As part of the Village Project program at Nicolet, I have learned a lot. There have been many challenges I have faced that I did not expect and although at times they were difficult I believe that it was good for me to work through these challenges now. My first takeaway that I have from the VP is that students respond best when treated with respect. There were many times that I would see or tell some of the students to do something, and they just would not listen. I noticed that a lot of the time when they didn’t want to listen it was because I or others were sort of talking down to them. While some kids still listened others wanted to be respected by me and once I showed them that respect they were able to reciprocate it. Another takeaway I had was that there are times when things need to be ignored. I noticed especially with the younger kids that they would do some things just to get the attention of one of the teachers. If I or another teacher fed into that and gave them attention it would continue. However, if we stopped paying attention at all and ignored it they would stop on their own since they were not getting the reaction that they wanted. My third takeaway was that connecting to students personally is very important in helping them learn. When I first arrived at Nicolet and didn’t know the kids well it was very tough to get them to listen or do anything with me. Once I started to connect with them more I noticed that they became more willing to do the activities I was telling them to do which allowed them to learn. My fourth takeaway is that young student’s attention can be difficult to hold. I worked with kids from kindergarten to fifth grade in VP so I had an array of ages. I noticed that with the fifth graders, I could hold their attention a little bit longer on things that we were supposed to be doing. With the younger kids, it was more difficult to keep them focused on the task at hand, and I was more often redirecting them than the older kids. For my fifth takeaway, I took real notice of the idea that each student learns differently from one another. At VP there were a lot of tasks that involved creating something using instructions, or by watching someone else do it first. I noticed that some of the kids excelled when the instructions were right in front of them and understood how to read and understand them. Other students excelled more when it was shown to them first, or there was a completed example in front of them that they could try and replicate. Seeing this idea play out in action drove home the point that teaching should use different strategies for different students. My sixth takeaway was that students need constant reminders of things. In the short time I was at VP, I noticed myself saying the same things to the students over and over. They needed to be reminded how things were done, not to run in the hall, or to not throw things at each other. My main work was with tutoring older students before this it was a little new to me to have to constantly remind them about these small things. My seventh takeaway was that sometimes kids just need a break and that should be granted to them. There were many days that I would come to VP and one or two students who were normally excited or happy to be there wanted nothing to do with the activities that day. Rather than force them to do the activity allowing them to have a break time and just do parts that they wanted to do for that day was beneficial to them. As educators understanding that students have their own lives and things happen is very important, the least we can do is give them a break every once in a while. For my eighth takeaway, I found that just because a student has behavioral problems does not mean that they are bad kids. Many of the kids that I worked with had behavioral problems in the classroom. What I noticed as I worked with them was not that they are bad kids at heart, but they have a lot of energy or have trouble focusing and their energy is not being focused on the right things. When I was able to get them interested in what we were doing all of those behavioral problems went away, as they were using their energy to do the task. While it is very difficult in practice to do this, it’s important to note and a big takeaway to not create assumptions about students before working with them. My ninth takeaway is that each student’s background knowledge although being the same age can differ heavily. Many topics were discussed or activities done during VP. Each of these was tailored to some bigger idea, whether it was writing, reading, hands-on learning, science, etc. I noticed that there were times when some kids would have vast background knowledge about the topic and it made it way easier for them to be successful at the task. While others had never encountered something that we were doing or talking about before and they struggled a bit more. Thinking about that for a classroom setting is important to not assume that people are coming from a vast background knowledge of the topics of the class. That is why pre-assessments can be an important tool to understand where the class understanding is. My final takeaway from the village project is that struggle is an important part of the learning process. Every single student struggled at one point during my time at Nicolet. Although for them it was very frustrating it was important for me to see as I never want to see a kid struggle, however watching them over a whole year showed me how important it is to the learning process. Kids who got things right away although being happy did not learn as much as a kid who struggled through an activity. Being okay with having a kid struggle and showing them that there is light at the end of the tunnel is one of the most important things an educator can do. I enjoyed my time at Nicolet, I got to make many connections with kids and see growth throughout the year in many of them. They were always excited when we were there and it was awesome to see a positive impact being made on not only a school but a school within the community that I am a part of.