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Jasmine Archibald
Mrs. Trentanelli & Mr. Soeder
Perry Service Learning
25 March 2015 No Day But Today
As soon as I was told I would be volunteering in the elementary, I was very hesitant and did not look forward to it at all. I have never experienced being around a lot of children at once so I was worried that either something was going to happen to one of them, if one choked, if one fell and got hurt severely or what to do if they started crying. I was not expecting to be changed so much by these 21 children. There have been times where I wanted to break down, cry and switch service sites, but then there are times that I leave my service site and become upset because I don’t want to leave. More recently, the second one has been more and more coming true as my senior year is coming to an end.
Throughout the school year, I have met some amazing children. Some of the children that
I serve stand out to me with individual memories that we have had together. Although I have had memories with all of the kids, Alyssa and Gavin will both hold a special place in my heart of why I always look forward to volunteering. They changed my entire views on what kindergarteners knew and how they behaved. They have changed my life completely, my views, how I act, behave, and that I will make misjudgements about people based off of others.

I want to start out with a quote that I feel like is the a very relatable quote that I feel like I

can relate to one of my kindergarteners with. “
The most important thing is passion. You can give

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somebody an idea. If that person doesn't want to do it, what are you going to do?” (Sirolli) The first person that I want to mention is Alyssa. When I first met her, she was very loud, misbehaving, mean and even violent at times. She was deemed a problem child during the beginning of the year when I first started at my service site. She would frequently have to flip her card and at times she would be on orange or even red. As many know, those are not good colors to have your card flipped to and often result in contacting the child’s parents. She wanted to help me clean up “snow” one day (shaving cream and glue) and came up to ask me if she could instead of watching the movie that my supervisor had on. I told her to ask, and she said that it was fine because Alyssa had been very good that day. Alyssa and I talked as we were cleaning up everything and wiping all the tables down and eventually we got onto the topic of her behavior. She told me that the reason why she was acting out was “because then I feel like people talk to me more. But since [my supervisor] says it’s bad, no one is my friend anymore.”
When she said that, it struck a chord in my heart, instantly my eyes teared up and I just wanted to hug her. Although I have never had an experience with behavior issues, I know how it feels to be isolated. I then paid more attention to Alyssa when we were doing specific activities in groups to keep her on task and to keep her from reverting to the same behavior issues that was the problem before. Over the course of the year, through long and tireless hours of subtle hints to her, I can honestly say that she has matured a lot. Yes, there are some bad days, but overall she has been fantastic anytime that I am around.
All of my children have taught me that my stereotypical view of kindergarteners was absolutely false on many different levels. They helped to serve me by enlightening me about kindergarteners. “Our service serves us as well as others.” (Remen 2) I believed a lot less of