For this project, I joined the innovative Write Suff Program at CMLA. The program connects MCLA volunteer mentors with fifth through seventh graders who come from three local North Adams elementary schools. Elementary school students come to the MCLA campus and participate in an activity or session and then write an assignment about what they did or learned. It was a great opportunity for the children to get involved outside of primary school and learn to write at the same time. I chose to join Write Stuff for my project because I saw it as an excellent opportunity to be with children and be able to analyze their behavior during activities but also teach them something new in the process and in this case I was teaching them to write. During this experience, I wondered if I would actually learn enough from children to be able to write this article about them. But, looking at it now, I can see that there are many things you can learn simply by observing and analyzing the simple things that children say and do. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While interacting with an 11-year-old at The Write Stuff, something I learned and found interesting was the effect of education on a child's daily life. I was talking to a kid about the school he attended and whether he liked his school. The boy told me exactly what school he attended and said he liked it because he really liked all his friends. He then went to tell me where he lived, giving me his exact address, what his house was like, and his phone number. The boy even went so far as to invite me to dinner because his mother loved meeting all his friends. When I later talked to another girl who was about the same age, I asked her the same question. After she responded I asked her if her parents had talked to her about giving out personal information to strangers and she told me that her parents had specifically told her to keep personal information to herself. When he told me I went back to the boy because I was curious. I asked him if his parents told him not to give out information and he simply said, “No.” When normal events like this happen, I usually don't think about it too much because it really doesn't matter that much, but since I have an assignment and was looking for things like this to happen, it caught my attention. In situations like this, you can see that education has an effect on a child's daily life. By definition, culture is the nurturing and encouragement of growth and development. The way you were raised by your parents is represented by your actions and represented in the things you do every day. We as humans are a product of the environment around us, so if we were raised by different parents or in a different area, we would be completely different people than we are now. I saw an example of this while talking to these two fifth graders. One boy's parents didn't think it was important to tell him to keep his personal information private, so he went ahead and gave it all to me. Who knows who else this boy could have reported this information to. He thought it was innocent but it's actually a serious problem because we wouldn't want that boy to give that information to the wrong person. This boy's parents made their son feel like he was safe with everyone and that's why he told me his storiesinformation. However, the girl's parents had told her that she shouldn't share the information because it could end up in the hands of the wrong people. He knew something bad could happen if he gave out the information, so he kept it to himself. Although these two children are the same age and are both in fifth grade, they have two different opinions on the same topic. This is because their level of education was different. We can assume that the boys' parents were more permissive and didn't think about it, while the girls' parents were more authoritative and made sure their daughter knew not to give out personal information. Their level of education had a huge effect on what they thought was right and wrong and on their cognitive development. One child thought what they were doing was okay because they had never been told not to do it while the other knew it was wrong. I found this really interesting because it's not something I would usually notice or sit and think about. It really highlights the effect your level of education can have on your entire life. This is just one small aspect of a child's life among a million different aspects, so who knows what other differences like this we can find. I also wonder what the future of these kids will be; will the girl grow up to be more protective of her life than the boy because she was told not to give out information because something bad might happen because of it? For me, talking to her child confirmed what we talked about in class. We always talk about how the way you are raised and the environment we grow up in shapes who we are as a person and shapes our actions. The experience I had with this little boy sharing his personal information showed me that we are a product of the environment we grow up in and that upbringing has a huge effect on how we act and what we say. Another thing I learned about it is how successful the scaffolding process is overall. Just as scaffolding in the normal world is a temporary structure used to support workers on the side of a building, scaffolding in psychology is a teaching process that involves providing resources and support to students as they learn new concepts. As students develop skills in those areas, supports are gradually removed so that the student can perform a task without assistance. In class we talked about scaffolding and I absorbed what we learned, but I didn't fully believe that this was an effective way to teach a child about particular topics just because I feel like it takes time and isn't the most effective way to help someone. While working with one of the children at Write Stuff, I was shown that scaffolding is an effective way of teaching. One of the children I helped with writing had difficulty writing down everything he had done during the day in the writing order. It should have started the moment he woke up to the moment he was next to me and wrote down what he had done. Since he was struggling, I decided to try using the scaffolding method to help him. I started by simply asking him what the first thing he did every morning was, I didn't want to give him the answer but I wanted to guide him. He said he woke up. I asked him what the next thing he did was and he said he got out of bed. When I asked him what he did next, he couldn't remember. He just remembered having breakfast and going to school. I told the little boy that there are intermediate steps that he is missing and he still couldn't think of anything that he was missing. I pointed to hisshirt and asked him when he wore it, and he immediately remembered several passages he had forgotten to write. As he continued to write this list, I gave him less and less help and eventually he managed to do everything on his own. This was the process of creating scaffolding and it showed me that my preconceptions about scaffolding were wrong. I thought scaffolding wasn't the best way to teach because it was time consuming, but it only took me a few minutes to use scaffolding to teach this little boy how to write a list of things he did during the day without skipping steps. After actually participating and witnessing scaffolding first hand, I believe it is a very neat way to teach a child about a specific topic or concept. I think gradually removing support from a child is a great way for the child to learn to work on their own and be more independent. This is very important for children in years 5 to 7 because they rely a lot on their parents and friends. When I used scaffolding to teach this boy how to write about his day, he learned effectively and quickly and it was an amazing thing to witness firsthand after being skeptical. I learned a lot from this experience. Even though we've talked about scaffolding for quite some time in class, it's always more effective to learn things when you actually participate in them. I feel like I use scaffolding a lot in my daily life when I help people and even when I've helped people in the past, I just never noticed that I was using it before. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay One last thing I learned from volunteering for the Write Stuff program isn't from a specific interaction with a child, but it's what I learned from the different types of teaching strategies I observed. Some of the times I participated in the program, I simply observed how the mentors interacted with their mentees. There are different teaching styles which include permissive, uninvolved, authoritative and authoritative. As I observed these different teaching styles, I saw the effect they had on the children's interest in the program and their learning overall. The teaching style I saw the most was the authoritative style. The Authoritative style includes high expectations and standards of behavior, consistent application of rules, and the inclusion of children in the decision-making process. For me, this is the most effective teaching style, so I'm happy to say this is the one I've seen the most. Many mentors were strict with the children in the sense that they had to follow the rules and do the writing assignments, but they were also kind to the children and gave them the decision about what they wanted to write and guided them through the process. They also carried out guided activities with the students and had a lot of fun with them. The next teaching style I saw present was the permissive style. The permissive style is characterized by emotional warmth but few expectations or standards for children's behavior. There were one or two mentors who seemed to have volunteered just because they had done so too. They were really nice to the kids and let them do pretty much whatever they wanted. They did not apply the rules they should have applied and this negatively affected the children's overall learning. Mentors who were permissive towards their mentees did not form a relationship with each other, while mentors who used the authoritative style did. There are two other teaching styles but I don't have them.