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.