Digital Media Project
For my digital media project, I did service learning. I volunteered at Banaadir Academy every Thursday mornings from 9am-11am. At Banaadir, I would spend an hour in Mr. Cooper’s room and another hour in Ms. Steenvoorden’s room. In both rooms, I would tutor kids in math. Mr. Cooper teaches 6th grade math and Ms. Steenvoorden teaches 7th and 8th grade math. Both maths are similar, nothing too hard to handle. Since I was not allowed to take pictures of the students or anyone, I did take a picture of what the school looks like from the outside. That picture is on my medium page. I also took a picture of a math assignment that I helped a student with; it is attached below. During the middle of the semester, I went and interviewed the principal of the school, Shawn Fondow, and asked him what Banaadir was all about. He gave me insight and history of the school. From volunteering at Banaadir, I acquired skills that will be useful to me for the rest of my life. I learned to be more patient and more open with life. Since Banaadir have mostly Somali students, every time I volunteered, I got a taste of a different culture. I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, so going to volunteer at a school where there are close to being none white students was different for me. By tutoring the children, I learned to be more of a patient person. There are things that I will know that the children does not and it does not take that fast for the dots to connect for them than it does for me, because I have been through it before and they have not, and I had to be patient for the dots to connect with the children. I am glad that I volunteered at Banaadir to acquire both the skills of being patient and open-minded. When I first started to volunteer at Banaadir, I came in with an intended major of chemical engineering. As the semester went along, I changed my major to chemistry and on a pre-dental track. I did not know if I wanted to be just a dentist or if I wanted to specialize in something. The more I volunteered, the more it came clear to me that I would not mind working with children. By partaking in the service learning, I found out what kind of major I want, what track I want to go on, and what I want to specialize in. I am not currently planning on majoring in chemistry, going pre-dental, then specializing in pediatrics dentistry. I do not think that if it were not for volunteering with Banaadir, I would not have come to the conclusion that I want to be a pediatric dentist.
