My Social Action Plan

Reflections

"Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river" - Virginia Woolf

This specific quote is a quote that stuck with me for the past 8 weeks of my final teaching experience.

Although the main aim of the project set out by the IIE was to involve the community and the learners, after countless discussions with my mentor teacher, the HOD and the principal, it was agreed that the learners of the school need their own individual project to work on to assist themselves.

While being placed at a well-known and established school within my area, it was brought to my attention that many of the learners in the foundation phase cannot read properly as English is not their home language, it was also due to the low level of reading skills these learners had that they would struggle to write basic sentences.

Through this the aim of my social action plan became one to known as "help to read", this allowed me to dedicate time throughout the school day to read with the learns, to help them with sight words, and to increase their fluency of reading. Although the CAPS document does not allow enough time to cover all of this throughout the school day, I took 30 minutes a day to assist two groups at a time - this soon became the learners favourite time of the day.

Initially I was worried that this would not be a "good" project and that I should've just stuck to a project that assisted the community however I quickly realized that this was going to become a success. Once the learners saw they were being helped, actively, they began to show an interest, the learners began to read more, to write proper creative writing paragraphs, started reading in class once their school work was done, and started encouraging their friends to read as the learners I worked with were taught that through reading it will assist them with their academics and will encourage them to be creative with their writing pieces.

By the end of my 8 weeks of teaching experience, the learners started bringing books to school to add to their little classroom library, they started getting excited to go to the library at school and choose the "hard" books to read, it was also clear that the learners spelling and writing had began to improve as they started reading and learning more.

Service learning has always been apart of my life, starting from young ages. Being able to help or to guide someone has been something that I have always done and taken part of in many different forms. However, this particular project made me realize just how important it is to provide help to those in our daily lives as you never know what that help may do for those individuals. Professionally I have realized that community projects always start in the classroom and I as the teacher have the benefit of seeing who or what needs help in that given time and I will be able to start making a change. Although this wasn't a community project, it was an inside school projects which involved the teachers, the learners and the learners parents. As the teacher, the learners look up to me for help as well as I am there to positively influence the learners.

The benefits that this 8 week project had on the learners will further encourage the learners to want to read more, to want to learn more, and to want to do better personally and with their academics. This has also taught the learners and the other teachers that not everyone is on the same academic level and that it is okay to take time out of your day to help the class as a whole, to reach out for help, and for the learners to keep heling their friends who need the help.

One thing that had really stood out to me was one particular learner who had never spoken English in her life before, until 6 months ago, started reading more, becoming fluent and was assisting the weaker learners with their reading and writing. This particular child had said to me "thank you for helping my dreams come true, for helping me learn to be better, and for making reading and writing fun and not scary." It was in that moment that I knew that by starting a project within the Grade 3 classes, I was making a difference to the learners lives, and that my chosen project was indeed not a failure.