Ethan Silvius

Synthesis Paper
May 2, 2012
Freeport School District
My service learning at Freeport High School was extremely eye opening. Also, I believe
it will be very helpful to me once I am out in my own classroom. This class obviously teaches us
great lessons relating to gender and ethnicity in our society, but I believe this service learning
cite was the best possible one available. I think this because it put us right in the classroom
environment in which we will need to remember these lessons later in our careers. Other sites
were clearly valuable, but Freeport High School was the best. I was able to see actual situations
and scenarios play out within the routine of a regular school day.
In my three days while in Mr. Winkers and Mr. Zicks classrooms, I saw many things
happen that made me think back to our class lectures, discussions, and homework. While
listening to these discussions I thought about how many of these situations were over
exaggerated by society and they were not as big of a deal as they were made out to be. But I
realized that was because of the community I lived in which was, all white and all English
speaking. Even here in Platteville, the majority of people are white and English speakers.
Freeport opened my eyes to how real and alive these problems are. For example, Mr. Winker
taught only two different classes. One was AP Russian History while the other was American
Government. His history classes were mostly seniors and they were very studious and had much
homework assigned to them. He had four sections of government, the fourth and final being a
lower level group. Many of the classes before this one were mostly white but this one was
mostly black and that opened my eyes greatly. After talking to the teacher, it was clear than
many of these students did not have good resources at home backing their education. This
connects clearly to our discussion concerning fairness of schooling. It was clear that because
these kids households lacked certain resources, they were at a disadvantage. Something else I
noticed was how girls and boys were treated differently. Both teachers, being males, were
harsher on boys and expected more out of them than they did the females. This shows that
sexism still is prominent in schools nowadays because depending on what gender a student is,
they will be held to different expectations. I saw this when in Mr. Zicks class, more often than
not, he allowed the girls to talk more amongst themselves than boys. I do not believe this was
because he was biased toward them, but it was clear that he expected the boys to behave more
than the girls. Finally, the other similarity I saw in class related to a male student that was gay. I
only knew this because the students openly talked about it in class, but were not harmful or harsh
with their comments. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, in this classroom at least, the thought
that gay students were picked on by other peers. Also, there seemed to be no discrimination
from the teacher towards that particular student. My experience in the classroom clearly showed
me that our discussions and lectures are for very prominent issues in todays schools.
In the classrooms, I was able to help students with any questions they had with their
homework while assisting them in filling out worksheets and or doing projects. This helped me
realize how everyone learns differently and not all students can be taught the same way. For
example, there was a Hispanic student I assisted and he was not an ELL, but he had some
difficulty understanding some of the things I was saying. This improved me instantly as an
instructor because I had to think on my feet and quickly think of a way to help this student that
was difficult to communicate with. So to make it possible, I helped him read through the
textbook to find the answer, instead of me explaining it to him in my own words. Even though
this was a simple fix, it was a good experience for me because it showed me how language can
sometimes be a roadblock for communication so one must use more than just words to
communicate ones thoughts to another.
There are many things that were done by these teachers to help make the classroom
equal, even though there was definite diversity. These actions taken helped make the room more
relaxed and kept tensions between everyone down. First of all, Mr. Winker respected everybody
for the unique person they were, not for who he wanted or expected them to be. This respect
shown by him was also given back by the students due to the comfort they felt in his classroom.
Both teachers also were very fair in terms of class participation. In other words, they allowed
everyone that had something to contribute to the discussion to give their input. Not one gender
or race was given more say on topics than others. Equality was also demonstrated when it came
to rules. Tardiness was not allowed for anyone, nor was cell phone or iPod use. I noticed the
majority of the kids that were late to class were white males; the teachers still marked everyone
tardy that was tardy.
This learning experience will be forever helpful to me. Not only was I able to help
students from different backgrounds and upbringings, but I was able to do so while in the
environment in which I will spend the majority of my career in. That is the most important thing
to me because I was able to see exact and specific situations that I can learn from as a teacher
myself. It also helped me solidify the fact that I want to be a teacher. I loved every second of
my time there because I was able to help students learn materials and also help them figure out
problems on their homework. Helping people learn has always been a passion of mine and this
experience showed me that I will build on that passion once I become a teacher.