Justin Walters

Journal Entries

January 29th, 2019

We’ve been called into an orientation of sorts at the Burmese American Community Institute. My
remembered reaction to the events of the day are that it felt rushed, disorganized, and something of a mild
waste of time for all of us to do. I immediately get the feeling that this whole service-learning project was
arranged last minute. I don’t have any real negative reactions to that, but that day it did not feel like a
promising start. Lian and Sahib seem like good guys though. I think working with them should at least be
pleasant. Do I want to do the after-school program or try working with the adults? Stick with what I
know, let’s do the after-school program.
February 7th
It is good to be back around youth. Feels like riding a bike, although I admit to being nervous and unsure
of what I should be doing during my volunteer time. I met some nice people who are also volunteering,
and again Sahib seems like a good dude. The kids are lively, seem fairly intelligent, and are decently
respectful. Seems like most of what the kids are doing is math related which means I am useless. I had
hoped to be able to work with them on social studies, but the initial impression was that they just don’t
have that much homework in that regard. Makes me wonder if the American obsession with STEM
education is leaving out the subject material that undergirds critical thinking and functional adulthood.
February 14th
This was a great day of volunteering. I was there in the right time slot to read over the kid’s reflections on
Myanmar Union Day. It made me laugh how much some of the kids seemed put out by having to write
300 words like it was a huge amount of writing. That said though, it was great to see these kids being
asked to reflect on cultural values, and subject matter outside of the kinds of things that sustain life rather
than give that life meaning. I am no English major, but I did notice that many of the kids whose papers I
was able to look over seemed to have real difficulty with the correct tense of many of the words they
wanted to use. Specifically, they often would leave out the -ed at the end of a past tense word
conjugation. Not being the best at grammar myself it was hard to get too down on these kids, but much of
their syntax was notably off. I told Sahib that if I am around during the summer I would like to come
down and help them with teaching them English. I was worried that I wouldn’t get enough hours to finish
up during the semester, and he seemed eager to have continued help for as long as I was willing.
All Thursdays in March
I feel like we have too many volunteers working with the after-school program. Most of us just kind of
seem to be standing/sitting around, and in some cases, it appears the undergrads might actually be sitting
next to the kids doing their own homework instead of helping the kids with theirs. I’ve met and helped
few kids during this month, but mostly I just feel like I am sitting around twiddling my thumbs, and when
I am needed its math the kids need help with. I did have an opportunity to help with this one girl’s essay
on W.E.B. DuBois which was gratifying and I think it helped her, but I am not sure her grasp of English
was good enough to understand the revisions I made which made me hesitant. I didn’t want to just do the
work for her so that her writing was done in my voice, but at the same time much of what she had written
was incoherent (although, I did remark to her that her word choices had a certain poetry to them, you
could tell she was probably someone that enjoyed non-academic writing). It was a dilemma that has
repeated itself to me on multiple occasions that I have come in and volunteered. How do you help kids
more correctly use their own voice in writing without just doing it for them or putting words into their
mouths? It’s not like Math or Science when you can explain a formula or hypothesis and logically help
them to follow it to completion. There has been a professor who I believe works at UIndy in the education
department coming down to observe the after-school program, and I had a good, long talk with her at one
point during this month. It reawakened something of an interest in the subject of education itself. Maybe
someday I’ll get around to taking some education courses.
The First Week of April
Back from Spring Break. I wasn’t aware that they would have a two-week Spring Break. Although the
BACI sent out an email they didn’t make it clear that it would be two weeks. Coming back from Spring
Break there wasn’t a whole lot to do this week as the kids were just getting back into it. Another week
where it feels like I am up here to no purpose.
Second Week of April
This week I did something! After spending the first hour or so pacing about with nothing to do as per
usual I sat down with some of the students who apparently needed help with some art homework and
another girl who was doing some economics homework. Now, art is not exactly my wheel well but I feel
better about it than I do math so I attempted to give him some ideas on his assignment, but as I did it
became increasingly clear that he really didn’t want to actually do the work so I spoke with him about
some ideas for the assignment and we devolved into just casually chatting. Although it was “fun” in a
way to just talk with him and the others at the table I couldn’t help but feel again as if I was here to no
purpose. I don’t think the point of this for our class or for the BACI is just to make “friends” and
exchange pleasantries, but if the kids don’t want to work what can we do? After a shooting the breeze
with that table another opportunity to help presented itself with a kid named Henry who needed help
writing a paper on US History. Finally, a topic I can really help with! It was a mess. His teacher had
apparently asked him to condense down over a hundred years of history into four pages, and poor Henry
(sarcasm voice) was crushed by having to write such a lengthy report. Immediately we set to work trying
to come up with a plan of attack, which was made quite difficult by Henry’s constant complaining. I
helped him take a few things he had already put in his outline and tried to expand on them so that he
could reach his four pages. The only sourcing he had was some low budget looking website I hadn’t ever
heard of so I tried to coach him a bit on finding credible sources, and to his chagrin actually reading up on
the things he was to write about. The time flew by as we fleshed out his outline and I tried to give him a
list of things he needed to do before we met again the following week. Henry and I were the last to leave
that day, and I walked out feeling as if I had actually done something useful.
Third Week of April
I drove down to Indy that Tuesday looking forward in a grimly determined sort of way to helping Henry
again, but as I set about searching for Henry, I found him already engaged with a female undergrad who I
assume was helping him. So, that was kind of a bummer, and reinforced my feeling that we had too many
volunteers and too few kids actually needing any help. After wandering around aimlessly for a bit as no
kids seemed to need help, and none of them seemed to be working on anything besides math related
homework, I decided I had had enough and left.
Fourth Week of April
At this point I just decided that I could not justify wasting my time and the gas money of my grandparents
to go down to Southport just to twiddle my thumbs for a couple of hours. Particularly, as it seems
inclement weather always waited until I would make these trips to strike the area. That decision, plus the
scheduling of my second interview for a position in Muncie precluded my volunteering that week. So,
even though I doubt I have made my hours this is where I end my involvement. While I respect the BACI
and what they are trying to do with these kids, it just did not feel relevant to our course or respectful of
my time (and money). Perhaps if I could do it differently, I would have opted to do research or something
else, but the options available outside of the after-school program weren’t effectively presented to us. Not
to mention my lack of personal transportation making it very difficult for me to make my hours for the
semester as going into the course I didn’t know I would need to schedule transport for more than one day
a week. Overall, I just felt like this service-learning project could have been handled a lot better by all
involved, and I certainly don’t exclude myself from that analysis as I likely could have been more
aggressive in exploring alternatives to reaching my hours and/or relating the work better to our
coursework. It is what it is.