Reflection #12 Sarah Sumsion

Field Experience Service Learning Project

Cherry Creek Elementary has a student population over 600. Twenty percent of the students are hispanic, with less than 1% of other races and nationalities. The 6th grade class in Mrs. Stephanie Truscott’s class has 28 students, half boys and half girls.
From the very beginning Mrs. Truscott has been more than welcoming and accommodating. When I first contacted her she thanked me for being so on top of things and for planning ahead to let her know what was going on. Whenever we would ask her what we could do for her, how we could help, or what hours she would like us there, she would immediately ask what was required for our assignments. She made sure we were in a position to accomplish and work on school requirements. She was always friendly and open to conversation and talking about her point of view and philosophy of education.
Mrs. Truscott looked forward to our digital story and smiled and seemed very pleased while watching it.  She told us afterwards she thought it was great. She liked that it uses the core and that it was something the students can relate to. Afterwards she told us she would like a copy for her classroom for future use.
She was happy with how our lessons went and felt we prepared well in advance. She liked how we ended with our digital story at the end of our teaching week. She did not want us doing any Olympics activities because that is a fun end-of-unit activity the 6th graders do each year. She did, however, feel it appropriate to play our Olympics digital story as a preview of future lessons to come.
We taught Mrs. Truscott how to create a digital story and shared with her several different tools available to use. We explored the idea that even the students could probably make a digital story with ease. She told us the training was “awesome.” We talked about how the students enjoy movie clips and youtube things, although that site is blocked in the schools. She said the students, living in a media rich environment, would enjoy something like that over reading a textbook.
I think this service learning assignment was fantastic. It was a fun assignment, although incredibly time consuming actually making the digital story if being very conscientious of copyrighted material. I liked being able to teach someone else, because that helps me remember how to do something. I gained the ability to make a “sales pitch” for encouraging ways teachers could use digital stories. It gave me a reason to think about how great it can be to share and spread knowledge within the education community as most are working with limited resources.
This assignment for service learning was worth it. I now have a digital story I can take to my classroom, as well as the digital stories from my fellow cohort students and more. Teaching Mrs. Truscott about how to make a digital story was simple and fun. She enjoyed it and it was not terribly time consuming.