BRYANNA
Elementary Education Undergraduate |
BRYANNA
Elementary Education Undergraduate |
Today was my last day working with the Mariposa foundation and I must say it was one sad day. We began our day working with the Maripositas (little Mariposa girls) whom we never got to work with before. These girls were special, and you could tell that each one of them had all of the potential in the world to be who they wanted to be. After only working with them for one day I know that I have to come back in the future to see how all of them are doing. After the Maripositas left and went to school our cohort had a meeting with all of our teachers and that was extremely emotional. Every teacher had their own story and impacted everyone in the cohort differently. One of the instructors, Mary Jane, said something to me that I will never forget. She said that in order to be a teacher you have to be willing to learn. You have to learn about your students and the material that you’re going to instruct. When you do this, your instruction will be a lot better because you get more comfortable with whom your teaching to and the material. I have heard something like this before, but hearing her say it made it more meaningful because she is in the same predicament as me. Although she spoke English, there were still a lot of things she didn’t know regarding life in the United States. I didn’t know a lot about life in the Dominican Republic, so through the classes both the students and teachers were learning things about each other to make for a better learning environment. We ended our final day at the foundation playing games with the Mariposas who had been teaching us for that week. We first played a game that involved some people diving in the pool and grabbing scrabble letter pieces so that each team could make words. Although my concentration is Spanish, I found this game to be pretty hard. I still don’t know a lot of vocabulary, and this game helped me realize that I need to start learning more vocabulary so that I can be more fluent in Spanish. While playing the game everyone was dancing and singing different songs and it reminded me a lot of being home with my family. My family always has little cookouts where we play music, dance, and sing. After reflecting on this time, I realized that this was my family. Families have good times together and always share everything. I learned so much from both the Mariposa staff and girls, more than what they would probably even think. Without these people, I don’t believe this trip would have impacted me as much as it did. I became more fluent in Spanish and learned that I have to keep wanting to learn in order to be an effective teacher. I’m blessed to say I even had the opportunity to work and learn with them, and these are people I’m never going to forget. After spending a week at the foundation, I can honestly say the probability of me coming back and visiting is 1000%. Families are not supposed to leave each other for good, and I promise you that´s not something I´m going to do. ¡Hasta que volvamos a encontrarnos!
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AuthorI am an Elementary Education major with a concentration in Spanish here at Buffalo State College. I love working with kids and hope to one day be an ESL teacher. I love to laugh, dance, and spend time with family. I'm excited to embark on this journey to the Dominican Republic and can't wait to see what's there for me to explore! Archives
February 2017
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