Emily
I met Emily through a my friend Monica who's class I visited a few weeks ago to talk about my life and tell them a few stories about my experiences growing up in Germany. The school she works at is on the reservation, is called Mariano Lake and is for Native American kids only. My visit there was very interesting. It confirmed my belief that the school system needs to be reformed. Apparently there is only time for reading and math on the daily schedule, you will not find any other classes. Children in second grade are supposed to sit at their desks for 4 hours without any brakes and there is barely time for the 15 minuets of recess per day.In a way I feel what happened to me will happen to them. I'm talking about wonderful sweet children that have this creative spark in their eyes when you tell them about the world or art. I included a short talk about photography in my presentation and passed out my DSLR to let them take some pictures. It was amazing to see the excitement and passion that was instantly ignited.But as I mentioned before what happened to me will also happen to these children. Give them 10 years sitting still doing math and reading and the spark will be gone. They will end up being ready for the work force and and it is unlikely that they will be as lucky as me to find a teacher that will help them to find the way back to who they are.But this is of course not the fault of the teachers or the schools who put a lot of effort into doing the best they can do within the system. To me working with kids is such a fulfilling job and I had a wonderful time helping out in the classroom.Emily works at another school on the reservation called Church Rock. Again I had a great time helping out in class. Emily is an amazing person and is putting an enormous effort into Teaching these kids.The landscapes out on the reservation are really amazing. After class I asked her to come out to the playground to take the picture.
"Emily" Church Rock/New Mexico/Emily at the playground 02-25-13 at 4:55 PM
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