Who Am I?

Today was our last day of the semester at Empowerment for Girls. We talked about everything that we had learned so far. I was a little surprised to hear how much the girls had learned. I wasn't sure if they had really understood everything but I guess they had. They understood the concepts of things like stereotyping and racism pretty well. They said that we can't just assume every person of a certain group will be a certain way just because they are in that group. Everyone is their own individual. We also reviewed body image and how we need to respect and be happy with our bodies. After that we made collages from magazines of pictures and words that made up who we are. We focused on positive things and it was a really fun activity. I'm really looking forward to coming back next semester and working more with the girls. Our next two goals will be to help them become active and influential participants and leaders in the community and to better their decision making skills and plan for their futures. We plan on going into the community and doing a project to serve others. I think the girls will really enjoy it, the way I have enjoyed working and being a role model for them.

Reflectology

I thought this this service learning reflection time was a really good idea. It was not only a time for me to reflect on the service that I have done, but also a time to learn how other people have been serving in the community. The "speed sharing" was really fun because I had the chance to talk to a bunch of different people involved in different organizations and hear how things were going for them and what they had learned. It made me very happy to be a part of Empowerent for Girls because not all the others were enjoying their time as much as I was. However, I also got to learn from others from the experiences they shared. I have only been working with young girls so this gave me a chance to learn things about the homeless, elderly, and disabled also. We also had time to discuss things with our own organizations and talk about how things were going and how things could be improved. Overall this was good time spent and it made me realize that together we were all greatly helping to affect the community in a positive way.

Black and White

Today was a very interesting day and I was even able to learn from it. We spent most of our time doing an exercise with the words black and white. First, we had all of the girls write down words and phrases that had the words black and white in them. Then we gave them definitions of the words and had them label each of their phrases as being positive, negative, or neutral. We found that a lot of the whites had positive connotations, while a lot of the blacks had negative connotations. Examples of this include things like black eye and black market. This just showed how ideas are formed through language. This is something that people probably never notice but yet we can form feeling about ourselves through these words we hear. And how do you think these words and phrases make black people feel? This excersize helped to open my eyes even more to the problems of racism. I think the girls learned a lot from it as well.

Better Ways

I thought today went very well compared to last week. The girls were much more respectful and we were able to get through the whole day without the girls even needing a warning for their behavior. The first activity we did was really fun. We made "Me Dolls" where the girls got to create little dolls that showed how they were unique and special. They glued and drew all sorts of things on the dolls. Some of them were very interesting and this activity did a very good job at showing how everyone was special. We also did an activity on ways to respond to people when they do something hurtful or unacceptable. We made a list of things and then said what not to say and a better way to say it. I thought this was an important activity because I think it will help the girls learn how to deal with problems and hard situations better. There are many times in life where it is hard to respond in the right ways because we are so angry or annoyed. We need to remember to keep our cool and treat others how we would want to be treated.

Disrespectful

Today was a more difficult day with the girls. They were very hyper and had trouble sitting still and listening. Even after giving them several warnings and taking their stars away they were still being disrespectful. It was very hard to get through our activities. We talked about differences in people all over the world, including such things as religion and wealth. We also had the girls write about things that brought back memories from their childhood. This was a fun activity and the best part of the day. But by the end the girls had already lost all their stars and we were not able to draw for the doorprize. We had the girls write down what they could do to be more respectful. Hopefully they will remember these things in the future.

Different

I thought today was a great day with the girls. Our first goal was loving ourselves, and today we started our next goal: learning to accept others and be respectful of differences. First, we had the girls draw pictures of what it means to them to be different. There was a wide variety of ideas that they had, from hair length to una-brows. Then, we had the girls write down words that described who they were. Then, we had them come up with stereotypes having to do with their words. The girls were very respectful of each other, but it was kind of hard for them to understand exactly what stereotypes were so we might need to go over this a little more in the future.

Relationships

Our topic today was relationships. I thought this was very important because everyone develops many different kinds of relationships throughout their lifetimes. It was great to see all the things that the girls came up with that are important in relationships. We also talked about the things that make a good friend. They girls acted out scenes and gave examples of healthy and unhealthy relationships. They were very excited about this and did this very well. We also learned how to communicate with “I” messages to tell each other how we feel in tough situations. While the girls did very well in the activities, they were also very hyper and it was hard to get their attention at times. Being respectful and listening is something the girls still need to work harder on. They take their stars very seriously though so once we started taking them away they began to behave better.