Jason Atilano-Lopez

Introduction to Special Education 203

Community Service Artifact

Wed. 11, 2018

 Community Service

When I was told about the community service assignment, I already knew where I would

do all of my hours. I had already participated in the same place before, I decided to serve my

hours in the same place. The place that I had decided to participate in was the Sunrise library. I

live relatively close to the library and I know for a fact that the library is a very important place

for everyone no matter what age.

There were a few jobs that I had to do while completing my hours. The library receives

rushes of books, movies, audiobook etc. So many people return stuff daily and it gets really full,

there must be someone to organize all of that back into the shelves. This was my first job, as

items were getting returned I had to get a cart and fill it up with either books or movies and

arrange them in the shelves in alphabetical order. Although this task may not seem difficult, it is

extremely time consuming. Precision is huge part of what makes a library a library, so one must

pay close attention where a book or movie is placed. Another job that I had done was clean the

library up, a library must always be kept neat and clean for people who go in there to read, work,

or just hang out. This related to teacher education because it demonstrates responsibility in the

work place and also organization in a classroom and school setting.

As for my times I had to be punctual because I had made a commitment to the librarian

that I would be there at a certain time. I went in every Wednesday afternoon from 5:00 pm to

7:00 pm to add up to a total of 10 hours. I also had an extra day to come in for training and

preparation which lasted about 2 hours. I am going to become a teacher, so it is important to

work with the community in various aspects. The service learning component also helps us have

better communication skills with other people and getting to know others. Most importantly
community service helps many of us interact with different children and gives us an experience

of what its like to work with them.

Since I do not work in the library on a daily basis, I was closely supervised from a

distance at times. Usually the librarian left me on my own to do something when I showed that I

had complete understanding. Mostly I got positive feedback from both the librarian and people

who went in to browse for certain items. Yes, my community service learning work did

contribute to the community. There are so many different people that go to the library on a daily

basis and so much work to be done to keep the library the way it seems. There are lists of

volunteers at all times every single day. I feel like I gave back to the community by basically

working for their education. Keeping a library clean and organized are crucial components that

make it up. I do believe that the service was worth it. I feel like I helped out the community and

as long as I feel like I helped other then the time spent will always be worth it.

I don’t think I have any suggestions for the library. They did everything right and truly

met my expectation for what a library should be like. I did learn many valuable lessons while

working in the library. I learned how hard people work in a library, it is easy for people to just

return books, but they have got to be more appreciative to all of the people that make it possible

for them to check out what they need. The tasks are extremely time consuming, for example, it

can take anyone an hour to shelf a cart of audiobooks alone! I learned to be more appreciative of

all the free services that are provided to all of us, many people take these services for granted and

do not even realize it.

This was my experience in my community service learning component of the class. I

learned many valuable lessons in my experience, but I also learned key components that I will

need as a teacher. I enjoyed my experience and will participate in the library again soon.