is that if the students do not know these things then how do they approach their different classes. I felt that with my parents and my teachers I had been led and taught how to approach and succeed in my classes. As we all know urban school children have less support at home. On top of that if they are not learning this stuff in class when will they? How can they thrive and survive in a more competitive college setting if they get into one? I do not know the answers to these questions but this kind of realization encourages me to work as hard as I can while I can with these students to try to help them learn as much as I can teach them or try to impart on them.