Shacks from Mansions - Bishop O'Dowd High School

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The reporter asked him a question about his “troubled offseason.” Preston said that he had put that behind him. “Two hundred hours of community service and you can bet you’ll learn your lesson,” he said. I think I was fifteen or sixteen before I really understood what that meant. So now I’m holding nine folders. I’ll start the interviews tonight. I’m anxious to get this assignment over with. Just leafing through these volunteers’ evaluation sheets, I can already see they gave the program a big thumbs up. Telling their teachers what they wanted to hear. There’s a great tradition of that. Maybe I’ll do the same, but you know, before Preston Moncrief I didn’t know shacks from mansions, so excuse me if I don’t join the Hallelujah Chorus over three hundred high school kids set loose on the community, blindly colliding, if only momentarily, with real people living real lives. Those lives keep going long after the kids have reduced them to a line on a college application. (“Shacks from Mansions” Chapter 1 from the book Doing Time: Notes from the Undergrad by Rob Thomas, 1997, Aladdin Paperbacks, Out of Print. This version has been edited.) Page 6 of 7
Questions for Reflection: Your Name: “Shacks from Mansions” Anawim Project Orientation, 10 pts. Rel. Teacher: Rel. Period: 1. How do you think Randall felt about having a Big Brother 2. Would it have been the same if Preston were not famous 3. Whose idea was it for Randall to work out 4. At the end of the story you learn that Preston was a Big Brother because he was completing court required community service for something he had done. How did that affect his relationship with Randall 5. In the end, how did Randall feel about the experience he had with “The Thief” Moncrief Why do you think this Give an example as support. 6. In the last paragraph, the narrator (sarcastically) says there’s a great tradition of students “telling their teachers what they wanted to hear.” How could you make your service something more 7. What is one lesson you could apply from this story to your service learning projects at O’Dowd Page 7 of 7
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Page 3 and 4: "Not really," I said wanting to cha
Page 5: played tackle on the solidly packed

Shacks from Mansions - Bishop O'Dowd High School

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