Service Learning Project

Involvement within the community is important in many ways. Volunteer work can save work for an organization and could help save money that could be used towards something more beneficial towards that specific work place. Working within the community could also look good on your resume. Many businesses have their own volunteer work program and previous volunteer work can show commitment to your workplace. Most importantly, it can give a person a sort of self-satisfaction and it could also make up the slack from people that dont do as much to help out. Its healthy mentally and physically. A classmate, and I, was assigned to Mrs. Ness, a teacher that taught pre-school. Our role in the classroom was to participate in the activities with the students and help them with any school work that they did not understand. Typically, children at such a young age dont pay too much attention towards what another individual thinks and thats exactly what I noticed in the classroom. Every kid almost done their own thing but if one child saw something that might be considered "cool" then that child would copy the other which supports the interactionist theory. This theory "deals with a person's understanding of society based on individuals that they meet; according to the theory, a person's perspective changes every time they interact with an individual, shaping and changing the opinions and views." At this young of an age, the children walked to the beat of their own drum. They didnt care to much of their surrounding nor the teachers trying to give them orders. But once the lessons started they all quieted down and payed as much attention that a four year olds attention span would allow. Every week the teacher would pick a new leader and I noticed some students jealous because they wanted to be the leader in the lesson and Mrs. Ness said, "if you do your work good this week then you will be leader next week." The response to this was all positive feedback. Like the theory infers, since one child was the leader the rest wanted to follow in their footsteps. The leader influenced the other children and changed their view for what they want to be. Also, it seemed like the little girl felt proud of the title of being the leader. Later, I noticed that the teacher used titles to influence the children to do right and behave correctly. This always gained the students attention immediately and they listened to what she had to say. Going into this service learning project I didnt expect the children to take a liking towards my classmate and I, for the fact that we have darker skin. Colorado