Entry 9-Milk and Muffins (Final Day)

Last week was the graduation of our parents at Baby Institute, and this week I was at the final Milk and Muffins program for the semester (too many endings at once for me!).

As a reminder...this program was designed to combine our UCF (college of ed.) students in their early language and literacy course with parents and children in an urban community. We met for eight Saturdays at a neighborhood center in the Parramore Community. I want to share two key moments of yesterday's Milk and Muffins session--one focuses on the undergraduate students' growth and the other is on the response from our parents.

1.) Two months ago when we began this adventure, I met our students outside in the parking lot of the neighborhood center to facilitate some of their concerns about this community.  Although I did not talk about my "meet and greet," I knew that some students were a bit anxious about the environment.  As an aside, in the future, I will be more direct in explaining my presence rather than taking an unspoken approach.

Yesterday, there had been a shooting/killing in the neighborhood prior to the start of the Milk and Muffins program and many roads were blocked off by the police as they investigated this incident.  As the students arrived, not one of them even mentioned the shooting and simply jumped in to the preparation for the children and families to arrive!  Finally, when nothing was mentioned, I thought I should say something directly (I'm learning).  So I asked if anyone was running late because of the police in the neighborhood.  The responses were all similar in saying, they were rerouted, but it was not a problem because they just followed other cars through the detours.  I have to admit that I was quite surprised that the focus was on getting to class, and not the crime that had been committed.  It was not simply because the students expected crime to occur in this community, but rather that they had a purpose for being there and nothing would deter them. 
What a change from the first session when the students did not get out of their cars until they saw me waiting to this week's arrival. It reinforces the need for our future teachers to be involved in urban communities BEFORE they teach in diverse settings for the first time.

2.) The second moment I wanted to share was when we were saying good-bye to the families and letting them know that we would be back in August with our Fall Semester students.  Two parents said that they could not believe we were not back again until August. Sam (from last week's blog) said, "Don't you think that's too long for us to be away? April to August is just too long to wait."  Another parent informed us that she feels so much better about her daughter's readiness for Kindergarten.  She stated that after we talked about the steps to learning to read, she relaxed because her daughter is following these steps and she now knows that her daughter will be just fine.

These two moments I shared are all a part of my thinking and planning for next steps...I am not there yet, but know that there need to be next steps in order to truly be an agent of change.