First of all, as of the beginning of July, Sewa's Get Inspired Houston interns completed our month-long tutoring at Alief's Summer Language Institute program. As was mentioned in our previous blogs, the SLI program is a month-long voluntary summer school program for intermediate, middle school, and high school immigrant children who have lived in the United States for less than 2 years and are struggling with English language comprehension. Several interns collaborated with these students for four hours a week during the month of June, dividing their hours evenly between two or three classrooms. Their subjects were reading, science, and/or social studies, depending on which classroom a tutor was placed.
As mentioned, this proved to be both a challenging and rewarding experience. Several interns found that their students made great improvements in their language comprehension in just a few short weeks of receiving one-on-one tutoring. For example, I was tutoring a small middle-eastern girl in my intermediate classroom who was having a very hard time with even basic English. She was very shy, and whenever she struggled with something she would hide her face behind her burqa and hum while she tried to figure it out. Her teacher, Ms. Thompson, assigned me to her specifically, though I was also asked to go around the room during certain activities to help other kids with their spelling, writing, and comprehension. Though she was very shy at first, when she got something right, she was immediately more confident in her work and was usually able to complete it with more accuracy. Every time she did something correctly and figured out her assignment for herself, she became more independent and asked questions less frequently, though she also found that she had more confidence to ask questions in the first place instead of looking at me quietly for the answer. By the time I completed my tutoring, she was able to grasp the basic meaning of singular nouns, plural nouns, and past, present, and future verbs with relative accuracy. She also completed an entire worksheet by herself without my assistance, and I was very proud of her accomplishment!
At the end of the program, the principal, Ms. Hsu, and vice principal Dr. Jameson, organized a cultural event for the intermediate, middle school, and high school students throughout the last two days of class. Our interns and our AmericorpsVISTA supervisor, Aneel, attended the program for the intermediate children. At this event, teachers from different ethnic backgrounds were asked to bring in a dish from their country to share with the children, other teachers, and attendees at the event. And let me tell you, there was SO much food! The tables were overflowing with food from Mexico, El Salvador, Vietnam, South Africa, Bhutan, Panama, and other countries in South America, Central America, Asia, and Africa. It was delicious! After food was enjoyed, kids were able to go up to the front of the cafeteria and sing karaoke in their native language or perform dances they had prepared for the audience. After all the singing and dancing, the teachers played a recording of the Alief SLI "Theme Song" they wrote and prepared for the event, and all the kids got to go back to their classrooms with a complementary book to thank them for their dedication to their studies this summer. It was a very rewarding, fun experience, and I know we interns are very grateful for the opportunity to get to meet some of these children and to help them with their language comprehension and transition to American schooling.
In addition to the Alief program, we have successfully completed three immunization drives this summer! Our first drive on June 27th was held at the Alief annex, where children were pulled from their classrooms so they could be immunized according to what vaccinations were required by law. It was a bit disorganized at first, since we hadn't yet experienced what our roles were going to be, and there was quite a bit of running around and trying to find translators for a lot of parents arriving at the annex who did not speak English. Additionally, the intermediate kids were out during the first half of the day on a field trip and once they came back to the building they were all "combined" into different classrooms and mixed together, so calling certain teachers to send different kids down to the immunization area proved to be very difficult. Some children took a while to locate, but in the end we were able to locate them and successfully immunize them. All in all, it's estimated that we vaccinated over 75 children on the 8th, alone! We also learned a lot from our first immunization drive and used this experience to prepare for our second one hosted at the Los Arcos Apartments on July 8th.
That immunization drive proved a bit more troublesome. The weather was horrible and we were faced with bouts of heavy rains that ruined our posters, so that was a bit problematic. Additionally, while we were able to successfully prepare for large groups of people, the Texas Children's Hospital bus suffered a malfunction that led to the awning outside of the bus breaking under the weight of the rainwater. It took over an hour for the mechanic to arrive, since the bus couldn't leave without being able to retract its awning, and by the time the repair was completed it was too late to continue with immunizations. Though we were forced to end early, we were still able to vaccinate 13 children. To make up for the technical difficulties experienced on the 8th, we are actually conducting our third and final immunization drive today at the Los Arcos Apartment Complex from 9am to 2pm. Numbers and experiences from today's drive will be reported in another blog later this week, but from the sound of it it seems successful in spite of today's gloomy weather.
Our Intern, Shikha Shah, assisting a volunteer translator outside the Ronald McDonald immunization bus at the Alief SLI Immunization Drive on June 27th.
A close-up of the bus during the Alief SLI Immunization Drive on June 27th.
Our Interns and Alief SLI helpers outside the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile at the Alief SLI Immunization Drive on June 27th. From left to right: (front row) Emma Welch, Kriti Dogra, Miranda Mendieta; (back row) Shikha Shah, Shawn Hooper, Aneel Bhimani, Sarah Hiscock, Megan Nguyen, Lucinda Andrade, high school volunteer Rohan, Michael Shemenski, and assistant principal of Alief SLI, Dr. Jameson.
An inside look at some of the chaos of our paperwork room during the Alief SLI Immunization Drive on June 27th. Our translators and volunteers did an excellent job of adding order to disorder and helping things run smoothly!
As for individual internship teams, the Children's Activities team has seen a lot of success with their Los Arcos kids. The week following our last blog, for example, was "Earth Week," where the children were taught about the importance of the Earth and keeping it healthy for us, and were also educated on the recycling process and what recycling means for us as consumers. They then watched a video about how Earth Day came to be and when it was first celebrated in the United States. Once their lesson for the day was done, they made homemade bookmarks and drew about what they learned from the Earth Day videos and were asked to bring empty cans from their homes so they could make pencil holders later on in the week. An individual blog regarding updates from the Children's Activities team will be coming up soon!
The Public Health team recently took 6 immigrant families to the ECHOS public health office to assist them with applying for health insurance, especially considering the new changes in universal healthcare. At the moment, they are working on planning the End of the Summer internship event planned for this upcoming Saturday.
The event venue will be at Foerster Elementary, located at 14200 Fonmeadow Drive in Houston, zipcode 77035. It is scheduled for Saturday, July 27th, at 3:30pm and will have plenty of food, children's art, face painting, henna, hand-printing for the kids on a Sewa mural,, dancing, and plenty of other fun arts, crafts, and events to enjoy! Our dress code is semi-formal, and the theme for this year's event is "One World." This event is open to the public! If you would like to attend, please feel free. If you have any questions or inquiries, you can inquire through email at sewausa.houston@gmail.com or our website, houston.sewausa.org.
More information on our internships and end of the year events for our internship teams coming up soon, so stay tuned!
