Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Working With Children

By the way of introduction, I am Aleem Punja's cousin and he suggested I reach out to you to explore possible opportunities at the Children's Aid Society of Toronto.

The biggest accomplishment outside of the classroom I am proud of is my volunteering period at Plasp Child Care Services. Through this experience, I was able to make an impact on the lives of the children as they looked forward to meeting me every Monday. As a result of this experience, I was able to improve my valuable skills of leadership as I was required to look after the children and make the most out of their time there. Moreover, this experience has allowed me to create a unique connection with each child that will last for a long

After six years of working with children and teens, I have gained the knowledge and experience to know how to approach different situations and children. I have developed the ability to learn, observe and implicate what I have seen to make the lessons more enjoyable and relatable to the students. I am outgoing and high energy and I believe that it my genial personality can radiate throughout the camp. As a high school student, I have taught myself multiple languages and have created a curriculum for Unity that I taught to high school students. I also know a great deal about iD Tech camps since I have attended the Yale Robotics Course, the Adelphi Java Course and the Princeton Arduino Course. This program has helped me discover a love for coding

I adore working with children. I devote a lot of my time to helping entertain and teach kids. My local church runs a summer program named ‘Sidewalk Kids Hours’ (SWKH). Through the past few years I have volunteered more than 150 hours to this program, as well as my local boy-scouts program. The majority of the time is spent preparing lessons, and creating props, instead of the two days a week we run the program. However, the majority of people who work with this programs are teens, so even though I am not working with children every day, I still enjoy every day I go in.

Children are often known as being outspoken and active. They are raised to become the leaders for the following generations; however, unlike most children, I was very reserved and soft-spoken. Ever since I was a child, I never took the initiative to confront someone when I needed help. However, all of this changed the summer before junior year.

Different people have different opinions on working with children. I have had generally decent experiences with children. Although, some other people may have had one or two bad experiences small kids. I have hopeful expectations going into the service-learning project. I hope to connect with the children I will be working with and teach them about the bones and how imaging equipment works. But, small kids have a tendency to want their way with many situations, and it could be hard to deal with sometimes. I hope to have a pleasant experience with the children and have everything go well with no issues.

Since August of my junior year, I have worked with third graders in language development students came to me when they needed help or someone to talk to. R.O.P Occupations with Young Children taught me leadership skills and how to build strong relationships with students who went to me for guidance. I assisted students in System 44, a program designed to help students who were below grade level in their reading and writing skills. Each student was required to read a book followed by filling out a reading log. This is where I came in to help. Most students were unable to read correctly; ordinarily they had no understanding of the reading. While the students were working on their reading log, I was often beside them, giving them ideas and advice about answers to questions about the book. There were moments in which students did not know the definition of a word or the pronunciation; they called me to help them. A student named Luis would always raise his hand and had me go through the book with him.

In my short 34 hours of volunteering at Espial Child Environment, I was able to gain so much knowledge; not only through my mentor, but the children as well. Being able to spend so much time with the children has really been a great opportunity to see them grow both physically and mentally. While assessing how developed the different ages are, I was also able to see how similar they are.

What I learned about my ability to work with young children is that they need a level of patience for them to work through the problem on their own. I also learned that for the child to be most engaged you have to make it interesting for them to learn, and that children tend to have a short attention span, especially when doing math over a long break. For Ezra we made a deal that if we would complete all the math questions to the best of his ability then we would spend some time playing outside. By interviewing Ezra I found that addition comes pretty easy to him and that math is one of his favorite subjects in school. I learned that at this age children prefer to turn simple subtraction questions into addition questions and round the numbers up to 10’s for easier mental math. If I was going to do this again I would ask

During another memorable time I got to work on GED courses with Melissa, a mom of a three year old, who, like myself, is working hard to be a good mom and advance her education and life to where she wants it to be. She shared with me how being a foster kid had made her high school years extra challenging, causing her so drop out her senior year. She shared how she felt that she has suffered for that choice, ever since. We connected further with my sharing that it had taken me untill age forty to make it to college. We agreed that she had plenty of years to meet her goal and even dream past it. That no, it is not easy, for either of us but that it is so, so important. We both decided that we felt lucky to have beautiful healthy children and husbands who supported our efforts and goals. It was really touching to me when she concluded that if I could go to school while working and be a mom, then she could do what she needed to do too.

As a child communication has always come easy to me. I was able to translate between different languages and switch from one language to another without a problem. While in school, I always felt that my strength was in language, oral exams/debates, and presentations. I was very loud, talkative, and I was never afraid to stand up to anyone. But things started to change as I grew older. When we moved to New Jersey, I encountered many bullies, children and parents, who made fun of me for the things I liked or the way I spoke and acted. I decided that it was better to stay quiet in order to protect myself from being hurt even more.

I have extensive experience working with youth through 4-H, the largest youth development organization in the country, focusing on leadership, citizenship, and community service. For three years I was a counselor for the 6th-8th grade WI 4-H Space Camp trip to Huntsville, Alabama. I led activities that provided an energetic, engaged, and inclusive experience during bus travel and camp. I also counseled individual students who were homesick or had conflicts with other students. I also served as a youth project leader, leading a bi-weekly horticulture lesson and hands-on project for students in 1st - 7th grade. This lesson became one of the most popular projects. For this work I was awarded a senior leadership award.

]There was this one where I was volunteering with little kids in a program that I was involved with at the time. I was on probation while I was doing this, so I felt like if I can tell them to do right , I would at least teach them a path to success instead of failure. I went to,¨Jerome Center¨, located here in Santa Ana to help these kids with school activities, arts and crafts, sports and many more activities. I was like a mentor to them because there was like 3 teenagers in total. I would talk to them the most because might as well make my time useful and get to know how these kids were. Some were very loud and annoying being little kids that is, but a few were very quiet and shy and I liked talking to them because there character was a complete opposite from the louder ones. Either way I ended up knowing all their names and how each of them was. There were supervisors there too, too help us with any problems we had so it made me feel more comfortable and relaxed.

Going to preschool when you're still young, you never think of anything but maybe the

I used to not be shy. When I was younger, I liked to talk to everyone, I liked to have friends, but as the years went on I became more closed off. I did not have as many friends. I started to become quiet only answering when the teacher asked me a question. I talked to only a small group of friends. Now that I am older I am starting to learn and accept myself for being the way that I am. I have learned to use this as an advantage, I have become a good listener and am able to give advice. Even though I wasn’t always like this it always takes time.