SSS Volunteer Blog Post
In winter of 2016, I was presented with an exciting opportunity to participate in a community service experience with Miami University Hamilton’s Sustained Service Scholars program. I, along with several other students, was placed at the Booker T. Washington Community Center with the Boys and Girls Club program. For roughly six weeks, I went to the center and helped young students with their language arts and math homework. I mainly worked with students in kindergarten through grade four. I found it refreshing to work with these students because many of them were enthusiastic about doing their work and learning new techniques. One of the techniques I showed many of the students was how to use manipulatives to solve math problems. The students, especially the younger ones, enjoyed this approach immensely because it combined learning with ‘playing.’ Besides helping with homework, I also did literacy building activities with some of the students. The activities included sight words, alphabet flash cards, and listening to students read. I enjoyed listening to the students read. It was interesting to see which books they would pick, and watch them work to figure out words they did not know. Volunteering to help these students strengthen their math and reading skills was a rewarding experience for me.
Volunteering at the center was a rewarding experience because of the students I had the opportunity to work with. The students that attended the center reminded me a lot of the students in my own community and former elementary school. Similar to my community, many of the students attended disadvantaged schools- elementaries with low scores on school report cards. While many of these schools were working to improve themselves, the students still required supplementary academic support to stay on track and improve their skills. I believe assisting these students with their homework is an important step toward helping them develop and refine skills that may be neglected by their academic programs. Developing these skills ultimately allows students to reach their full potential, and accomplish their goals and dreams. Seeing students that are circumstantially disadvantaged receive the opportunities they deserve was deeply rewarding for me because I believe that all children deserve an opportunity to reach their highest potential. I believe that programs like the one at the Booker T. Washington Community Center are invaluable because they offer students the opportunity to develop needed skills that may be lacking because of gaps in their academic programs
