Community Service Reflection

Civics is a Grade 10 course where students learn about our political system, how public decisions are made, and the entitled rights and responsibility for a citizen who legally belongs to a country. In a course like civics, students critically investigate local, national, and worldwide issues with a political perspective. One aspect of the curriculum is personal action on civic issues, by which means students are to analyze a civic issue and develop an action plan to address it. Through this, our class worked with an organization named DILA (A Day of Information for a Lifetime of Action), an organization that aims towards engaging youth in Ottawa by encouraging hands-on engagement in their communities, addressing civic issues that individuals are passionate towards, and to increase the importance of the democratic decision-making process. A DILA project main objective is to simply empower the young millennials, by giving them a chance to let their ideas, imagination, and voice shine.

I was ecstatic to be able to be involved with this program. I volunteered to help with the program for 4 years and it was the best experiences I had with children. I did multiple things for the children: I was a chaperone for one of the groups, I made there lunches for them one year, and also made the activities for the children to enjoy.

Hi everyone, I am observing on Wednesdays from 8-10 and Fridays 3-4 in Cuesta Children’s Center Preschool 2. I believe a child’s environment can affect their mood, social skills, ability to learn, mental health, and physical health. These essential elements need to be meet or it will affect their adult lives. I feel the Cuesta Center does a remarkable job of offering all of these, and has wonderful transitions throughout the day. I enjoy observing the teachers modeling acceptable class room behaviors, asking open-ended questions while using descriptive language to help to expand children’s speech, and they were engaged in the children’s presents. I was engrossed with how the class offers multiple opportunities for children to broaden their

I knew my transition from an ordinary visitor to a volunteer would be a new and exciting experience. My task in the Summer Reading Program was to register patrons, explain how the program works, and give out prizes at the end of each week. The number of children who registered for the program impressed me. I enjoyed working with these children, since I knew exactly where they got their excitement from. I would look forward to seeing the smiling faces of the children as they received their prizes. Their faces made me reminisce about the joyful moments I had as a child when I couldn't wait for the grand prize week of the Summer Reading Program.

My project involved helping the children in the park to better their skills in Baseball. Many of the children that went to the park had no basic knowledge of playing baseball, so it was my job to help the professional trainers in teaching them the skills required to play the sport well. The original proposal included that I had to maintain the field in playable conditions, but I went ahead and added dirt as well as passed a rake to remove holes in the infield of the baseball diamond. I also had to help the smaller children in batting practice by simply pitching them ten balls each, but I took it a step further by telling them in which way to position their arms and how to better their hitting techniques.

I have the privilege of being involved with such an impactful organization. While helping, youth developed lifestyle skills, I’m also developing skills. Each year I form some amazing relationships that create lifelong friendships. Excitedly each encounter with the youth helps build my belief on why it’s important to help others along my journey. Therefore, being involved with this organization has transform and impacted

Reflection 1 Learning about family policy while doing service learning can provide those participating in service learning with demographics and background information on families and communities. The importance of those doing the service learning and the community collaborating is to get an idea of what is going on in their community that results in using the services provided by family policies. Learning about family policies can help me to understand what services can be provided to families. It can also help me understand what requirements are needed to qualify for certain services. It can be beneficial doing service learning because it can provide me with the opportunity to gain real world understanding and connections.

For my service learning hours, I decided to assistant coach at Four Corners Charter Upper School. When I took on this task, being tremendously excited to work with the girls there and give back to this school. My role consisted of being the assistant coach to my sister Amanda Ramirez, helping her to guide and train the girls to learn the sport of lacrosse. Having experience in coaching high school girl’s lacrosse, I came in with drills and strategies to be the most effective assistant coach. The girls that decided to come out for the team haven’t ever heard of the sport, which became a good thing for coaching, giving us the upper hand for coaching and teaching the sport to the girls.

After discharging from the Navy I have worked in various areas but mostly in Community Work supporting those with youth and young adults who have mental health issues directly and various administration duties . I would like to proof read articles connected to The Young Diggers In the past I have performed similar role when I assisted in proof reading and copy editing while working in community organisations . The areas I focused on were ensuring that there was no punctuation or grammatical errors i.e. typos , the correct use of terminology or if there was missing phrases. I also assisted in checking the writing style and most importantly the overall readability of the articles . Interested in assisting in other areas if there is any need

For my Community Service Learning placement, I am volunteering for PAAL, which is a program for children and youth with physical and intellectual impairments. Their vision is to offer individuals who otherwise may not get the chance, an opportunity to participate in a wide variety of physical activities.

I really enjoyed my service learning site because I got to work with kids from different backgrounds and help them with pronunciation and reading. I most significant accomplishment for me was be able to help kids who are struggling with English as a second language. I was pleased to see one of the students that I worked with actually came out of his shell and talked to other kids in the class. When I worked with him, he did not clearly pronounce the words, and his responds to me question were just nodding his head or performing some kind of gestures. For me last few weeks there, I was happy to see him being comfortable to speak out and interacting with other students. The most important thing I learned from my experience is that being patience

After reading the notes that people left for me after receiving kind notes from the children of 3rd grade and the staff, I feel that my action was successful because, according to the cards, I made a difference on how they students treated each other. My actual action is very close to my action plan. I completed every that I planned and even did more, like visiting autistic children that attend my old elementary school. I researched, interviewed, made a presentation, and presented to the school. After completing the project, my knowledge and understanding of service learning improved by seeing the difference between autistic and non autistic children in between the ages of 5-10, and how tease the special needs kids. If I could make any sort

According to Kathleen Flecky and Lynn Gitlow, service-learning is defined as, “learning that occurs in experiences, reflection, and civic engagement” (Flecky & Gitlow, 2011). In recent years more universities are implementing service learning into their curriculum. A key concept of service learning is civic responsibility. Civic responsibility can simply be defined as your responsibilities as a citizen. As will be shown later in this paper, service learning can have many benefits not only to a student, but also to the community members

My community placement is at Herring Cove Junior High, which consists of grades seven, eight, and nine. Grade nine students have a healthy living class, which is taken over on Wednesdays by a group called “Pathways”. Pathways works with the school as a student-mentoring program. There are two women who mentor the girls, and two men who mentor the boys, one class at a time. Pathways teaches various topics every week, which includes alcohol, drugs, and sex. Darcie (Dalhousie Nursing Student) and I sit in on the girls group weekly. There is one student in the girls group who has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). She comes in every week with her Educational Program Assistant (EPA); she listens well and is interactive with the group with the encouragement of the EPA. The main topic of the week was not sex, but the topic of sex arose during the discussion. When sex was being discussed, the EPA and the student left the class.

Saturday, October 7, 2017, from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm I volunteered with the organization Habitat for Humanity at NAZ. I was accompanied by six students from the group Blue Key Honor Society that morning, to the residence of a man whose home was in need of renovations and cleaning. Greg Webb from the organization Habitat for Humanity was the main coordinator of the event and he assigned each of us a job. Before beginning the service we received a detailed procedural description of what was to be done and how to go about doing it efficiently and securely. The tools and protective material we were to use, such as gloves and goggles were provided to us by Greg before beginning. To begin with, the first half of the service I was scraping off dry and damaged caulk from the exterior surroundings of the trailer home. I also helped Greg measure and cut boards to replace the flooring of the patio and steps leading up to the front door. The rest of my time in the service I helped two other students scrub and power wash the exterior surface of the home as a result of an accumulation of mold and algae over the years.