Day 12

Today marks the fourth day we have spent with the children at Stella Maris School. All of the graduate students are assigned to two classrooms- one class for the morning and one in the afternoon. By working with two classrooms, we have the opportunity to work multiple teachers and students. All of the graduate students have built relationships with the children within the classrooms that we meet and with children that we met playing and talking to outside of the classroom. It will be very hard to say goodbye tomorrow. Since there has been another university helping out at Stella Maris, it has been difficult to find the right balance between offering help and not overstepping boundaries. The other group of students visiting from a different university are undergraduate students majoring in education and speech pathology. However, it gives us the opportunity to work with other people; in the future, we will be collaborating with other professionals. 
The students at Stella Maris are some of the sweetest children that we have ever met. Each morning when we arrive at the school, they greet us with the biggest smiles-including the ones we have not had the opportunity to meet yet. After you have met the child once, they already think of you as their best friend. Stella Maris has provided the graduate clinicians the opportunity to work with populations they did not have the exposure to at the university clinic in Kingsville. The graduate students feel like they have learned so much from the children. Many people ask: what can you accomplish in one week at the school? By going to Stella Maris for a week, we were able to educate the teachers on areas that they need help with such as pre-literacy, literacy, autism, etc. as well as provide them with activities and resources that they could use throughout the semester.
We have been eating dinner at Midtown Restaurant all week. Since tonight was our last night eating there, the owner came to our table and we were able to thank him for the wonderful food. Each night we were served fantastic food that helped give us the energy to go back to the hotel and finish working on the activities we would give the teachers the following day. 

Mia Fontenot


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