JOURNAL ENTRY ONE

THEME/TOPIC: PROMPT SIX (PROBLEM)

Before taking education 160, I have never applied any afterschool position in
United State. However, I did work in the afterschool program at an international high
school in Taiwan. Since most students in that school are from very rich family, the school
has facilities and programs that poor school cannot afford. After working in that
international school in Taiwan, working in Wilsons afterschool program is an eye
opening experience. According to the Tavernises article, Researchers from the
University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college
completion the single most important predictor of success in the work force has
grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s (2012). This research shows that the
achievement gap between rich and poor students is a major issue. First day working at
Wilson, makes me believe there is a gap between the poor and the rich students. The
students in Wilson do not have as much opportunities as the students in Taiwan
international school to go on a field trip or listen to professional speakers. They do not
have many varieties of choices that give them the chances to experience different
activities. While working in Wilson, I had a chance to chat with a couple students in
Wilson and ask them about their weekend plan. A student name Ener told me he is going
to fish with his father, and another student name Jeanette told me she is going to go
shopping with her mother. From their responds, I realized that since their families are not
wealthy and do not have the extra money to let the children to support mastery or expand
horizons outside of class, the best they can do is to spend their valuable time with their
children. This is a major different between the rich and the poor. Due to Tavemises
article, One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that

wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children while
lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single
parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources (2012). As it was mentioned
earlier in this journal, college is the single most important predictor of success in the
work force, and how well students do in college depends on how well they do in previous
educations and their out of school activities. Since educators cannot control the
environment and activities that students spend on their free time. Therefore, having the
resources time and money to provide the best afterschool programs is one of the best
options that educators can do for children from low income family. Give them as much
opportunity to learn and practice different new skills and further expand on their old ones
is important. Being competitive is good, but it is a different story if there is no chance for
the poor students to compete with the rich ones.
Source:
Tavernise, S. (Feb. 9, 2012). Education Gap grows between rich and poor, studies say.
New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-growsbetween-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

JOURNAL ENTRY TWO

THEME/TOPIC: PROMPT SIX (EVALUATION)
Learning In Afterschool (LIAS) is not a perfect evaluation tool. It is an evaluation tool
that focuses on five different principles active, meaningful, collaborative, support mastery and
expanding horizon that can encourage the students improvement and enrichment in many field.
After working three weeks at Wilson afterschool program, I realized that Wilson is not an
educational base program. Wilson is a recreational base afterschool program. Students enjoy

outdoor and indoor activities more than support mastery and expanding horizon. Wilson
afterschool program does not focus mainly on the support mastery, and definitely not on
expanding horizon. Wilson afterschool site focuses more on the three other LIAS principles;
active, collaborative and meaningful.
Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon I helped out at Wilson afterschool site. During
homework time, I usually help the third grade students with their multiplication skill. If the
students finished their homework and if there are enough time, Mr. C (the third grade teacher)
will handpick five to seven students whom Mr. C thinks need more help on multiplication skill,
and tell them to sit at a semicircle table with me. At that table, I will give the students worksheets
with fifty multiplication questions and ask them to do them under a three minutes time limit.
Normally they wont be able to finish all of them but I told them to do as many questions as
possible. After repeating this exercise for ten to fifteen minutes, students will lose their focus.
When they leave, they all can answer some multiplication problems that they could not answer
before.
Other than that, Wilson afterschool site doesnt really have anything that helps students
support mastery. However, they did a really good job on the active, collaborative and meaningful
aspects. An example will be during the outdoor activity time, students can choose which station
they want to go to for the lesson. All the students are super excited with the activity they do at
this period of time. There is one soccer station, which is also students favorite station that train
students with their dribbling skill, passing skill, shooting skill and most importantly the ability to
work as a team. In this station students will first do some small drills with each other to warm up.
While doing the drills, they are actually improving their teamwork because soccer is not a one
man sport. After they warm up, they are allow to play in an actual game. This is the interesting
part of the program. While playing in a soccer game, students learn to be a leader. When there are
conflicts between two players, they usually just deal them on the court and forget about the

conflicts after the game. They learn to work with their teammates and think critically about where
should they pass the ball and how do they score under different circumstances. Lastly, through
soccer they are able to put away all the cultural differences and become united, which is one of
the most valuable and useful real life lesson.
Source:
LIAS Self-Assessment Tool

JOURNAL ENTRY THREE

THEME/TOPIC: PROMPT ELEVEN (CHANGES)
Project success is a well-organized afterschool program. However after working at
Wilson for four weeks, there is one thing that bothers me a lot. Whenever it is homework time,
most students are not particularly happy or excited to work on their homework. Since Wilson is a
unified afterschool program, all the students have the same homework. Except for those few
students who know what they are doing, most students are either struggling or copying from
others. Also other than those who have homework to do, there are a few students who either
finished their homework or do not have any homework. These students usually just sit at their
desk, and doing nothing for the whole time. If there is one thing I can change in the project
success program, I will change the structure of the homework time.
During homework time, students are required to finish their homework. Other than stay
quit and sitting in their sits, the staffs do not give any instruction of how they should work on
their homework. Students can raise their hand when they have problems, and the staffs will go to
them and help them with their questions. However, this kind of environment is lacking
excitement. To students, homework is their worst enemy. They do not have fun doing them.
According to Huang and Dietels article, afterschool programs used a number of strategies to
keep students engaged in learning, including cross-content integration, diversity of activities, real

world examples, dialogic and cooperative learning, and cultural awareness programs. Learning
was often embedded discretely in sports, games, discussions, and journal writing (2011). Best
program should use different strategies to help students become or stay interested in learning; it
should not be the opposite.
If I am going to rearrange the structure of the homework time, I will give more
instruction to the students. I will distribute them into four people a group and tell them to discuss
and complete their homework together. At least for the first ten to twenty minutes, I will ask them
to not ask any questions from the staff members, because I want them to think and struggle. This
way all the students will be participating and students with less knowledge will be learning from
students who know more about the subject. Then I will walk around the room and join them with
their discussion. Doing this I will be able to give out hints to groups who do not know what to do,
and also see which group have finish the homework. For those groups who finished the
homework, I will give them some complements and ask them to be teacher assistances for other
groups who have questions about the homework. This can train their leadership skills and help
them become more confident. Furthermore, I will prepare a record book for checking if they
completion their homework or not. I will ask all the students to come to my desk one by one and
make sure they finish their homework. Lastly, if there is still time, I will prepare some gifts and
ask students to volunteer themselves to explain some of the homework questions to the class. I
will give the gifts to whoever volunteered.
Resource:
Huang, D. & Dietel, R. (2011). Making afterschool programs better. National Center for Research
on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), UCLA.
http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/policy/huang_MAPB_v5.pdf