In March a group of Clarke County School District (CCSD) 2nd graders came to visit our campus as part of the Experience UGA program.  The focus of this particular trip was public health and incorporated the importance of physical fitness.  UGA students, under the coordination of College of Public Health Graduate Assistant Deenene Chandler, guided a number of stations that each of the small groups of students and teachers visited and engaged interactively.  The interactive educational stations addressed: Nutrition, Physical Activity, Hand Washing & Germ Spread,  and Bullying Prevention.

I loved watching the second graders who were from the nearby Barrow Elementary School actually walk to our campus for the Health field trip.  How apropos, no?  It’s always so wonder to see their bright and excited faces when they come to campus.  We are equally excited because we know that it will be a learning experience and memory we all will cherish throughout our lifelong learning journeys.

Teachers and students arrive to the Coliseum seating area to a surprising nonchaotic scence as hundreds of children, their teachers and the UGA volunteers provide instruction on the day’s itinerary.  After which groups of second graders are divided up into groups of about 8-10 children as they tour the various stations set-up throughout the building.

 Here UGA students engage the children in interactive expression and education about how to effectively negotiate the challenge of bullying in schools using some best practices strategies.

 The students after engaging with UGA Public Health Students are encouraged to write down and share their experiences.  They were encouraged to think of ways that they could experiences a positive outcome under a bullying situation if it were to occur.

 At this station the children were shown how to make healthy choice with regards to what they eat and how portion sizes can effect diet.  They also where challenged to place “food cards” under the appropriate category.  They had three categories to selection from: 1) “Good to Go!” foods, 2) “Sometimes” foods, and finally 3) “Whoa!” foods and how their intake should be minimalized.

I enjoyed this station particularly well as the students had the opportunity to engage in physical exercises as teams.  They were mirroring each other’s movements as the stood face-to-face and to see the smiles an hear the giggles coming from them was priceless.  It was also a wonderful reflective opportunity for me to remember how important “gym” and physical fitness was to all public school curriculum.  As a child, I vividly remember the energy me and my classmates would put forth in an effort to earn “The President’s” physical fitness award certificates.  I was happy to see a valuing of such learning being an important focus of this public health field trip.  Particularly, in light of concerns for childhood obesity and it’s related diseases.

Even some of the elementary school teachers were tempted to join the students in the exercises and mirroring activities. So cute! 🙂

UGA Public Health student demonstrates proper hand washing techniques.

At the hand washing station children learned the importance of keeping their hands cleans to avoid harmful bacterial (i.e., germs). They sang the ABC…s song as methodology for having the proper length of time under the water (or with a sanitizer) for washing their own hands.

This is my favorite picture taken with the Experience UGA program for CCSD students.

This picture (and it’s associated experiences)has been one of my favorite so far with the Experience UGA program.  The little girl in front with the yellow barrette in her hair, bent over hugging another little girl was so precious and full of confidence (so you know I was lovin’ that alone).  Well, as we were talking she asked me a personal question about an injury I had in high school.  A tumor damaged the 7th facial near on my left side of my face so I sometimes don’t have symmetry when I am talking, but can achieve it at rest and/or typically pretty well for photos (as you can see above).

I usually never think about it much, but children are so natural and uninhibited (if you are educating them correctly) she asked be about it directly.  I told her about the injury and said to her, “…but I’m still pretty!” laughing afterwards to which she replied, “You are very, very pretty!” and “I going to be a doctor.” ❤

Notwithstanding, take a look at my little future doctor up front.  She is bent over in the picture hugging another classmate with the sweetest smile on her face.  That is exactly the type of spirit and intelligent young girl we with Experience UGA want to see become a doctor along with all the other beautiful children in this photo that our program helps in facilitating their vision whether it be to become a doctor, teacher, scientist, college professor… the possibilities are endless! 🙂

“Can you write that another way so I can read it?” is what the cute little boy told me toward the end of our field trip when a group of Clarke County School District kindergartners visited campus.  I will go in to more detail about my reflection on the substance (both explicit and implicit) of his request to me that day later in this post.  Nevertheless, this was an awesome field trip time for these particular children as our College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) was sponsoring an outdoor viewing of a number of animals that where being presenting on campus for a CVM event.

Ms. Dorothy from the CCSD helped managed the children while on campus for the field trip. She was an absolute pleasure to work with.

On most of the field trips along with teachers and parents each class typically has other paraprofessionals that accompany each group.  The children are teamed with out College of Education early childhood students who are always so excited to work with the children on campus.  The pre-service teachers operate under the direction of Dr. Janna Dresden who is not only a clinical associate professor within the education department at UGA, but also serves as a board member for the Experience UGA program.

The UGA Office of Service-Learning (OSL) oversees the program from an administrative end and works in direct cooperation with faculty, CCSD, and UGA students to help ensure well-coordinated events on campus.  The OSL also raises funding that helps with the trips offering its administrative planning, financial support, and OSL volunteers to assist whenever needed.

I was just as excited as the children to see all of the animals that the VCM brought to campus on that day.

Having the opportunity to see a camel, water buffalo and a bison with its horns up close and personal was all the rage for everyone.  Particularly, the little guy in my group who attempted to draw the bison.  We work in cooperation with the CCSD curriculum objectives and with the kindergartens we focus on concepts of geometry.  So as the children tour, they are to identify geometric shapes that the notice in the environment. The next take time to write down the things that they see and later engage with us about their experiences.  It is so much fun to see the children point and walk as they shout out loud, “Oh I see a triangle”, “There’s a circle”, “That’s a rectangle”. 🙂

I waited and waited for one of the “fainting sheep” to just keel over!!  lol  But to both my and my little guy’s disappointment they never fainted in front of us while we viewed them.

Sheep casually strolling around in their pen.

As I mentioned earlier, each child is given a clipboard and writing utensil and are encouraged to write and draw.  My little guy was enamored with the  extremely large bison (below) and I encouraged him to draw it.  He was very hesitant but I encouraged him with each stroke until he gained confidence to draw his own vision of the bison.

This was his initial product and he (and I) were so proud of his drawing.  As the children ate their snacks I wrote a little note to him thanking him for coming to visit us at UGA today.  Unawares, I wrote the note in cursive.  It wasn’t until the little boy asked me,  “Can you write that another way so I can read it?”, did I have a sort of epiphany.  His words lead me to think about teaching and learning and the assumptions we sometimes make about how individuals perceive, process, and create meaning from their experiences and how important it is that we as educators be prepared to meet learners where they are.  The child had no idea how to read cursive as he had not reached the stage of learning such a concept.

We are sometimes faced with learners who either have underexposure to certain experiences that would facilitate learning.  They might simply learn more effectively in different albeit creative ways that may require we “go off-script” in order to facilitate effective learning and engagement.  I so love how this job allows me to reflect and grow both as a researcher and educator.  It also confirms for me an adult education best practice which holds that adult learning (particularly in my case) is a relationship of knowledge reciprocity where I too learn from the children and adults I interact with during the trips.  The students are not simply empty vessels that I am looking to pour my omniscient—all knowing—knowledge into via a unidirectional process (i.e., Paulo Freire’s “banking education”). I have offerings in the educational process as do they and the learning should and must me multidirectional.  I believe we all know this in the UGA COE, but its good to get a reminder every now and than. 🙂

Lin Chen (holding yellow bag in this pic) looks on as students stand in line for face painting.

Lin Chen does a masterful job working under Dr. Dresden in the COE.  She does of great job of coordinating the student teacher volunteers and mapping out the day’s activities and routes.

Of course, the departure time is always filled with mixed emotions for us all. The children don’t want to leave and we would love to keep them on campus forever. Nevertheless, we give our hugs and say our goodbyes motivated by the fact that we will get to do this all over again for a different group of students the following week. We resigned yet motivated to watch the children as they continue to matriculate to their next grade levels as they return to us the following year having literally grown older and ready for their next Experience UGA adventure.

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UGA Early Childhood Education majors, who volunteer to participate in Experience UGA, are the backbone of the kindergarten field trips to campus.

The field trips of Clarke County School District (CCSD) students to our campus at UGA keep getting better and better. 🙂  The quote that titles this blog post perfectly summed up the sentiment of a little boy who I overheard speaking at loud as he, our student teacher, and his classmates were headed to their school buses for departure.  His asserting that he never wanted to leave UGA and “like it” was exactly what we want to hear coming from students.  Such a response let’s us know that our partnership is working and also we are to not become complacent as we ultimately want to turn that sentiment form “like it” to “love it!”  In the picture above one of our early childhood learning students at UGA engages a group of kindergarteners to identify geometric shapes while gazing over a larger view of campus.  I so love this picture as it is a perfect metaphor and meme of our efforts to encourage these student to look out into the larger world and tell us what they see.  At the same time, we are positioning ourselves as educators to help facilitate their increased view of themselves and their community.  We are also positioning them to make the connection of how UGA is very much a part of the community as we seek to form relationships of reciprocity being a land-grant university committed to teaching, research, and service.

In addition to our “write-and-draw” exercise we do with the students to encourage them to draw geometric shapes, the student-teachers take time out to enjoy a snack with the children and read an engaging story.  They are encouraged to interact with the student-teacher and to share their ideas and impressions during story time.

Civil & Human Rights Field Trip Clarke County School District 11th Graders

There are few words to express how moving and informative a field trip this particular one was for both us as adults and for them as youth negotiating issues of race, civil unrest via Ferguson, and how they are to interact with police.  It was surreal to realize that we had plans to coordinate with the CCSD teachers’ curriculum on this topic and subsequently major life events interjected requiring we be very intentional and purposeful as we negotiated sometimes sensitive topics of racial violence and police authority.  However, fortunately for us you would have been hard pressed to find a better group of folks more up for this task.

We were truly blessed to have with us for the field trip with CCSD high school students, Mrs. Shirley Taylor and Mrs. Carolyn Turner who were a part of the Athens Civil Rights Movement as high school students themselves.  They participated (as high school students) in protest marches, sit-ins, and faced racial hostility from the local policy who used dogs and intimidation at that time in an effort to dissuade  the student movement.  Both Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Turner are feature in the video production we shared with the students called “If We So Choose” which offers emotionally riveting testimonials of other Athenians who participated and witnessed the Athens Civil Rights movement.  UGA undergraduate Mansur Buffins is a Sociology major and did an excellent job of creating dialogue through powerpoint presentations and interactive skits in order to engage the students more deeply into the topic of civic and human rights.  We had two separate venues on two different days so that we could ensure that all of the CCSD high school 11th graders could attend.

Carolyn Turner (seated) and Shirley Taylor (standing with microphone) regale the audience with stories about their efforts in civil disobedience and non-violent protest.  Some of the stories were more amusing as Shirley spoke of how she snuck to drink from the “white” water fountains only to discover that the water tasked no different.  The following are some quotes they shared that I simply had to highlight:

“Nobody paid us, nobody said you’re a good child, it was just something we needed to do!”

“We didn’t have any fear until the dogs came… but we had to do what we gotta do.”

“Some of us felt a little inferior at first [relative to school integration], but most of us didn’t.”

Clarke County School District high schoolers (and myself) listen with high intensity and interest to the stories about the Athens civil rights struggle offer by our guest speakers.

UGA law school student and Black Student Law Association (BALSA) member Jonathan Stuart took the lead for a teach-in session with the high school students, particularly offering points of advise to black males as they negotiate police encounters.

Jonathan provided instruction on both days of the teach-in and was joined by fellow BALSA students.  They engaged the youngsters in discussions and answered some of their questions regarding their rights and best practices when interacting with police.  On yesterday we were jointed by UGA Police Chief James “Jimmy” Williamson who talked about his efforts to increase racial competencies among his police officers.  More poignantly, he was very transparent with the audience by sharing his own story of a police encounter he found less than pleasant to say the least.  Chief Williamson then went on to mention how his wife (a UGA Sociology Professor) brought to his attention how his privilege as an educated-white male allowed him to deflect the less than cordial officer’s attitude.  She went on to emphasize to him how some conflicts can arise when people of different cultural backgrounds encounter police and things escalate unnecessarily.  Chief Williamson’s transparency in his remarks was refreshing for me personally.

UGA Police Chief James E. Williamson engages students, teachers, and staff during the Experience UGA civil and human rights field trip.

BALSA law schools students head out into the audience to dialogue with the high school students and answer some of their questions about their legal rights.

Claire Cohan (right) and spoken word poet Lise Pierre from the UGA office of Multicultural Services and Programs.

I just want to take time out to give a special shout-out to Ms. Clair Cohen who is the coordinator of the Experience UGA program operating out of the Office of Service-Learning on campus.  I just finished chatting with her and told her how amazing she is and how much I admire her ability to arranging all of the pieces in bringing these wonderful events to campus.  She literally works with faculty, teachers, and students on both ends to accomplish these monumental field trips that are directly impacting and changing the lives of these students for the better.  Thank you Clair!!  #YouRockBigTime. 🙂

Ms. Shirley Taylor and I. What a blessing to meet and sit at the feet of both she and Ms. Turner for these programs. #CivilRights_SHeros #WomensHistoryMonth

The beautiful and appreciative faces of the CCSD students and teachers as they enjoy their lunch on campus.

Hope you enjoyed the continuing sharing of my #InternationalLife.  I am so loving my new job with the Experience UGA program within the Office of Service-Learning.  I feel so blessed and inspired by all the people I am encountering on this journey. ❤  Until next time.