Service Learning Reflection (Question no. 4)

I’ve already written about my encounter with CH in a previous reflection. But as I led the expert hunter/fisherman through listening and writing exercises, I was reminded in addition to the existence of sub-culture-specific “glossaries” the effect of lists. We discussed in class how lists are everywhere - how we organize things in list form, how we simplify extensive pieces of information for lists, how they work their way into our everyday life. We have grocery lists, bus schedules, TV guides, etc. If I remember correctly, most of my classmates agreed that lists are generally very helpful.

I was instructed by NALC to work with CH through a series of exercise designed to help students recognize beginning consonant sounds. It worked like this - CH had before him a workbook filled with several columns. Each column had a heading of four letters of the alphabet followed by twenty blank lines for writing. My job was to read aloud twenty words and on each line CH would write the letter that each word started with, one of the four letters listed. He did fairly well; he had to struggle and think through a few of the words, and had a lot of trouble particularly with the letter “c.”

While this exercise proved helpful, and CH did show improvement, there was a flaw, I think, in the lesson plan. We didn’t do this exercise five or six times, not even nine or ten times. We did this same exercise for the entire session as instructed by the NALC staff. CH commented, and I agreed with him, that the activity was pretty monotonous. It was overwhelming to look at CH’s workbook and see four pages filled with dozens of blank lines. It was in this case that I figured that the “list” was an almost discouraging tool. Even though repetition is key in learning anything, it’s a different story to have an adult humble him/herself in order to learn a skill such as reading and writing. The pages of lists definitely brought down CH.

I might have gone about this exercise differently. Instead of presenting the entire book incomplete, it might seem less daunting to give the student scanned copies of the workbook - one or two pages at a time. I would even try and get rid of the list; it might be more suitable to give the student a blank sheet of printer paper and have him or her use a pen or pencil and write out the words in a more individualistic fashion.

It’s been a few weeks since I met with CH. I knew that after our time together that he would be working on those lists for his next several sessions. I wonder how he did with the rest... Either way, that particular hour at NALC showed me that there is a downside to an otherwise helpful everyday writing device. Hopefully we learn not to overdo lists.