Description and Overview
The biggest task of mine this summer that I shared with a fellow Swarthmore student, Jissel Becerra-Reyes, was editing a 100 page manual. This manual, the Youth Court Training Manual, is a guide for teachers who are teaching Youth Courts. Consisting of background information, 21 lesson plans, and several appendices, the Youth Court Training Manual is intended to create a class of expert Youth Court members. However, when Jissel and I were thoroughly reading, editing, adding to, and changing this document, the idea of creating a Volunteer Manual came to mind, so we created it. Essentially, this manual is being created so that a law student, an undergraduate student, and anyone volunteering and helping the teacher knows exactly what they need to do when showing up to class that day. Lastly, the final manual we were deemed the task of was creating a K-5 manual. Youth Court is a disciplinary, educational, and a socialization tool, and we thought that it would be best to start teaching these students these skills when they were most absorbent, hence the kindergarten through 5th grade manual, which emphasizes rules, respect and responsibility.
Skills Gained and Lessons Learned
Creating these lesson plans and manuals pulled from many areas of academia such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and education--and those are the fields that I pulled various readings from in order to edit and create the lesson plans for the Youth Court Training Manual and the K-5 Manual. One cannot create a lesson, let alone a manual, without understanding your audience, the circumstances your audience experiences and lives with, and the resources, or the lack thereof, that the school provides. I learned that you cannot use the copy and paste method when teaching as each school, each class, and each students is different. You need to learn about your students, where they come from, and how their background and living style affects their behavior in the classroom. Teaching to a classroom of Black students has to be different than teaching to a classroom of White students, Hispanic students, or a racially mixed classroom. I not only learned this from all of the readings I did but also from mere experience of going into the classroom and just watching.
Impact and Importance
Understanding before creating lesson plans is important and necessary because if you do not understand the students you are teaching to, they will not learn and you will not be teaching. Lesson plans are supposed to reach the student and open her or his mind, and all of the manuals we created and edited are therefore simply a guide as each teacher will need to tinker with and slightly change the lessons depending on how their students receive them. Those teaching need to understand their students, and this has to be done before any lesson creating can begin.
The biggest task of mine this summer that I shared with a fellow Swarthmore student, Jissel Becerra-Reyes, was editing a 100 page manual. This manual, the Youth Court Training Manual, is a guide for teachers who are teaching Youth Courts. Consisting of background information, 21 lesson plans, and several appendices, the Youth Court Training Manual is intended to create a class of expert Youth Court members. However, when Jissel and I were thoroughly reading, editing, adding to, and changing this document, the idea of creating a Volunteer Manual came to mind, so we created it. Essentially, this manual is being created so that a law student, an undergraduate student, and anyone volunteering and helping the teacher knows exactly what they need to do when showing up to class that day. Lastly, the final manual we were deemed the task of was creating a K-5 manual. Youth Court is a disciplinary, educational, and a socialization tool, and we thought that it would be best to start teaching these students these skills when they were most absorbent, hence the kindergarten through 5th grade manual, which emphasizes rules, respect and responsibility.
Skills Gained and Lessons Learned
Creating these lesson plans and manuals pulled from many areas of academia such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and education--and those are the fields that I pulled various readings from in order to edit and create the lesson plans for the Youth Court Training Manual and the K-5 Manual. One cannot create a lesson, let alone a manual, without understanding your audience, the circumstances your audience experiences and lives with, and the resources, or the lack thereof, that the school provides. I learned that you cannot use the copy and paste method when teaching as each school, each class, and each students is different. You need to learn about your students, where they come from, and how their background and living style affects their behavior in the classroom. Teaching to a classroom of Black students has to be different than teaching to a classroom of White students, Hispanic students, or a racially mixed classroom. I not only learned this from all of the readings I did but also from mere experience of going into the classroom and just watching.
Impact and Importance
Understanding before creating lesson plans is important and necessary because if you do not understand the students you are teaching to, they will not learn and you will not be teaching. Lesson plans are supposed to reach the student and open her or his mind, and all of the manuals we created and edited are therefore simply a guide as each teacher will need to tinker with and slightly change the lessons depending on how their students receive them. Those teaching need to understand their students, and this has to be done before any lesson creating can begin.