Community Service Reflection
I know it's been a while since I started to do my community service but the unfortunate part is I keep forgetting about documenting my experiences. I finally realize that it is part of the grade and I hope it is not too late as my memories are still fresh enough to recall.
Contradictory is the word I've been looking for to sum up my first impression for my community service. It was a snowing February afternoon, I was not quite in mood because I just pulled out all-nighter on Thursday. And it was Friday. I just felt exhausted - I thought I would fall apart any moment back then. To make it seemingly worse, I have to go to Richfield and it literally took me one hour and half to get.
At the PA, I’m helping Arminda and Teresa with the after school program on Fridays. Basically, bring art and essential common sense to kids is the main goal of this after school program. The situation at PA is a little bit unique as almost all the kids are Mexican/Latino and they started learning English at PA, so during talking to them, I need to correct their grammar mistakes all the time. I am in charge of the art project group and we have done several interesting projects.
The first project we did is a game board. It took these smart kids two weeks to first draw a game board and then play with it. I was impressed by the creativities of these kids. Someone made a “Family Guy� game board and my favorite character must die in the middle of the game; someone made an “Aliens vs. Predicators� game board and whoever plays this game should solve several puzzles, math problems and quizzes. Otherwise, that person will be eaten by either Aliens or Predicators. A boy name Roberto made a Mexican Immigration game board. He told me that one day his mom was telling him many stories about Mexican Immigration moving from Spain and Latin America to United States, so he was inspired to make a game board to display their immigration routes. I was amazed by how smart this boy is.
The next project we did is to paint pots to thank volunteers. Painting at that point became a total “disaster� when everyone was trying to finish the task as fast as they could. Some kids just painted the pots into one single color and handed them in. Everything became a little bit too messy. Then, I began to paint my pot, drawing colorful bubbles. Roberto was very curious about what I was doing and he began to imitate my way of painting the pot. It turned out that he did a pretty good job and he gave the pot to me to thank me. That’s only reward I have got from the volunteer work but I felt everything was worthwhile at that moment.
For the next Friday after school program, we invited a music band to school and give the kids a small concert. Everyone is excited about the mini music-fest. They were four musicians coming from West Bank Music School. They have done many free concerts for elementary school kids. They taught the kids some fundamental knowledge about musicology and instruments. The best part is that everyone has a chance to play with those instruments. It was a pleasant afternoon, enjoying music and watching them freak out about music. It was very nice. However, they are always so noisy.
I began to be a lunch buddy last Friday. My lunch buddy is Shaccaria , a 5th grader. She is probably the coolest girl in her age I have ever seen. Shaccaria is polite, humorous and very caring. She is not Mexican but black. She told me that sometimes it is weird to fit in another group of people. I said, I feel exactly the same way. After lunch, I began to help Mrs. Smith with the children’s library. Rearranging the children’s library is really tiring because it is always at a mess. Then in the after school program, the kids learned how to write blogs and basic rules on how to protect privacy on internet. I just think, why we didn’t have such great activities when I was little?