Learning Letter

1.     All if the work we have completed I fully enjoyed doing and I actually learned a lot about different countries and the different cultures. When I first joined this class I thought that we would be reading actual children's books with pictures. When I looked at the readings and realized that these were chapter books, I was surprised. I likes that before every book discussion in class we had to do research on the book as a whole. I thought this was very helpful when discussing the book and comparing how real the books were in compared to what happened in real life considering that most of these books we real were fiction. The hardest project for me to do was when we got to be in groups of 2 or 3 and research on two borders. I thought this was hard because it was hard to find information on our countries and we didn't know exactly what we were doing. The end project for this turned out nicely however I thought this was the hardest project. My favorite project was actually the family project. My group did extended family and I thought it was so fun to read stories on extended family and relate to the messages that the stories were saying. The other groups I was surprised on how much information and children books there were on same sex parenting. I had no idea and it was really eye opening. I also really enjoyed the museum display. I thought this was a great way to express who you were as a person and it gave the class a change to get to know everyone on a personal level. I liked seeing everyone's creativity on how they were going to express themselves. The most interesting blog for me was doing research on Nepal/India and human trafficking. I learned about human trafficking when I went to youth group in high school, so I had a little bit of background on that already. I just thought that the topic was interesting and I just kept wanting to add more to my blog the more I researched.

2.     When talking about the readings, we covered a lot of topics but also there were a lot of similarities throughout each book. For example, the age of all the children that we read about really opened my eyes about what children in other countries have to go through for very little or no cash. The age in every book really shocked me. As a class we also talked about how money can influence anyone to do something. If it is for your family, or for yourself money is important to everyone and is needed to survive. Greed is a big factor of these books. Another topic that we talked about in class was regret and acceptance or at least that is what I took out of the last couple books. Especially in a long way gone. You need to be able to accept yourself before you can live through your life. Acceptance of crossing the border and be able to do something greater for your family or accepting killing innocent people or accepting that you were in sex trafficking is hard to do. And each story they did accept what they did and in most cases their families accepted them and what they did as well. That was a good thing. Im glad that most of the stories we read had happy endings. I also thought that when we discussed things in class it helped to understand each book and the reason behind each story. Some stories I would not give younger students until they are in high school because of the content. But I did enjoy all of the readings and discussions.

3.     I participated a good amount I think through out the course. Throughout the course I saw myself as a citizen of the world as sometimes helpless because I'm not doing much for other people. It defiantly opened my eyes when it came to wanting to do more to help people. And I think that as a teacher I can do that. It is just hard because as of right now I feel like I can't do much. I don't have money because I'm a poor college student and I'm busy with school. However I do want to do more for the community. Start small and when I get older do more for the students as a teacher and influence students in a positive light. I want to do more because of this class.

4.     My plan of action im going to start small. I decided that I am going to continue to volunteer as a mentor at Cheney Middle School next year. I loved doing it this last year and it helps local kids in the community stay on the right track and also allows me to be doing something with kids which is what I want to do when I'm older anyway. I also want to study abroad in the next year to be able to see the world and a different country. Im going go take our speaker Sean's advice and travel as much as I can while im young because that gives me a chance to see the world through other people's eyes. Between these two things I think I will continue to carry on with the information I have encountered and learned and use it in my future.