Community Service Reflection Paper

For my volunteer hours I have been spending my lunches at Madison Middle here in
town. I spend an hour there 3 times a week supervising the kids as they enjoy their free time. In
my time there I learned to view middle schoolers differently. I built relationships with the
students and teachers and learned how to help the children work through their problems.
When deciding the grade level that I wanted to teach I initially wrote off middle school in
my mind. But when watching the students interact with each other and the teachers it made me
see how fun and interesting they are. They are so quirky and unique its fun talking to them and
just hearing them in passing. It would be so interesting to be able to help them grow in an
instrumental time in their lives where they explore new things. I will now be more open to
teaching both middle and high schoolers when deciding in my future career.
The relationships I have built with students over the course of the month that I have been
doing this for has been interesting. There is a table that I discuss Pokémon with, another one just
discusses what they did over the weekend and shows me how to do a silly dance. I think that
practicing building relationships is important for my future as an educator. I am not the most
openly sociable person right out of the gate. I strive to be the kind of teacher that I had that took
an interest in the quieter students and made sure that they were doing as good as the students that
will tell you whether they understand the material. The relationships you build with students you
teach them in a more effective manner as you understand their needs.
While observing how the teachers interact with the students and each other has
invigorated my desire to be a teacher. Seeing the passion that the other teachers exhibit show me
the kinds of educator I wish I had more of in my schools growing up. I had a larger school
district, and we were only talked to when we did something wrong. In comparison the principal
Dr. Koch is down in the cafeteria talking to the students and helping wipe down tables. I can’t
remember seeing my principal unless it was a school wide assembly. In my future as an educator,
I will do my best to model my behavior after them because I see the care that they put in even in
something as simple as lunch duty
The students are for the most part well behaved but there are small altercations happen
from time to time. There was a specific instance where a student flagged me down to tell me that
a student was being disruptive at his table. When I got there the other students at the table were
not comfortable telling me what the other student had said because it was so inappropriate. I
didn’t know how to proceed if they wouldn’t even tell me what he did, so I flagged down one of
the teachers that was supervising. She came over and talked to the disruptive student and calmed
the table down as they were getting rowdy. What surprised me was that she also talked to the
other students at the table and asked them to help the disruptive student learn what was socially
appropriate since he wanted to be their friend. The understanding and caring that she handled the
situation with inspired me and just helps me to know what I will need to know in my future as an
educator.