Now that my Senior year is coming to a close, and my senior service project is completed, I reflect on the effect that I may have had on the small community where I contributed my services, and the effect that that community had on me. I know I learned a lot from being able to have this experience and I only hope I made as much difference on the children at Sister Terisita's Children's Center.
In working in the community I learned a lot of skills that could never have been learned in the classroom. Skills that will contribute to my future success I’m sure. I learned the value of Organization. This project demanded a lot of paper work and the ability to organize that paper work and use it again later on in the project. Papers written early in the year were needed for other papers and information later in the year. Research, Facts, and goals all needed to be kept in order. In the past, keeping papers in order wasn't really what I was good at, however, I now know how to properly keep what I need to keep well put together and organized.
Another very important skill that I learned was patience. Working with children isn't really the easiest job one could do. Children from three years old to seven years old who demanded attention and when not getting attention, or for that matter anything else they may have wanted, they would cry. They would cry for the longest time. I learned how to deal with children in a firm, yet friendly manner. Above all things, I wanted to earn their trust. I wanted them to know that I was not their enemy to punish them whenever I feel like it, but their friend who enjoyed playing with them on the slide and giving them piggy-back rides. I wanted them to know also though, that I was the boss. If they did do something wrong, I would be there to correct them. I learned exactly what my limitations were when punishing children, and taking care of them. There were times I just wanted to give them a good spanking and they would stop, but that isn't the way the situation should be handled. I learned to bring myself down to their level and understand them a little more. I believe this will help my a lot when I have kids.
I have gained a lot of experience working at my site and with the children. I can see now the difference in learning in the classroom and learning first hand out in the community. In classrooms I have been told that just a little bit of work can make a big difference, but I really never believed it. I thought, "what could I ever do that could effect the community so positively?" Now I know. Even if I only helped one child, it was worth all my hours of work. What happens to that child could be passed on so easily and that child could help a lot of other people.
Sometimes a person just doesn't learn a lesson until the experience happens to them. Just having someone tell you that something is true, doesn't mean you believe it. "Seeing is believing" as they say. Your teacher tells you that families don't have places to live and are homeless, eating out of dumpsters. What do you hear in a lot of responses to that? "Well, if they got off there butts and did some work they may be able to have a home." I believe you don't know what you are talking about until you have seen it with your own eyes. Many families live at the shelter at the Family Support Center because of one reason or another, and maybe they just can't help but live there. They may have had there house taken away from them. You just don't know the reasons; not until you have seen them, and seen the families and children effected by mistakes, accidents, lack of education. Seeing is believing.
I have never worked at a day care like this before. Not with at-risk children. So most of my obstacles had to deal with how to treat the children. Debi and I spent the first week or two getting to know the kids and witnessing Janice, out mentor, handle them. We eventually got the hang of the job, and in doing so we got closer to the children. Our next mission, to get them to trust us. This wasn’t much of a problem for us, the children were very trusting. Most of the challenges came with being patient enough not to yell and scream at them when they were not behaving. I strongly believe that when a child does something wrong it’s important to have an explanation for why what they may have done was wrong. Also, some children were harder than others. Near the beginning of my project there was this little girl, her name was Alexis. She had some problems with her behavior. She would say bad words and spit at people who she didn’t really agree with. I would, in result of her misbehaving, punish her like I would any other child. If she was fighting over the bike, I would take the bike away from her. The problem lied in how she had no fear of punishment. I would take the bike away, she would yell at me, and run away. Then I had to chase her down and punish her again. I didn’t know how to handle her at all. Unfortunately for me, fortunate for her, she went to a different school. A school that will definatly be better for her personality. I was glad for her, but I was also sad that I was not able to help her myself.
With the actual project itself, I hadn’t many problems at all. The whole thing went really very smoothly. I felt lucky that mine was going so well when I heard that others were having so much trouble. I was very glad for that.
The employees at Sister Terisita’s Children Center didn’t work there for long periods of time. Janice was the only one, along with a couple other workers who stayed for very long. In result of this, I had the chance to work with a lot of different adults who would work there with me. It was a very good experience for me to talk to adults about the children because I don’t know nearly as much as they do about it because they are older and more experienced then me. It was great to get to many other peoples way of dealing with the children. Janice is very stern, but not so much that the kids start to resent her or anything. They love Janice and it’s great to see her with them. In that way she was a really great mentor to me because by just observing her with the children I learned so much about how I should be with them. When dealing with adults, I also had a chance to meet a few of the parents of the children. Many realities came from that. It became real to me how these children have to live because of their parents. I am definatly not saying that the parents of these kids are bad parents, because I don’t have the right to judge anyone. Though, I see that maybe some of the parents aren’t doing enough to take care of there children, and some of them may have had bad luck in the past and are trying to pick themselves up on their own two feet again. I think that’s great that they would try to hard, but in the mean time, children are living in a shelter. Some parents don’t take responsibility for their kids at all. In meeting some of these parents I saw new realities, and I am now able to understand things just little bit more. When I walked through that door of the Children’s Center every Tuesday and Thursday I knew, that day I would teach another child something new. I would teach them through art that there are different ways of dealing with sadness, anger, and frustration. I hoped that I could ground the children a little bit more into something solid and real. Something that could never go away. Leaning that yelling doesn’t solve as much as you think it would. That when you share, you in return gain more than if you didn’t share. I believe that I helped out the children there in that way. I also believe that I helped out the site that I worked at by being there to take care of the kids and be a positive role model for them when they were understaffed. We brought new and different ways of handling the children. I really enjoyed playing with the kids and giving them piggy-back rides and playing on the slide. I encouraged their imagination to grow. I really enjoyed that and I think that in the long run it really impacted the kids and the site a lot. It’s not a big community, but big enough.
There isn’t anything in my life that I can remember that impacted me as much as working on my senior service project. I’ve been pretty sheltered most of my life from some of the sadness in the world and from people who are less fortunate than me. My father always thought it would be good for me to take a look at the places that some people had to live and how they had to live, but my mom never would have it. I saw a small part of that when working at the Children’s Center where people where living in the shelter. It made me realize that I have life pretty good, and that maybe I should be doing something with it that can help make there lives pretty good too. I know that I would really like to devote a portion of my time in the future to community service and help out people. It’s really rewarding to see the little children come running to you to hug your legs when you walk into the building. It makes me feel very lucky and I appreciate having had the children in my life. If I had an opportunity to go back to October and do my senior service over again, I wouldn’t do a thing differently. I learned so much about myself when doing this project. I learned my strengths and my potential. I learned that I am good with relating to children, but I learned that there are always those children who you can’t reach.
When there was work I had to do, when I had to make plans for what we were going to do with the children next and how I was going to teach them something through an art lesson, or how to teach them something from a mistake, I just had to dive in. I had never dealt with kids like this before. Kids with so much change that happens in their lives. If I had an idea I just had to go with it and hope that it would turn out alright. I wasn’t experienced, but that is what Janice helped me with. She gave Debi and I suggestions when we were clueless as to what we should do. For example, in the beginning of the project, we wanted to do something with the kids that would start the art part of our project off. Debi and I didn’t have much of any idea, but Janice came up with something very useful. A self-portrait idea. With the self-portrait it’s easy to see how the child might see themselves. It was a great idea. Janice was really helpful, which I think is one of the most important characteristics of a leader. Also being knowledgeable in what they are doing. If they don’t know, you don’t know. I think it is also important for a leader to have good communication skills in order to direct things that are important and that need to be done.
Janice works hard at the Children’s Center. I learned for sure this one thing about non profit organizations is that the labor is so unstable. Sometimes there are a lot of workers, sometimes not enough. This has a lot to do with my project in helping solve the problem of a lack of order in the children’s lives. When a child develops an attachment to someone who works there, and the next day they are gone, it’s not good for the kids. They look up to that person and now they have to find a new bond with someone else. This could eventually lead to a lack of trust in people on the child’s part. No one sticks around. Nothing is ever the same. I learned that non profits have a problem with finding people to work there at times. It is probably a result of how little funding they get. Catholic Charities doesn’t get much money so they can’t pay as much in wages to the employees. It’s terrible because it could be having an effect on the children.
I really think I’ve formed a lot of new relationships while working at the Children’s Center. I’ve formed a relationship with every child who I have meet there. Different relationships with each child. With little Ava I have formed a kind of sarcastic relationship with. She is a very intelligent child. Much smarter for her age. I can be witty with her and she will understand. She loves to play with my hair. It’s quite hysterical what she does to my hair. I have that relationship with her and that is very important to me. A little boy named Jonathan is the most caring child I have ever seen. He looks after his older brother Georgie. You would think it would be the other way around. Jonathan loves to run around the play ground in circles, but he won’t run unless I am running with him. If I stop running he will stop running and turn around and look so frustrated with me and say “come on!!” and wave his arms around. The cutest little boy I have ever seen. I give Georgie piggy-back rides. The first thing he says to me when I walk outside is “can I have a piggy-back ride? You remember how I showed you are supposed to do it?” He taught me how to give a piggy-back ride. With every child at the center I have a special relationship with. It’s really nice to have that.
I have gained a new perspective on things since the day I began my project. I see that what I make of myself is very important. I have been given opportunities that not everybody has. But I have it. I can’t make myself successful to help other people get to those same opportunities. I really think that that is important. I have grown in new ways because of this project and in my continues experience in community service, I will continue to grow even more. How will I grow? I don’t know, but I know that I will become a better person. The more I grow and the more I learn about the world will help me contribute to creating a society that makes more sense to me. A society were children don’t have to suffer as they do now. Not just in our small community of Sonoma County either, but all over the world. There are people dying everyday from hunger, disease, or war. I think that if we all work together we can make some of that suffering go away.
In the future I plan to take my new found knowledge and continue with community service and helping children. The more knowledge I gain, the more I can do with my knowledge. I strongly encourage everyone who is planning on working with children for their senior service to take what comes at you with an open mind and heart, because then you are able to do a lot more for the children and for your community.
