Ibrahim+Abed

Ibrahim Abed (A- Independent study) May 24th, 2012 Service Learning Ms.Mazhar **//__ Service Learning Portfolio __//**

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 * //__ Table of Content __//**
 * 1) 1. Service Learning Reflective Essay
 * 2) 2. SMART GOAL Sheet
 * 3) 3. Updated action plan
 * 4) 4. 4 Journal entries
 * 5) 5. Disability research
 * 6) 6. Hour sheet

**//__ Service Learning Reflective Essay __//** Where do I begin? Service Learning is great. Some people only think of it in the way of getting something nice onto their college regime, but until now, I haven’t seen anyone, who wasn’t mentally touched by the people they’ve been helping. Just doing something for your country gives you this feeling of satisfaction. After the first 5 hours Magdy, Youssef and me completed, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe how fun this actually was, and how much connection we gained to these 14 years old orphans. It made me want to stay with them forever. I loved being with these people and it certainly was very fun. The only problem would be schoolwork and traveling on holidays that could keep us away from Ehab and Co. Ehab is one of the 14-year-old children we’ve been visiting. If you reflect on each one of the group made up of 11 kids, you’ll kind of feel that he is the leader, the one who drives his family forward, through the seemingly easy times. He is smarter, taller and more mature than the others, though the other 10 children were not far of from him. The first time we went, he was the one to show us around and make us feel like were at home. It was amazing and so was this year’s experience of helping my community. Over the past couple of months, I’ve completed around 60 hours of Service, mostly going to this Orphanage, but also helping out in a couple of other of things. This has taught me a couple of things, that are crucial when dealing with spontaneous situations, or having to deal with different people, people that don’t usually see IPhones or the sight of another country. One of the most important things I’ve learned is organization. This factor has been crucial in the work we’ve been doing. When for example preparing to help out in a class or actually having to teach a class of 11 people by yourself, you have to have a lot of organization. At first, we had to be a little creative and be able to act fast and responsible. The dad of the family, Mr. Hatem, didn’t really trust us at first, but luckily for us, he knew Youssof’s cousin Aly El Sewedy, who has been helping out at this orphanage for quite a while now and seems to be like a celebrity there. Another basic thing I’ve learned is thinking ahead of your moves. When talking to these kids, you usually have to be able to analyze the conversation, respect their opinions and work on top of them. I realized that every person is different, and that you should try to build on their point as much as possible, instead of rejecting what their saying, while maybe adding a bit of my opinion into what I’m saying. These basic skills have been also helping me out at school, as I know how to recognize people’s interests much faster and might switch subjects when realizing that their not interested or uncomfortable when talking about that particular subject. To my level of thinking, I have improved it a lot in the past year. I’m not sure how to relate this to Service Learning, as I think it’s just me getting older and being able to stuff more facts into my brain, but now I surely can think broader and faster than before. Fortunately for me, I always had Youssef or Magdy on my side, when being stuck in a problem or not knowing what to do, when the lesson isn’t flowing as good as planned. Then of course I’d just turn to some football, which everyone in the room enjoys. Especially Youssef, who we always laugh with about his high level of aggression and how he “blew away” a person last Thursday while playing football. Everyone laughs and starts getting involved again, as they slowly gain more concentration. Me personally, I’ve changed a lot in the past year, slowly understanding these people. I realized how well they work as a community, much better than any I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve learnt that on the last day of going to the orphanage. I went back to Sewedy’s car, to get my Phone, and it wasn’t there. Quickly, we investigated and figured out, that his driver had left the car for 15 minutes to get gas for Magdy’s car and had left one door unlocked. Someone had taken my 1-week-old IPhone 4. This was a shock. Around 15 people from inside the Orphanage came out. They spread into different areas to look for the phone, that me, someone who they consider as a friend had been stolen from. They ran into different directions, scavenging and interrogating everybody they saw, which looked suspicious. Other people went of into cars, looking for the person who had stolen my phone, while others were standing with Magdy, Youssef and me, talking to us about the huge amount of things that get stolen in this area everyday, and how we should trust the orphanage, as they would never do that to one of their friends. Other than that, they were telling us what someone might do when stealing a phone and how he would deal with it. After 2 hours of looking and trying to locate the phone through its Mobile Me account on Magdy’s phone application, we gave up the hopeless fight to find this expensive item. It was gone, and I knew that I had lost something again. Right now I’m writing this paper 2 days after the incident. It seems like I haven’t seen anything yet, and that I might be facing some issues with my parents for the next couple of long long weeks. I am depressed, but not because of the phone. Ehab and Co. thought that we would never go there again, after what had happened and as were done with our hours, and summer is about to come soon, we didn’t know how to explain to them, that there will not be a next time for either Magdy or Youssef. Me personally, I’m pretty dedicated to going over there the next year and building our relationship with them even further. Surely, none of us had any challenges with these children. In my football club, I usually play people of that sort and knew exactly how I should react with them and knew right away what to do. I felt like Magdy was the more serious person. He focused more on teaching them, to get them ready for their end of the year government exams in English. Youssef was in the middle. Sometimes he was more teaching the kids, and sometimes he would rather listen to their stories, play with them or just listen to Magdy. Me, I think I’m that guy, who was slowing the production a bit. I was more interested in the entertainment part of our job and loved going onto the field and play with them some football. Next year, I am doing some sort of Community Service again for sure. It doesn’t take so much time of you, and in the end you feel so much better. Sometimes, the kids would even teach us or help us out. They helped Youssef in his Arabic homework, and told me some things about really everything. Even about girls we had a little of talking. There was only one challenge in this whole project. We didn’t know how to talk about our own parents. They’ve been living with Mr.Hatem all their life, while we can go back to our lovely parents everyday, who take care of us and make us a nice warm meal everyday. We weren’t sure if it was all right to talk to them about their parents, and if they ever met their parents. Maybe next year I’ll gather the courage. The problem concerning this issue is the overproduction of children in our country. For the past couple of decades, women have been getting normally 6 children, believing that the six children will get big, rich and be able to care for her well. Soon, they realize that she can’t take care of all of them, or even afford enough money to buy them sufficient amounts of food. It’s ignorant and makes me angry, every time I think of how uneducated these women are, due to our corrupt government, which can’t provide our country with a proper educational system for everyone. I believe that all the problems people are dealing with in Service learning are all connected to the lack of education in this third world country. For the past 40 years, we’ve been going down the drain and the highest people politically were scooping up the millions of dollars of the streets. It’s humiliating and should hopefully have an end soon. When this revolution has finally completed its stages of succession, hopefully Egypt will rise again and soon, if everything goes right, we won’t have poor people to worry about, a good educational system, clean water and food. Maybe not us, but that’s not why were doing all this. We’re doing it for our children, so that they can live in peace and harmony and don’t have to experience what we have to everyday.

3. Smart goal sheet: S: Teach and aid orphans in need. M: When they are happy and able to complete questions and assignments given to them in the language or subject taught. A: Yes, helping out people has always been something that has attracted me and sometimes even been a burden, when accidentally neglecting my own happiness for the one of others. And I believe that my goal is realistic enough to be able to achieve. R: The only obstacles I will be facing is the fact that my life is already very busy and packed with weekly and daily routines that I have to complete, but time can always be found somewhere, even if it has to be squeezed into my weekend. T: By the end of the school year, before I move to England, I want to have built up a special relationship with the orphans I am helping.

4. Updated action plan: Target Problem: Education

Target Group: A group of 4 orphans aged approximately 8-9 years

Project Title: Yanboo3 El Nour

Goals:


 * 1) 1. Learn the alphabet
 * 2) 2. Be familiar with basic English terms
 * 3) 3. Know correct spelling and grammar (the basics only)
 * 4) 4. Write simple English sentences
 * 5) 5. Say and write the name of something that is drawn on the board
 * 6) 6. Have a simple conversation in English with each other or with us

Obstacles:


 * 1) 1. The orphans have a very short attention span
 * 2) 2. The orphans are often not obeying what we say
 * 3) 3. The orphans often get bored from our activities and become disengaged
 * 4) 4. Not all the orphans are at the same English level, thus some were more advanced than others
 * 5) 5. The orphans often forgot what we had taught them the class before

Tasks:


 * 1) 1. Start class exactly at 2 o’clock
 * 2) 2. Combine writing exercises with drawing exercises, so as to keep the students more engaged
 * 3) 3. Provide the students with treats after each class or after having accomplished an impressive feat
 * 4) 4. Before commencing the actual lesson, have a little review of what we did last class
 * 5) 5. Have 10 minutes at the end of each class to just sit and play with the orphans

(Same action plan as Youssef Rizk, due to the same project)

**//__ 4 Journals (Service Learning this year) __//**

2nd Journal: This time was more organized. In the car we started to talk a little about how we were going to spend our 5 hours with the kids. It seemed like such a long time, but like the first time it passed very quickly. We decided to have more of a structure, handling things differently and following guidelines that we had observed from our teachers in classes at CAC. We realized, that English was also just part of their education and I helped them out in Arabic, as I had already finished the government program last year with my Arabic tutor. It seemed simple and soon, we go the hang of it. I taught them a lesson in Arabic, about a grammar section. Then later on, we went on with the usual English work. Composition, Dialogues and more simple things. It was surprising though, how good they were at reading, and even when we asked them to interpret the text, they knew perfectly what every single word meant. It gave us the idea to create problems of our own, just to make sure that they weren’t saying things of by heart that they had learnt. They didn’t really like the idea, but soon they learnt to cooperate and were also pretty responsive to what we asked them to do. Again, long hours passed by pretty quickly. The way back took us more than 1 and a half hours, due to the horrific amount of traffic. We arrived at the afternoon. //Exams// Today was a little different. They were preparing for exams that they were going to take over the next couple of days. We didn’t want to disturb them from learning for the Science exam they would have in 2 days and let Mr. Hatem teach them a bit about this subject, reviewing the main concepts they needed to know. Later on we helped them out with English and reviewed with them, helping them out and answering their questions individually, acting as a helping crew that would solve any problem anyone of the kids had. Then came my favorite part of each of our visits. We went down to their beautiful grass pitch and played football. 6 on each team. It was a pretty fun match. At first my team went down 3:1, but I motivated my team mates as much as possible, as I know from Varsity Football, and soon we had beat the other them 6:3. It was a perfect comeback, and we saw pretty funny moments in the game, like Youssef, the goalie, blocking 4 shots in a row, throwing his wide body against each single shot with confidence. Then we went back to the class room, but I had some other business to finish of with Ehab and with Mazen. They were both convinced that they were faster than me and so we did what I am trained to do. We raced. It was a 150 meter race from outside the football pitches. First I raced Ehab, going fully out from the beginning and beating him by about 25 meters. Against Mazen, I knew I would have to pace myself, and so I stayed behind him the whole race until the final finish, where I caught up to him. We gave each other hugs of gratitude and respectfulness and said bye to them.


 * Journal 4**: Today I was at the school helping out for the cancer hospital. I arrived about 1 hour into the process and was pulled into the chaos of trying to prepare over 500 meals for patients at the cancer hospital. It was really fun and organized. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and every once in a while we were forced to cope with a couple of difficulties, having to act and solve them by ourselves. That is what I love about this. In DEO, my old school, we had a couple of things we needed to know in each class, basic concepts that we followed directly (Very German yes I know). Here, in CAC, we have to face things we could never have imagined and be able to think of different solutions for the problems, exploring all the possibilities and coming up with a conclusion, that we have to follow through with ourselves. Anyway, one thing that amazed me as well that day was, how big that McDonald’s delivery bag was. About 9 people carried it, and it was filled with over 500 happy meals. It was like a dream. After a couple of hours (around 3 or 4) I left the school, as I had to go home and do some homework. Also, I was very hungry and wanted to eat and have Iftar at home. It felt good to help out, but I felt like I should’ve gone to hand out the meals with the other helpers at the hospital and see the appreciative smiles these patients probably gave us CAC students.


 * Journal 5**: Today was the coolest, and most fun day I have ever experienced in any Community Service project or trip. We prepared an Iftar for the Janitors, Bus monitors, Bus “Misses” and the guards around the school, but that wasn’t the best thing about that day. Before, starting from 3p.m. till Iftar, we played some hardcore football against them. It was the Varsity team of CAC against the All Star team of workers around the school. At first, we thought we would have to go easy on them, but soon we realized that this wouldn’t be as simple as we thought. These workers knew us better than we thought, and they even knew who was the better player, the faster one and the stronger one, by just watching us play everyday at practice. It was a difficult match, but surely very fun to be playing with such diverse and different people. In the end we barely won by a goal or two, and went to change. Afterwards was the Iftar. The food was pretty good, but it seemed like the workers enjoyed much more than we expected they would. They ate with a smile, probably thinking: “Who’s serving who now?” But nono, they looked like they really appreciated our effort to make them a nice meal after a long day of fasting.

6. Disability research: **//__ Autism __//** Autism causes kids to experience the world differently from the way most other kids do. It's hard for kids with autism to talk with other people and express themselves using words. Kids who have autism usually keep to themselves and many can't communicate without special help. They also may react to what's going on around them in unusual ways. Normal sounds may really bother someone with autism — so much so that the person covers his or her ears. Being touched, even in a gentle way, may feel uncomfortable. Kids with autism often can't make connections that other kids make easily. For example, when someone smiles, you know the smiling person is happy or being friendly. But a kid with autism may have trouble connecting that smile with the person's happy feelings. A kid who has autism also has trouble linking words to their meanings. Imagine trying to understand what your mom is saying if you didn't know what her words really mean. It is doubly frustrating then if a kid can't come up with the right words to express his or her own thoughts. Autism causes kids to act in unusual ways. They might flap their hands, say certain words over and over, have temper tantrums, or play only with one particular toy. Most kids with autism don't like changes in routines. They like to stay on a schedule that is always the same. They also may insist that their toys or other objects be arranged a certain way and get upset if these items are moved or disturbed. If someone has autism, his or her [|brain] has trouble with an important job: making sense of the world. Every day, your brain interprets the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations that you experience. If your brain couldn't help you understand these things, you would have trouble functioning, talking, going to school, and doing other everyday stuff. Kids can be mildly affected by autism, so that they only have a little trouble in life, or they can be very affected, so that they need a lot of help.

** What Causes Autism? **  Autism affects about 1 in every 150 kids, but no one knows what causes it. Some scientists think that some kids might be more likely to get autism because it or similar disorders run in their families. Knowing the exact cause of autism is hard because the human brain is very complicated. The brain contains over 100 billion nerve cells called **neurons** (say:**nur-**ahns). Each neuron may have hundreds or thousands of connections that carry messages to other nerve cells in the brain and body. The connections and the chemical messengers they send (called **neurotransmitters**) let the neurons that help you see, feel, move, remember, and work together as they should. For some reason, some of the cells and connections in the brain of a kid with autism — especially those that affect communication, emotions, and senses — don't develop properly or get damaged. Scientists are still trying to understand how and why this happens. ** What Do Doctors Do? **  Figuring out if a kid has autism can be difficult. A parent is usually the first to suspect that something is wrong. Maybe the kid is old enough to speak but doesn't, doesn't seem interested in people, or behaves in other unusual ways. But autism isn't the only problem that can cause these kinds of symptoms. For example, kids who have hearing problems might have trouble speaking, too. Usually, the results of lab tests and other medical tests are normal in kids with autism, but doctors may do them to make sure the kid doesn't have other problems. These medical tests can include blood and urine tests, a hearing exam, an EEG (a test to measure brain waves), and an MRI (a picture that shows the structure of the brain). Intelligence (IQ) tests also might be done. Often, specialists work together as a team to figure out what is wrong. The team might include a pediatrician, a pediatric neurologist, a pediatric developmentalist, a child psychiatrist, a child psychologist, speech and language therapists, and others. The team members study how the child plays, learns, communicates, and behaves. The team listens carefully to what parents have noticed, too. Using the information they've gathered, doctors can decide whether a child has autism or another problem.

How Is Autism Treated?
There is no cure for autism, but doctors, [|therapists], and special teachers can help kids with autism overcome or adjust to many difficulties. The earlier a kid starts treatment for autism, the better. Different kids need different kinds of help, but learning how to communicate is always an important first step. Spoken language can be hard for kids with autism to learn. Most understand words better by seeing them, so therapists teach them how to communicate by pointing or using pictures or sign language. That makes learning other things easier, and eventually, many kids with autism learn to talk. Therapists also help kids learn social skills, such as how to greet people, wait for a turn, and follow directions. Some kids need special help with living skills (like brushing teeth or making a bed). Others have trouble sitting still or controlling their tempers and need therapy to help them control their behavior. Some kids take medications to help their moods and behavior, but there's no medicine that will make a kid's autism go away. Students with mild autism sometimes can go to regular school. But most kids with autism need calmer, more orderly surroundings. They also need teachers trained to understand the problems they have with communicating and learning. They may learn at home or in special classes at public or private schools.

Living With Autism
Some kids with mild autism will grow up and be able to live on their own. Those with more serious problems will always need some kind of help. But all kids with autism have brighter futures when they have the support and understanding of doctors, teachers, caregivers, parents, brothers, sisters, and friends.

I’m not sure when, but sometime before the revolution we drew a Map of the Middle East with the kids we were working with. We finished it pretty fast, but faced some problems, when realizing, that the scales that every group drew at were different. It took us a bit more time to fix everything up, but after two visits we had finished it.
 * //__Middle East Map__//**