凯特·惠特曼，23岁 Reflects on ‘Fulfilling Opportunity to Learn and 给 Back to the 哈特福德 Community’

凯特·惠特曼，23岁，a 社会学 主要和 修辞学、写作和媒体研究 minor from Bedford, New York, is a part of the Ivy Society at Trinity and sings with the Trinitones, Trinity’s oldest all-female a cappella group. She also is a student-writer for Trinity’s Office of Communications. Below, Whitman reflects on a formative experience in a 社区学习 course during her first year at Trinity:

I knew I wanted to study the social sciences at Trinity, but I was unsure of which one would fit me best. I took a bunch of different 101 courses, and ultimately landed on a major in 社会学. Because Trinity is a liberal arts college, I was still able to take courses in other fields that sparked my interest, even if they didn’t fall under my major or minor.

在我的第二学期, I enrolled the Education Studies 200 course, “分析学校,” with Director of Social Science Research and Lecturer in Sociology 丹尼尔·J. 道格拉斯. 我听说过信誉最好的网投十大平台的好东西 教育研究课程 它提供的课程范围也很广. The course had a classroom component and a community learning component. 在课堂上, we would discuss how social constructs and factors impact the educational opportunities students have in the United States. The course also included psychological and 生理 perspectives, creating a more in-depth opportunity to analyze educational systems through the social sciences. 在我三一杀手生涯的这个阶段, I had decided I was going to major in 社会学, so being in a course that implemented sociological perspectives and ideas was very helpful for my future 社会学 (major-related) courses.

The community learning component of the course allowed students to participate and observe at a local K-12 school once a week. I was assigned a first-grade class at the Expeditionary Learning Academy at Moylan School (ELAMS). ELAMS is a neighborhood school in 哈特福德, so all the students who attend need to live within a certain proximity to the school, which also happens to be right next to Trinity.

每周一下午, I would walk into the school alongside the parents dropping off their children. We were all going in for the same reason: to learn. I would help the teacher with her class lessons, which sometimes consisted of reading aloud to the class and other times consisted of doing one-on-one work with students who didn’t understand the lessons. I was simultaneously taking notes of my observations for our weekly journal reports of our classroom experience. This activity greatly developed my research analysis skills and helped me in my future 社会学 research courses. Recording research through an observational lens was a different type of writing for me, which helped me in my rhetoric courses that had assignments with a wide range of writing styles.

在以拦, 我陪学生们去吃午饭, 课间休息时和他们一起玩, and tied their shoes when they didn’t know how. The students were eager to learn and it was extremely rewarding to watch them develop their educational and social skills throughout the eight weeks in the classroom. It was an incredible and fulfilling opportunity to learn and give back to the 哈特福德 community. (不幸的是, the community learning component of the course was cut short when classes went online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Not only was it a great experience working with the students and faculty at ELAMS, but it was also interesting taking what I was learning in my “分析学校” course and applying it to a real-life situation. 通过我的观察, I was able to analyze the class through a sociological, 生理, 心理透镜, which I wouldn’t have been able to do without the help of Professor 道格拉斯. I used these newfound skills in other humanities courses, such as my “Research Methods in the Social Sciences” 社会学 course, 也由道格拉斯教授授课, w在这里 I studied school uniform implementation and its effects on suspension and expulsion rates.

Taking the “分析学校” course in my first year prompted me to get more involved with other opportunities on campus. Trinity has so many different things students can get involved with, 在校内外, and this course showed me that trying something new—in this case, community learning—is beneficial to my education. 从这门课开始, I’ve taken two more educational studies courses and two more courses with Professor 道格拉斯. I plan on taking more educational studies courses and community learning-based courses before I graduate from Trinity.

I am not currently planning on being a teacher in the future, but I took useful lessons from working in a first-grade classroom. It is a very rewarding feeling to make a difference in a first-grader’s life through their education.

Read more about 社区学习 at Trinity 在这里.