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Reflections 2008-2009

Welcome to the 2009 volume of Reflections, a compilation of essays by MiraCosta College students who participated in the Service Learning Program during the 2008-09 academic year.

“Our individual salvation depends on collective salvation," President Barack Obama , in the tradition of the Kennedy family, told graduating seniors during a commencement address at Wesleyan University.  "Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you'll play in writing the next great chapter in America's story."

Service learning is a proven teaching method that marries academics with community service. Each year more than 1,000 MiraCosta students provide valuable assistance to community non-profit organizations and public schools as part of their course of study. These students are responding to President Barack Obama’s call to public service, and are positively impacting our local community. Each essay in this book captures part of their journey and provides insight to the transformative power of volunteerism and service to society. 

Our student authors are to be commended.  For many, their essays represent their first, and hopefully not last, published material.  I also want to send a special thank you and hearty recognition to our faculty members and community partners who together provided meaningful and, for some, life-changing experiences for our students.  As a result of their guidance and wisdom, our student participants have grown stronger and many have a clearer sense of purpose for their lives and future professions.

Congratulations to our college’s Service Learning Coordinator, Carol Wilkinson, and program staff and volunteers for being named to the President's Honor Roll.  This distinction is awarded from the highest levels of government and recognizes an institution's leadership in building a culture of service and civic engagement on campuses and in the nation. Congratulations to our faculty, staff and community partners for making wonderful things happen through collaboration and service!

MiraCosta College’s Board of Trustees, faculty, staff and campus administration applaud the efforts of our Service Learning Program and hope that readers will be inspired and informed by these testimonies of hope and service.

Francisco C. Rodriguez, Ph.D.

Superintendent/President

MiraCosta Community College District

An Unbreakable Smile
Ashley Hunter
Health 101: Principles of Health
Instructor: Linda Shaffer

It was the week of the Santa Ana winds and temperatures had hit above ninety degrees.  The air still had the lingering scent of smoke from the recent epidemic of fires that had rolled through Camp Pendleton.  I crossed over the rickety old wooden fence into REINS (Riding Emphasizing Individual Needs and Strengths) Therapeutic Horse Ranch and immediately felt a sense of calmness.  The dust fluttered around my car as I drove down the narrow dirt corridors between the gelding and mare horse corrals.  Having owned horses for four years prior, REINS felt like home.  With my graduation from high school, and my move to college, there was no longer enough time to dedicate to my beloved horses and therefore I had to make the distressing decision to part with my best friends.  When starting this service learning project and seeing REINS on the list I knew right away that I would volunteer there.  In the beginning the only reason I chose to work there was that I would be around horses, it wasn’t important to me that I would be working with children who have special needs.  All of that changed over the days I spent working with the horses and children.  I developed a special bond with some of the kids, a bond that I will never forget.

Each day after brushing and tacking the horses, we would walk the horse to a ramp where a child would be waiting to brighten his or her day.  It was a remarkable feeling to see children who were distraught and crying, suddenly forget everything and reveal a smile when they saw the horse.  We served as a guard rail for the children; we would hold our arm across their leg and hold on to the saddle to ensure the safety of the children in case of an accident on behalf of the horse or rider.  It’s a different feeling to know that someone so young can put all of their trust in you.  Some of the children were only about three years-old and others were up to ten, every single child was different and unique in their own way.

There was one boy who made this whole experience worthwhile, his name was Carter; he was three years old and suffers from Myelomeningocele which is a birth defect where the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth.  As a result of this disorder, almost seventy percent of infants develop hydrocephalus which is water in the brain, which Carter did as well.  He had difficulty speaking, would frequently vomit, and his body language was severely stiff.  The first day that I started working there I saw Carter; he was tiny with a semi large head full of light brown curly locks with the most gorgeous honey colored eyes.  He was sitting in a wheelchair crying hysterically and had just vomited on himself.  Pat the instructor told me that Carter was always like this and could be very difficult to work with.  To say the least I was a little nervous about working with him.  As we walked the horse up to him he became very anxious and his crying worsened.  My heart hurt for him to see him so distraught.  Pat picked him up and placed him on the horse and within seconds of touching the saddle, Carter stopped crying.  It was an image so magnificent that it is hard to put into words the feeling that I got from it.  From that moment I suddenly understood the reason REINS is called a therapeutic horse ranch, it wasn’t just a form of physical therapy but mental and emotional as well.  Pat continued to tell me that Carter is very shy and does not adjust to newcomers very easily.  As soon as we began the lesson, Carter’s eyes were transfixed on me; he had his hand on my arm and paid absolutely no attention to Pat.  He was smiling and laughing at me and would even attempt to speak.  Pat and I were taken aback by his actions and she couldn’t believe the way he was performing.  From the moment I saw Carter smile, I knew I would return.  He brightened my day and gave me a sense of happiness one rarely feels in an entire life time.  The whole staff was amazed by the way he had acted towards me and no one could figure out why he was so attached to me.  Everyday after that when I worked with Carter, he was the same.  He couldn’t take his eyes off me and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  Because of Carter, I had an unbreakable smile.

This organization definitely emphasizes the concepts of stress, psychological health, and communicational skills.  During my time there, I would be lying if I were to say that it was not stressful.  It emotionally takes a toll on your psychological health.  When you’re working so closely with people who really need you, it changes the way you feel.  Going into this project, I assumed that I would get my hours over with and all would be well.  But what you don’t realize is that you emotionally grow ties with individuals as well as the service itself.  I learned how to cope with my stress by channeling my energy into helping the children feel more relaxed and to release the amount of stress they had.  You realize how much you have when you work with people who are physically challenged, who can’t walk, and can’t speak.  It gave me a new respect for who I am and for the life I live.

Working at REINS was definitely challenging at times, some days were easier then the next, but overall this activity changed me as an individual.  This turned into something more than just a class assignment.  I now go to REINS every opportunity I can to see Carter, the horses, the staff as well as the rest of the riders.  When you take an hour or two out of your day to genuinely help someone else, I believe you transform into a better person.  You become someone who knows the meaning of aid, someone who knows the feeling of commitment, but more importantly, someone who knows the feeling of passion.

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Fickle Friendships

Mary Mitchell
Child Development 109: Child Behavior and Guidance
Instructor: Laura Paciorek

Service Learning was a rewarding experience that showed me a small piece of what I am getting myself into.  A lot of the Miller textbook came alive as I walked through experiences that mirrored its context.  I spent about half of my time outdoors, where I mainly policed tricycles to the right path, read books, played in water and sand, kicked balls, looked at a lot of bugs, and played with random toys.  The other half of my time was spent in the classroom assisting in crafts, playing games, building block towers, reading books, or dancing at circle time. My time with these children was delightful, challenging, and eye opening to the profession I have chosen.  The most striking experience gleaned throughout my time with the children was marked by their developing concept of friendship, and it is their behaviors in friendships that I will reflect on as well as the social and physical environments that shape the interactions.

“Anyone who has one of these blue things can be our friend,” Amy announced throughout the classroom.  In her hand she held a few blue links and stood with her chest out and head held high as children began begging for the coveted blue links.  She gave the other children links and they skipped off with grins on their faces.  Ten minutes later the blue links were no longer in sight and Maggie approached Jessica saying, “Are you my friend?”  Jessica responded, “No, I am Emma’s friend right now.”

This situation repeated amongst the 11 girls playing in the classroom almost continuously.  Each girl would go from person to person establishing who their friends were and were not.  Once their rounds were completed, they would start again.  I must have said, “We are all friends at school” one hundred times.  One minute a child was jumping up and down holding hands with their “friend”, the next moment they were crying about their lost friend.  The friendships were a constant cause of conflict in the classroom.  Bartering for the popular child’s friendship comprises a desperate race to give her the most desirable thing of the day.  Fridays were the worst for friendship behaviors because they are sharing days, where children can bring toys from home. If you brought the coolest toy, you were the popular friend of the day.  The little girls would follow the child with the My Little Pony trying to convince her that if they got to play with the toy, they would be best friends.  These cliquish behaviors were constant, “troublesome and hurtful interactions” (Miller, p. 72).

It was really hard for me to watch this behavior as I find it is so unloving.  How are children learning these cruel behaviors at such a young age?  Friendships are very important to preschoolers, but does the process have to be painful and full of rejection?  I found myself constantly thinking about the idea of creating a “community of learners” (Miller, p.77).  I have yet to become a teacher, so possibly out of naivety, and maybe young enthusiasm, I believe this constant battle for friendships doesn’t have to run the classroom.  My mind is consumed with ways I could foster a sense of belonging and community when I am privileged with a class of my own.  I am a mom first, and watching my preschooler struggle with friendships made the experience of service learning all the more impactful.  I want my daughter to have good social skills and a positive self image.  I hated watching insecurity fester in her little spirit.  With that said, what can be done to create a community in a classroom?

“In a true community of learners, children see themselves as valued members of an inclusive team” (Miller, p.77).  The key word is “inclusive” because that is the word that can make someone a true member of a group or an outcast.  According to Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, most preschoolers were in the second stage of development where they use bargaining to get what they want (Miller, p.180).  Unfortunately, the children I observed were bargaining for friendships, which almost always functioned at the expense of others.  Observing this stage of moral development explains why this behavior is so prevalent.  Another possible reason for the children’s behavior could be a “desire for recognition” (Miller, p. 201).  Children, like adults, want to feel like they belong, that they are noticed and wanted.  If a child feels like the children are not accepting her or that they don’t want to be with her, she may become increasingly obsessed with trying to find those friendships.  Because of the moral stage of the children and the importance of learning to build friendships between preschoolers, the behavior of fickle friendships is observably and developmentally normal.

As a future teacher, I will attempt to curb this likely behavior so that it does not dominate the relationships within my classroom community.  One way of doing this would be to establish ground rules from the very beginning.  By facilitating a conversation on friendships and being a team, the children will learn what it means to be kind.  In order to maintain these friendships, I would remind the children about how to include others, and have the children role model what being a good friend looks like.  This would give me a non-threatening environment to help the children develop their social skills outside of negative interactions.  By being an observant teacher, I can watch for positive friendship interactions, and reinforce these behaviors by talking about how much I enjoyed seeing them build the team by being kind to each other.  I could help the children talk through their problems by facilitating problem solving.  To do this I would get down on their eye level, listen to each child’s side, and through active listening and mirroring, help the children see each other’s side of the situation.

The idea of fickle friendships and building a sense of community are tied to the environments that shape the classroom.  Above, I have discussed my thoughts on fickle friendships, and now I will attempt to use the environment to build a context for the created community that I witnessed.  The social and physical environments can add to or eliminate certain behaviors, so a well rounded discussion requires the full assessment of environment as well as behavior.

The preschool’s social environment has some great qualities that foster a community of learners. The social environment both inside and outside is generally child-directed.  The children are able to pick their activities and are given adequate time to relax and engage fully in play.  This child-directed environment gives the child freedom so that they can focus on areas of their development like friendships that are appropriate to their zone of proximal development (Miller, p.426).  The teachers work hard to “establish a nurturing social environment, a setting in which children feel safe enough and comfortable enough to be cooperative, empathetic, and altruistic” (Miller, p. 254).  There are many areas where children can be alone and where children can gather in groups which give children the option of pursuing groups in their comfort level.  Some children like small groups, some prefer large groups, and others like one-on-one interactions.  The room has the children’s artwork displayed and each child has their own cubbies to foster the feeling that they belong in this community.  The children have a set routine that they can count on and they sing songs and dance together each day to help foster friendships.  Each morning the children sing a good morning song with a verse that requires them to get in a tight circle, cross their arms, and hold hands with the person on each side.  Then they shake hands with each other as they sing, “Shake hands everybody, shake hands everybody and make a friend today”.  This is the children’s favorite verse so they usually repeat it several times.  I like it because it incorporates the idea of friendship in a non-threatening way.

There are also a few issues with the social environment.  First, there is a huge emphasis on competition versus cooperation.  The teachers give stickers to the children that clean up and participate in circle time.  The same few children have a shirt full of stickers each day.  The children then usually compare the amount of stickers each has.  The idea of reinforcement is a great tool which can play “a huge role in what behavior children choose to use” (Paciorek, lecture 8, p. 5).  However, the children seem to change the attempt for reinforcement into a competition for the most stickers, where some children usually win and others always lose.  The children that lose are not apart of the “in crowd”.  The teachers are successful in reinforcing good citizenship, but unfortunately they are also reinforcing the friendship game.

Head Start is very strict on schedules which led to another problem in the social environment.  They are constantly trying to keep up with the schedule so the transitions are crazy. The teachers would look at the clock, panic, and then rush the children to the next assignment.  Some children had a particularly hard time with this because they would be deep in play and then all of the sudden forced to stop what they were doing. They would cry and or ignore the teachers request to clean up. Transitions are stressful on the teachers and children, making the mood during transitions crazy and unsettling for the children.  When the environment is stressful and crazy, the children may become hostile and thus have issues with other children.  

The last problem with the social environment is that the teachers are often pulled in a million directions and don’t always have time to help the children practice “creative problem-solving” which is vital to children building healthy friendships.  I noticed they were often not able to do active listening or hear both sides of the story, and thus the children missed out on opportunities to learn how to respectfully listen to their friend and then give their side.  Instead the child who is in trouble the most is the one that takes the blame for the issue.  The teachers often resort to “triage” tactics where they pick the biggest crisis to handle first and then head to the next issue.  The teachers are aware of the friendship issue, and they are constantly trying to improve their classroom to be a true community of learners.  However, the key component in building this community requires that children learn how to solve their own problems, and to do that, they need their teachers to help them learn how to problem solve with each other.  If creative problem-solving became the primary priority in the classroom, I believe they would begin to see the children mature in friendships as well as see the children creating solutions rather than escalating problems.

The preschool’s physical environment is fun and inviting.  Outdoors, there are 3 double tricycles where children can take their friends for a ride fostering cooperation in friendships.  Another area has a puppet theater and puppets, three play houses, 3 tables with chairs, and cubbies with assorted toys so that children can interact with other children with similar interests.  Yet another area has a ball bin, sand table, and water table where larger groups kick balls to each other, or line the outside of the table to engage play with several kids at a time.  Lining one wall of the play area is an area with dirt and small trees where the children enjoy finding bugs.  The boys dig for bugs together and the girls make little homes for them.  These fun activities the children engage in, helps to foster cooperation which is crucial to building friendships.  The Head Start staff continues to work on making environments that promote friendships and cooperation.  The outside environment offers many opportunities for these friendships to be made and cooperation to be learned.  The physical environment gives the right tools to aid in the development of friendships, and has been well planned to suit this intention.

The inside is also developmentally appropriate and engaging. There are two tables each with ten chairs around them.  This promotes a sense of community, especially when they eat; they pass the food around to each other and talk amongst themselves.  They have a dramatic play area which constitutes a favorite section of the room.  It is always packed with as many children as the teacher will allow.  This section is where they model behaviors they learn from adults which may help them figure out how to appropriately deal with friendships.  They have a computer with a bench so that 2-3 children can play at one time.  The computer tends to bring the boys together which is one of the few areas that interest the boys in cooperation and friendship.  The circle area is also home to the blocks, cars, farm, and people.  The children use this area to build communities that replicate things that interest them.  I have often seen several children working together to make bridges, towers, and roads to accommodate their plastic community.  This environment is well planned out with a wide range of interesting materials that are age appropriate, and traffic patterns are considered to keep the flow of the room at an appropriate speed so that the room is as relaxed and comfortable as possible (Miller, p.250).  The inside environment is a wonderful place for children to gain their first experiences in friendship building.  It is fun, inviting, homey, and personal to the 20 kids that fill its walls.  It portrays the feeling that this is a place they want to be that is safe for them to experiment with social skills.

I found that the physical environment was appropriate and gave the appropriate tools to foster friendships.  The social environment also contains many of the right tools for the children to learn how to build friendships and with a little bit of work in the social arena, I believe the classroom will succeed in building their own community.

Service learning is an experience that is such a privilege.  I am so grateful that these teachers trusted me to interact with the children, and they gave me amazing amounts of freedom to experiment with what I am learning.  I am a parent of a preschooler and one that is nearly in preschool so I spend almost every day in the classroom learning and communicating with the teachers and students.  As I continue to learn and be involved with the preschool, I feel like it will prepare me to have a great start with my own classroom.  I hope that by volunteering as much as possible, I will gain sufficient knowledge to create the community of learners that I feel is a feasible opportunity for children to be a part of.

Miller, D. (2007). Positive child guidance (5th ed.). New York: Delmar
     Learning.

Paciorek, L. (2009, Spring) Weeks 7, 8, and 10 Lectures.  CHLD 109 
      online: MiraCosta Community College

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Debunking Myths about Poverty
Julianne Simmons
Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology
Instructor: Karen Baum

Have you ever had one of those life changing moments when what you thought you knew as truth was disproved?  Well, that happened to me just this past semester at the North County Food Bank.  Volunteering at a food bank made me stop and question very common and accepted ways of thinking.  I thought that I was a fair person and even highly sympathetic towards those living in poverty, but I found that even I fell prey to the lies about the poor that many people take as fact.  

It all started in my Sociology class when we were offered the opportunity to participate in service learning, which is a program that offers out-of-class learning through helping the community.  Concepts from the class are then applied to the service work, which in my case meant applying sociology to volunteering at the food bank.  I’ll be honest; I chose the food bank because I thought that it would allow me to help the community without requiring me to constantly socialize with the public.  I’m not much of a people person and thought naively, that the food bank wouldn’t require interaction with friendly, chatty shoppers.  I was definitely wrong about that.  Actually, most of my preconceived notions about the food bank and its patrons were debunked within the first couple weeks of volunteering.  Through this paper I hope to address a few myths about the poor, and then share a little piece of the thriving and surprising world which makes up the North County Food Bank.

Myth 1: Most poor people are lazy because they do not want to work.
Half of the poor are either too old or too young to work.  About 40 percent are under the age 18, and another 10 percent are age 65 or older.  About 30 percent of the working-age poor work at least half the year (Henslin, 2006).  Unfortunately, many people who frequent the food bank have to deal with the stereotype that the poor are lazy and rude, which is certainly not true of the shoppers at the North County Food Bank.  While there are many young and middle-aged shoppers, most of the patrons were elderly and were part of a senior program that let them get free food.  Without the program, they probably would not get regular meals.  As for being lazy, most of the shoppers helped out when they were at the food bank.  Although it was not required of them to assist the employees and volunteers, many would not browse for food until they had helped in some way, whether it was organizing, sweeping, cleaning, or assisting another shopper.  A few shoppers even shared with me that they were using the food bank as a last resort, only temporarily, and that they were just in between jobs but wanting to work.  Many shoppers work extremely hard but just can’t make ends meet.  They aren’t lazy, just facing unfortunate circumstances.

Myth 2: Most of the poor are African Americans and Latinos
The poverty rates of African Americans and Latinos are much higher than that of whites.  Because there are so many more whites in the U.S. population, however, most of the poor are white.  Of the 34 million U.S. poor, about 55 percent are white, 20 percent African American, 20 percent, Latino, 3 percent Asian American, and 2 percent Native American (Henslin, 2006).

I was trapped by this one, I regret to say.  Living in an area with a large concentration of Latinos, who unfortunately have a high rate of poverty, I forgot to think about how many poor white Americans there are, as well as how many live in my own community.  I was still expecting mainly Latino shoppers at the food bank.  Instead, I was surprised to find that most of the shoppers were white or Asian American.  As surprised as I was at the race-ethnicity of the shoppers, I was even more shocked to realize how easy it would be to start having feelings of group superiority.  While I felt no personal resentment towards any of the shoppers, experiences at the food bank showed me that people can easily fall prey to prejudice, linked to ethnicity, gender, age.  However, the food bank was good for me in that it inspired me to practice cultural relativism, which is not judging a culture different than yours but trying to understand it as it is and on its own terms.  Not only did I accept the various cultures of individual shoppers but the food bank had a separate culture of its own.  It had its own values, norms, and rules that were very different from what I was used to, but the experience of volunteering there helped me to see that different doesn’t mean that it is bad, just something new to discover.

My first day on the job, I arrived at the food bank expecting the worst, although I didn’t realize how pessimistic I was until I look back on that day  I had a good reason for being apprehensive.  Finding the location of the food bank was difficult, even though it is located right off of the freeway and can be seen from the off ramp.  I had never been to the food bank before and didn’t know what I was looking for.  Also, it did not help that the building is actually a warehouse in an industrial area.  There are no signs leading you to the front door, and it is located between two buildings and partly hidden from view.  Even the MapQuest directions left me wondering how someone needing assistance would be able to find it.  When an organization meant to help the needy is located in a hidden warehouse off of the freeway, it is clear that personal relationships and neighborly care are not priorities in our society.

I did find that the shoppers enjoy a sense of class consciousness in that they share a common bond of being unemployed or poor workers with tenuous jobs.  As hopeless as that may sound, their shared socioeconomic status causes them to treat each other as family, polite and caring, and they get to know and look out for one another.  The shoppers made going to the food bank enjoyable, and getting to know them helped contradict many assumptions of the poor that I held.  Overall, I learned a lot about myself through volunteering and the experience made me want to be a less selfish person.  It also helped me realize how blessed I am and how much I complain about my small troubles.  It was a humbling experience to see the positive attitudes that the shopper maintained even through the tough times they were facing.  I definitely plan to make volunteering at the food bank a regular event in my schedule and to make volunteering in general a permanent activity in my life.

Henslin, James M.  Sociology A Down-to-Earth Approach, Core Concepts
    2nd ed.  Boston: Allyn & Bacon,  2006.

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Service Learning Project: Cardiovascular Disease Foundation
MJ Lopez
Nursing 160: Certified Nursing Assistant
Instructor: Mary Wright

For my service learning project, I volunteered at the Cardiovascular Disease Foundation (CVDF).  I picked this project because the description of the organization immediately caught my attention.  I would be able to learn about heart disease which is something that will definitely help me in nursing school.  The description of the agency’s needs included: working with the public, assisting with youth activities, helping with health screenings, data entry, telephone follow-ups, website updating and research. 

The Cardiovascular Disease Foundation is a great clinic that is run by Dr. Zalman.  The primary goal of the foundation is to improve the quality of life by promoting cardiovascular health through prevention, research and education.  Since heart disease affects everyone, there wasn’t a single demographic type of patient that came to any of the CVDF’s services.  At the health fairs, people of different ages, cultures and genders came to get their blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels checked.  This is the first area that the foundation encourages people to research.  In knowing their numbers and levels, the foundation could further assist people with their heart and health knowledge.

My volunteer experience was fulfilling.  Whether I was helping with office work or providing patient care, I was doing something to contribute to a great foundation.  Through these experiences, I was learning about cardiovascular disease.  It includes many diseases including: coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, heart attack, sudden death and rhythm problems.  Cardiovascular disease is an abnormal function of the heart or blood vessels.  The cause could be from structural defects, infection, inflammation, environment or genetics.  The risk factors that are included with cardiovascular disease include: diabetes, excessive weight, smoking, physical inactivity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and stress.  Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States and one in three American adults have some type of cardiovascular disease.

The best part of the experience was learning how to provide cholesterol and glucose tests for the public.  I attended two events where I was trained and immediately began to do the tests with minimal supervision.  A lot of times, the lines for tests would be long and I would be doing one test right after another.  I would stay focused and do my part professionally and at a pace that was acceptable for me, the individual and the rest of the people in line.  This showed me that I had the capability to work as a health care team member in a fast paced environment, which is a prerequisite for a nurse.

I can’t pick one thing that I liked the most about volunteering at the Cardiovascular Disease Foundation.  From the people I worked with to the health care screenings that I provided to the public, I enjoyed everything about the foundation and what it stands for.  I learned the importance of understanding heart disease.  I was able to share with my family and friends how to care for your heart and how nutrition and daily activities affect the well being of the heart.  I would describe my experience as something I enjoyed because I was doing something for the community and didn’t expect anything in return.  This helped the people in the community because in spite of what is going on with the economy, the foundation could provide services that may not be affordable, or covered by insurance.  Lastly, I would like to share that the experience of volunteering time and energy for a great cause is something difficult to describe.  Rather I would encourage everyone to experience it for themselves, because only then they can appreciate the power of service.

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For this particular addendum, the students had to choose between doing community service with elementary children or with senior adults.  At first I was not ecstatic about working with either kids or seniors, but I saw it as a good opportunity to accumulate community service hours while gaining college credit.  Going into it, I figured I had a substantial amount of experience with seniors so I decided that I would work with children.

Since my childhood elementary school, Christa McAuliffe Elementary, is located right down the street from the college, I decided that’s where I would work.  My fourth grade teacher, who was my favorite teacher, still teaches at the school and I jumped at the opportunity to help her and her second grade class.  Through this service learning experience, I was blessed with an opportunity to reunite with my favorite teacher, give back to the community, and expand my knowledge in psychology.

Christa McAuliffe Elementary School is located on a hilltop behind Palisades Park in Oceanside.  The school is home to the Challengers and serves students from kindergarten through fifth grade.  According to the school’s website, the school is a place “where students reach for the stars.”  STARS is also an acronym for the outcomes the school focuses on: Standards, Teamwork, Achievement, Responsibility, and Success. The school’s main goal is to prepare the students with the tools for success in the future.

Working for Mrs. Salmon was an experience I will truly cherish.  My duties in her class varied.  Tasks included: helping her decorate the classroom, working individually and in groups with students with the students, and even leading lectures.  Her classroom environment was an inviting one, the walls were decorated with the creativity and imaginations of all the children.  She was very supportive of my attempts to get a feel for teaching and allowed me to do observations on how the class interacted with her as a teacher.  Each day was a trip down memory lane.  The episodic memories I was able to retrieve was rewarding enough in itself, but those were merely the cherry on the cake of my experience.

I gained a profound respect for elementary teachers and the battles they must overcome through the workplace.  My initial interpretation of elementary school teachers was childish (no pun intended) because I figured it was an easy job.  However, after stepping in those shoes I see just how wrong my assumptions were.  The duties of an elementary teacher go far beyond the typical curriculum.  The teacher I volunteered for assumed the responsibility of identifying possible learning disabilities, family-related psychological effects, depression and the overall cognitive abilities of each student.  This was quite an eye opening experience.  These teachers are not just teachers; they are applied psychologists with a mission to ensure that every student has the ability to succeed in life.

Psychology is intertwined throughout the art of teaching.  From motivation, to learning capabilities, to language barriers, it was all covered throughout this service learning project.  One student in particular would not do any homework, nor complete any assignment without receiving gratification for the correct answers.  Rather than playing into the “good job” approach after each answer, I ignored the student, depriving him of the response that he longed to have.  He did not take my approach well at first, but with time he learned to do the assignments for his own enjoyment rather than gratification.  This student experienced a shift from being extrinsically motivated to intrinsically motivated.

The most common disadvantage I saw in the classroom was children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  This psychological disorder is marked by difficulties in concentration or in sustaining attention for extended periods.  ADHD affects several students in the class and the overall effects of this disorder were clearly evident.  There was one student who was extremely bright, yet struggled in school because of his inability to focus on homework as well as the tasks at hand.  I had the ability to work with this student one-on-one as well as in a group setting and noticed a major difference in the quality of work produced.  In a one-on-one tutoring session, the child was much more involved and the quality of the work improved tremendously.

Another student I worked with was affected by Turner’s syndrome which is a chromosomal disorder affecting 1 in 2,500  females in which all or part of one of the X chromosomes is absent.  She does not look like all the other students in the class; she is smaller than everyone else, and she has psychical abnormalities that would prove to be problematic in school, especially at such a young age.  Yet, this student is filled with courage and a will to succeed that far surpasses students in her age group.  Rather than being teased and harassed for looking different, she got up in front of the class, explained the syndrome to the class, and cleared up uncertainties and mixed notions that the students of the class had.  Rather than putting up a defense mechanism, this student laid it all out on the table and took an extremely mature approach to a difficult situation on her own.  Since doing so, this student has not experienced harassment or being teased because of her efforts and courage.

One area I felt I contributed to the most was with a student who battled language barriers.  Unlike the Vista School District, the Oceanside School District does not have a program set up for students who have English as a second language.  Because of this, students who face language difficulties have the potential to slip through the cracks and run a risk of failing in academics.  One student came from Guatemala and is a year older than everyone in the class.  The principal of the school wanted to move this student forward to the third grade because of his age, but he was not adequately prepared to do so, because he was pulled from school at a young age.  As a result, he struggled not only with English but with Spanish because he did not gain full knowledge in his native language before coming to the United States.  This student’s predicament was a new situation that I had not encountered in the past.  I tried to remedy the situation the best I could by working one-on-one with him to try to build his vocabulary and associate words in English to words he knew in Spanish.  Although the vocabulary did improve the more I worked with him, there is still a long battle that lies ahead for him.  My hope is that he will not get discouraged and stay persistent with his studies. 

My service learning experience has taught me more than I could have ever imagined.  Through volunteering at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, I was able to reinforce many of the concepts that I learned in the psychology course.  I was also able to learn more about myself and what I value as a person.  This experience has opened my eyes to the teaching world, and reopened my eyes to what it means to be a child.  There is beauty that lies in the development of creativity, of imagination, and of the future.  The children I worked with may someday be a teacher, a CEO, and maybe even the President of the United States.

The benevolence I saw in Mrs. Salmon and the teachers at Christa McAuliffe has truly restored my faith in humanity.  After my experience with business, law, and politics it is refreshing to see that life doesn’t always break down to dollars and cents.  The relationships that I have developed with the students are ones that I will always cherish.  I came into the experience unclear on my goals, unclear on my objectives, and unclear on my purpose.  Now I am able to see why I was there.  I have a purpose, and it is to assist those students in need who could potentially fail in academics.  That possibility is something I will not allow to become a reality.  That is why I have decided to continue my service learning experience throughout the rest of the academic school year to ensure that the students who I have worked with will continue to make progress so they can succeed later on in life.  I may be only one person, but I now know I can have a positive impact on the future right now in the present.

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Into the Driver’s Seat
Ron Parks
Math 105: Concepts and Structures of Elementary Mathematics I
Instructor: Angela Beltran

My service learning project was an opportunity that brought me from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat.  It gave me the chance to see first hand how it would be to teach math to elementary students, more specifically, second graders.  I got to observe, participate, and help the teacher and students with the knowledge that I have gained throughout the years.  This project allowed me to test my skill with mathematics and its’ explanation in a way where a second grader can understand and comprehend the material.

Mrs. Wood did a fantastic job to make me feel comfortable in her classroom and never let me feel helpless.  Since I work at the school I knew a few of the kids who were in the class which also put my worries at ease.  Those students would wave and talk to me, which encouraged the other students to also want to get to know me and build a relationship.  This made the teaching aspect of my whole experience easier.

During my visits, for the first few minutes I would take in all the details of the classroom.  I would see how the desks were positioned, where the supplies were, where Mrs. Wood would teach from, etc.  I wanted to get a good feel of how I should present myself when it is my turn to teach and stand in front of students.  There were many new aspects of teaching that were not available when I was their age and I was amazed at all the new technology that was provided.  Instead of the overhead projector that has been in use since I was in elementary school, they now have a machine called the docucam which is essentially the same concept but improved.  The advantage of the docucam is that it allowed us to write on any medium instead of limiting us to just a transparency.  The students enjoyed sitting up at the docucam with Mrs. Wood and doing a math problem and seeing their writing on the large white screen.  In addition, many of their textbooks were available on the web.  I thought this was helpful because if a student forgot their book, they could go on the web and pull up their homework and never miss a beat.  If not for this experience, I wouldn’t know about the new developments that are available for teachers and their students.

My biggest worry about the service learning project was that I would not be good at helping a student with a problem, or teaching them about a concept.  It is one thing to understand the material, but then to teach that material to someone else is the most difficult part.  I had to remember that I was teaching a child and not a peer of mine.  That was the hardest and most frustrating task because when they did not understand and looked at me with a blank stare, I wondered what part I messed up and how to correct it.  Taking this class helped me to use props so the students have a visual representation of the math problem.  Before long I was using the tools I learned from all those countless hours of completing modules and it made my job much easier.  I found myself doing the missing addend approach, take away approach, and others I’ve learned this semester.

When I reflect on this experience, I think it was a great time and it helped me understand just how much hard work goes into teaching.  There were times when I actually felt like a teacher because Mrs. Wood would tell the students to ask me if they had any questions so I did my best to meet their needs.  My favorite experience was probably when I got to work with the students one on one.  This allowed me to get to know the students and how they like to be taught.  I used different methods with them to help them understand the material.  The service learning project solidified my feelings of wanting to become a teacher.  I did not doubt my love for teaching and kids, but to get a first hand experience that I enjoyed made the decision easier.  The service learning project taught me how to be a teacher, a listener, and also a student of the profession itself and I am grateful for it.

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What you Receive in Return
Mallory Rorabeck
Counseling 110: College Success Skills
Instructor: Wendy Horton

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and as I got up for the volunteer project, I felt I was in search of an emotional uplift.  I have always felt that helping people was the best gift I could not only give to someone else, but also myself.  The moment I drove up to the premises, I knew I had come to the right place.  The sun was shining brightly on the buildings and the other student volunteers had bright, welcoming smiles on their faces.  

Today, I was going to help organize various activities for the children living at Casa de Amparo.  Casa is a non-profit organization that provides shelter and support services for children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect.  After we were briefed on our duties for the day, we met the children.  Most of the children were quiet and distant as they approached us.  Our first task was called an “icebreaker.”  For this task we were to pair up with one child and put together a creative handshake.  As I looked around, I spotted a young boy.  He stood there with his arms swinging at his hips and his eyes wandering looking for a partner.  He was not shy by any means; in fact, it took me only a few minutes to realize he was the most outgoing one of all.  As we put together an original handshake of our own, we laughed as if we were not strangers at all.  I believed from that moment on, he knew I was there to help him, to make his day just that much better.

We began the day with relay races.  Another student and I volunteered to be in charge of this event.  I have always been a person who loves to be considered the leader of the group so this felt just perfect for me.  I also love children.  With a slice of enthusiasm and a cheerful tone, the children followed my lead with excitement.  My goal was to encourage team support.  The first relay winner was determined by who crossed the finish line first.  However, for the second relay, I told the children the winning team would be determined by how loud and supportive they were of each other.  It was so great to see the children laughing and cheering each other on.  They showed such enthusiasm towards the relay games.

My favorite part of the day was the fashion show.  We had brought tons of clothes, accessories, and jewelry for the children to dress up with.  When we first arrived at the facility, the children were shy.  Looking into their eyes, one could see that they had been through far more than any child should have to overcome.  I felt terrible knowing these children had to be taken from their families and their homes, I wanted to show them how truly special they were.  Once we started the fashion show, it seemed their troubles were temporarily forgotten.  They began expressing themselves in so many ways, they loved being noticed.  With all eyes on them, they would stop to pose in front of the audience with smiles and confidence.  As they walked down our pretend runway they soaked up the attention with all of their hearts.  It was painful for me when I had to tell them the fashion show would soon end.  They continuously asked to walk down the runway one more time: “Please please please... I promise this is the last time!”  Of course, I didn’t have the strength to do anything more than say yes repeatedly.  Before I knew it, the other volunteers were telling me it was time to be finished.

Based on their quiet and withdrawn actions at the start of the day, I believe the children felt abandoned and lost, not belonging to anyone.  However, in my opinion, I strongly believe that our MiraCosta group made it essential to point out how important each child truly is.  By the end of the day the children began to act as though they saw more importance in themselves.  The attention we gave to them, our smiles and friendliness, helped to build the children’s self-esteem.  I saw the children walk away that day with confidence and pride they may have never seen in themselves before.

All of the children had been taken from their homes because of abuse and neglect.  The children were seldom given the opportunity to see how beautiful and significant they were to the world.  I strongly believe the people that work and volunteer at Casa De Amparo make a huge impact on how the children perceive themselves.

I do not know whether the children at Casa will ever know this, but that day they gave me one of the most precious gifts I have ever received.  Each time one of the children smiled at me, I felt as though I had truly made a difference.  The other day I was telling my best friend that one of my strongest goals in life is to make a significant impact on the lives of others.  That day, I left Casa de Amparo knowing and believing I had that ability to do so.

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Self-Reflections
Betty Gastelum
Humanities 251: American Studies
Instructor: Denise Stephenson

I never thought what life would be like if I didn’t have a home.  I never realized what life would be like if I didn’t have food, but I started to picture my life without the necessities I take for granted once I started doing my service learning at a winter homeless shelter.  Operation Hope brings homeless families into a safe and warm place to live during the harsh cold weather of winter.  I thought when I got there I wouldn’t feel safe, that I wouldn’t get attached to anyone.  I thought that I would want to get out as soon as I could, but once I started to help out and talk to people, I didn’t want to leave.

Throughout this class, I learned a lot.  I have learned that not everything is what it seems, there’s often more than meets the eye.  I have learned that not everyone’s values are the same.  I have learned to read things semiotically (before this class, I had no idea that semiotic was even a word).  Because of this course I will be able to see things for a deeper meaning and see how American values are intertwined in almost everything we do, have, or say.  I feel as though I understood the class better because of the interaction with other classmates and having them explain things to me as well.  I think I now have a greater view of what America is as a culture.

One value I learned from my service learning was equality.  We all talk about it, but most of us don’t realize how much it means to people  The homeless see themselves as those who are looked down upon as less than human because of their homelessness.  Many people judge them without knowing their true stories. At Operation Hope everyone was treated as equals.  No questions were asked and the doors were open to all who needed help, without rejection.  Each person is treated like any other person; they are all given clothes, food and a place to stay.  I talked to one man who said he feels as though he’s been finally accepted by someone.  He felt as though everyone cared for him and would talk to him and make him feel as though he was equal to others.  The center also helps the residents get jobs, maintain sobriety and find living arrangements.

The value of equality is instilled in me and I have gotten it from my parents, the media, the government and from others that I have encountered.  I feel as though we all say that everyone is created equal and yet we look down upon those who are different.  I experience equality through my friends accepting my family for who they are.  My mom is gay and my best friend is very conservative and although she doesn’t feel the same way about gay and lesbian couples that I do, she still accepts us for who we are and treats us the same as others.  I show equality by not judging others without knowing who they truly are and working at the homeless shelter helped me accomplish this even more so.

Another value I observed through service learning was ambition.  Most would assume that people in a homeless shelter would be lingering in the past, but the residents always looked to the future and maintained the hope that they would make it someday.  They never allowed their past to be a barrier and didn’t dwell on the mistakes they had made.  They acknowledged their faults but didn’t use them as an excuse.  Most people talked about job interviews they had and the hopes of getting their children off the streets and into homes where they could be safe.  They talked about finding ways to make it without resorting to the past behaviors.  Each person had an ambition and a desire to work hard.  They didn’t just desire something; they tried to make that ambition into something.  In America we always have ambitions to make it somewhere and become something more.  Some have ambition for power while others desire a happy life.  My parents have shown me that through ambition, I can make it one day, doing whatever I want.  They showed me that if I work hard and have a dream that I can achieve it.  Ambition is a form of motivation and it has helped me to go to college and be the first in my family to get a college degree and become a photographer. 

Throughout this course and service learning, I have figured out that I am smarter than I thought.  I can analyze things for underlying meanings which I don’t think I could have done before.  I have found that being an American is more than just norms, it is also about being yourself and not what society dictates.  I feel as though I am more in tune with my values and I discovered ones I didn’t think I had before.  I never realized that education was such a strong value in my family because I am the only one to go to college.  But I think the reason I didn’t see it as a value before is because I never thought that it was such a big deal.  My parents wanted me to have an education and they made that into a value I have set for myself.  This class has demonstrated that if I dig deep enough, I can find deeper meanings behind things that I would have never thought of before.  For me, being an American is about being true to oneself and appreciating the fact that everyone is different.    

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The Stars of my Life: The Children at Casa de Amparo
Brittni Oldham
Sociology 145: Psychology/Sociology of Family
Instructor: Karen Baum

The gift of life in the eyes of a child can easily be distorted.  A child that has come from an abusive, neglectful home can see life in a different light.  I completed my service learning hours at Casa de Amparo, a shelter for children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect.  I began my actual service at Casa before I became a part of the service learning community at MiraCosta College.  I served roughly 50 hours that were documented with the service learning coordinator, but served well beyond that with my hours reaching around 85 hours for the semester.  Coming from a somewhat strong family and home, I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into at the children’s shelter.

I began my service in a classroom of four children, all between the ages of 6 and 10.  I never thought I could be intimidated by a child, but I was.  I felt that I lacked the life experiences many of these children have been through.  I found it difficult to talk to the children at first for fear of saying something I shouldn’t or setting off a memory from the child’s past.  I wanted to be a positive role model and a friend the children could rely upon.  I made it my goal to work on progressing to the point that I wasn’t afraid or intimidated anymore.  The Interactionist Theory explains that the internal dynamics of the family as a group of interacting individuals shapes the meaning of family and relationships.  Knowing this particular theory and observing the children’s personal interactions with each other, the staff and the other volunteers, I found that I needed to learn more about myself in order to learn how to talk to the children and create my own relationship with them.  One example of a close relationship I formed was with a precious nine -old girl.  She was at the shelter for nearly a year.  It broke my heart.  She taught me about the social work system and what it is like for her being in the system.  She is in foster care now and has been since the beginning of March.  She calls me about every other weekend.  She is doing great and progressing in school.  Her older brother is in the same foster care as her, so she is around family.  I am very happy that I met her.  She was the first child to interact with me when I started my service with Casa de Amparo.  We will be life long friends I’m sure.  Because of my interactions with this child I can talk to any child about what they are feeling.  I approach the situation in a way that isn’t offensive and it allows the child to tell me specifically what he or she wants to and nothing more.   I don’t allow any questions to put pressure upon a child.

How do we apply the concepts of family to children in a group home?  This is something I have struggled to answer all semester.  Our class textbook helped to define some ideas.  A primary group is a small group in which there are close face to face relationships, and these relationships are emotionally charged.  Family and close friends are included in this group.  Secondary groups are often larger.  The relationships involved are distant and practical.  My professor, Mrs. Baum asked me, “How would you classify these children?”  After much thinking, I came up with the following.  The children have been placed into a shelter with strangers.  Some of the children have been in and out of the shelter and foster homes but for the most part are with strangers. In some ways I think the relationships they form are secondary ones.  The staff members work to implement a family like environment.  They care for the children as substitutes for parents but without the close affection.  Children get hot meals, showers, and bedrooms; but lack the individual attention that a mom or dad would provide.  I feel that the relationships the children form with each other are greater than that of a secondary group.  They have formed close face to face personal and emotional relationships.  They even fight like brothers and sisters.  They have learned to cope with living without their biological parents.  Though their lives are hard and confusing, they have learned to cope and create relationships that help them look past not having parents there for them.  They have found alternative ways to receive the attention they need from each other.

The children I work with have created this light in my life that makes every day a joy.  I also have times without my family.  My husband is in the United States Marine Corps so he is deployed quite often.  As this occurs, I find myself drifting toward the children for affection and friendship.  The children trust me and can rely on me and I can trust and rely on them.  We have almost created a family like relationship: we are a primary group.  I like to think of myself as the big sister they all share.  The relationships I have created and the friends I have made in the shelter will last a lifetime.  I can see myself nowhere else.  Missing a day puts me down, but when I go back and see the big smiles on the children’s faces, my heart just fills with joy.  I am proud to be a student at MiraCosta College and feel privileged to be part of such a fantastic program.  I would recommend service learning to anyone and everyone.  It allowed me to connect the class material learned in class to the personal experiences I gain with the children.

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Service Learning at Brother Benno’s
Arthur J. Murphy II
Health 101: Principles of Health
Instructor: Linda Shaffer

Over the years, spring break has evolved from a time of giving, planting, and helping the community, into a self gratifying week of pleasure, fun in the sun, drinking and brain dumping.  This year I had the opportunity to experience the old spirit of helping our fellow man by devoting two days of spring break to the community.  The Service Learning Center hosted a spring break project at Brother Benno’s.  They offered transportation for the first day as a way to introduce MiraCosta students to the organization.  Then it was up to the students to return and continue their service.

The Brother Benno’s Organization is composed of a humble family of elders, who have dedicated the remainder of their declining youth to serving the community.  This is a heartfelt organization, full of God’s love, which radiates grace and hope to those in need.  The staff consists of women that display grandma grace, and old men that are there to help a worn soul.

Brother Benno was a Benedictine Monk, a man of faith who devoted his life to helping the needy.  Oceanside residents, Harold and Kay Kutler, started feeding the homeless soup from their soup kitchen, which was given the name Brother Benno’s.  Moreover, Brother Benno would prepare soup at the local abbey, and bring it to the little house which bore his name.  Additionally, Brother Benno needed money to facilitate his expanding call of servitude.  To accomplish this, he used machines at a local pasty factory to bake bread in the wee hour of the night. He would then take the fresh bread and knock on the doors of the wealthy, feed them, humbly look them eye, and say, “What are you going to do for me?”  Later, the pastry owner suffered marital problems, and ended up giving his establishment to Brother Benno.

Today, Brother Benno’s legacy lives on and has grown from a little soup kitchen to a six bedroom sober living house.  Additions to his legacy include two men’s shelters, two women shelters, a thrift shop, and the pastry factory converted into a high level all purpose center.  Services provided include: an emergency shelter for women and their children of abuse, a sober living facility for women, two servants living homes, a house for program staff and two facilities for mandate male recovery.  The culmination is the Brother Benno’s Center, a facility that serves anyone in need and functions as the headquarters.  Services provided include: work for those living the programs, lodging, clothing, food, hot meals, showers, haircuts, bus passes, blankets, laundry, diapers, baby formula, mail delivery, tutoring, case management, church service, furniture assistance, computer and office accommodations, and of course encouragement through hugs.

Brother Benno’s covers the entire spectrum of the health topic.  Many people that line-up for assistance have been beaten by this world, residing in cars, the brush, on the verge of homeless or escaping violence and drug abuse.  Once arriving at the center these nurturing servants seek first to feed you, dust you off with a shower, and provide clean clothes.  Then it’s time to assist the individual by providing human services. No matter how bad the word has been to someone, food, hygiene, clean clothes and an empathic heart elevates the self worth.  The stress of the world seems to dissipate in an environment of support and the recovery groups rebuilds psychological health by providing shelter, peer support, and work.  Sometimes a person only needs someone to relate to, or the ability to seek refugee in God’s House.  These and other needs are met.  All these services are provided through donations of money, perishables, and domestic goods.  Also Brother Benno’s thrift shops provide a large contribution towards organizational funding.

On the first day of service, about ten students, including my wife and I were transported by the Service Learning Center staff to Brother Benno’s Center.  As soon as we arrived, Thomas a member of the staff placed us in a line, to sort a mound of food.  It seemed like hours of going through canned items.  Two things that I learned were, canned foods had an expiration date and other countries are not required to comply with Food and Drug Administration policies.  With that being said, we came across food from other countries, lacking dates or dates from decades past.  Since I had the biggest mouth, I was given the additional tasks of breaking down boxes and empting the trash bin that was being filled of old, non FDA compliant foods.  Once the food was sorted, our team moved to a roller line, where we filled eighteen boxes at a time with: one can of potatoes, two cans of corn, three soups, two canned fruits, two green vegetables, two pounds of rice, two pounds of beans, one box of cereal, two cans of tomato, a jar of peanut butter, a can of tuna, two boxes of macaroni and cheese. 

Listing the contents of the boxes sound like a lot of food, but when a family of four or five arrive this is nothing for them.  The food we sorted and packed came from personal donations and from San Diego County food distribution centers.  When items run low, the organization buys food out of pocket.  And since the county gives a little food, they regulate what Brother Benno’s places in the boxes, audit the contents of food boxes, and dictate the rationing of certain items.  Once we had boxed the allotted number of boxes for that day, we cleaned the area and received a formal orientation of the organization, met the staff, and were given a tour of the center.  In the middle of the meeting, a woman arrived that was graduating from the drug program later that night.  She was so happy to see us, that tears filled her eyes.  She was there selecting furniture for her new apartment.  It is not important to bring up her past, but she overcame the streets and drugs to have her own place, stable employment and sobriety.

Next the staff provided us with a glorious lunch which reminded me of the importance of fresh food.  After lunch the group was divided into two teams.  One team was going upstairs to clean the attic, while the second team organized the children’s library.  I chose to go upstairs and get dirty.  In the attic, we discovered an assortment of donated literature that empowered children with meaning.  We sorted books that included the Golden Book series, bible stories, and old scholastic publications.  These books are given to the children while their parents are getting assistance.  To me this was the highlight because it took me back to my great grandmother reading to me as a child.  This concluded the first day, but it was so much fun that my wife and I returned the following day to continue serving.

Arriving the next day was the same story, working in the food warehouse.  Only this time after packing and sorting, we were taken to see where the food went, once it was boxed.  We followed a box all the way through to giving it to a family.  After leaving us, the box was routed to a section that deals with distributing items to the needy.  We watched a family receive clothes and a food box, which made the older lady smile.  Then we had lunch and this time we had the chance to see the recovery staff and participants in the lunch room, then back to work in the warehouse.

I had a great time, and would definitely do this again. I thought this was an obligation from class but afterwards, I think it should be mandated for gradational purposes.  As for affecting my educational goals, I think I had a chance to see the hearts that will be in my care after graduation.  I know that I will help another organization even if it’s my own.  Thank you for this opportunity to help.

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A New Perspective
Laura Cervantes
Health 101: Principles of Health
Instructor: Melissa Conrey

To many of us, community service is not as important as other things in our lives.  Every time I heard the word community service, I hated it.  Not only because I thought it was just working for no reason, but also because I did not want to spend my time doing something I was required to do.  When I first heard that we had to do a service learning assignment, I was a little frustrated because I did not have the time to do it, and I thought it was going to be pointless.  Once I began researching places I could serve, I began to show interest in this assignment.  I chose to do my volunteer hours at the Ivey Ranch Park Association.  Ivey Ranch is an organization that provides care and activities for disabled children.  There I learned many new things that I would not have learned anywhere else.  I met new people that made me change the way I look at others.  What I learned I will take with me for the rest of my life and I will keep this knowledge to share with others who are not educated enough to know about this subject.

As I said in the beginning, Ivey Ranch is a daycare that takes care of children with special needs.  Some of the children have a slower learning capability then most of us do.  The kids may have a disability, but they are just as equal as we are to each other.  Some of the kids have ticks that they can’t handle but they have to deal with them.  Whoever is watching them has to be careful because the children can hurt themselves without even knowing.  Pat is the main teacher and Miss Lorena is another one of the teachers, most of my time was spent with Miss Lorena.  She showed me around the school and gave me some tips on how to take care of children with special needs.  The first day I arrived at the school, I met the children.  First there was Scott, and when I looked at him, I did not observe any noticeable disability.  I found nothing wrong in the way he was acting, or the way he looked.  Miss Lorena said he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  Even so, he was very intelligent, respectful, and caring of others.  Then I met Cole.  Cole had this tick where he would always be clapping.  When I was first introduced to him I was a little afraid because I thought he would come after me or that he was going to hurt me.  It was the total opposite.  Cole was very nice and listened to his teacher when he was told to stop doing something.  He was probably more afraid of me then I was of him.  There were many children and all of them were unique and had different needs.  Some had mental disabilities while others were nonverbal which made communication difficult.  They were all harmless kids that some people may look down upon but no one has the right to look at them differently. 

Some of the kids are dropped off in the morning before school and come back after school.  They mainly go because their parents are working, so they need after school care.  The bus drops of the students, and then a teacher comes out to pick them up.  The staff can have challenging days dealing with disabled kids.  Sometimes the teachers risk injury to themselves because the work is physically demanding and some of the children don’t realize their actions can be harmful to others. 

The kids get to play outside on the playground and when they are inside they do activities with the teacher.  Some of the activities that I did with them included doing puzzles, painting their names so they could hang them up on the wall, and creating Halloween drawings.  I also read the children books and played with them outside.  All the kids had different needs, some of them needed to have their diapers changed, some needed to be fed, and others just needed constant supervision.  For example, Bobby had a hard time staying in one place and always wanted attention.  Every time I supervised him, I had a great time.  He is a really awesome kid who will always bring a smile to one’s face with all the things that he does.  He might not be able to communicate with others because he has a nonverbal disability, but he is enjoyable to be around.

One of the children was a one-on-one student, which meant that he required teacher’s assistance at all times.  He had to always have somebody with him, because he was very slow at everything he did, and also he couldn’t walk.  There was no strength in his legs for him to get up, he did not talk, and he would not understand what I would tell him.  He was just very quiet and calm.  One of the days I volunteered, I got to spend my time with him.  Ten minutes after I arrived he was given his snack, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and it took him almost two hours to finish the sandwich which was when I left.  Throughout this time, I read a book to him, played with him, and then teacher Pat showed me how to get him up so that he can try to walk from one place to another.  One of the things that he enjoyed was going outside and sitting on a toy car.  I sat him on the car and was pushing him around.  He would just laugh because he was happy, and then I got excited because sometimes it is hard to get a smile from certain children. Even his teacher said that she didn’t know he liked to be outside, but now will bring him outside to play on the car.  

This was an experience I will never forget.  If it wasn’t for this class, I wouldn’t have gone to volunteer and I wouldn’t have met these wonderful children.  They really changed the way I look at those with disabilities.  Before I was afraid of them, but now I see them no differently than other children.  They are all the same; they just have different things to deal with.  Before this experience, I had no idea that a place like this existed in our community.  It never went through my mind that there was a daycare especially for children with special needs.  Even before I completed my hours, I already knew that I was going to keep coming back and I have.  This place changed me in more ways than I can describe or put into words.  I thought about all the things that I have and don’t value.  Some of us talk way too much about pointless things, about other people, and about things that hurt others, when there are children who can’t even say their own names.  Kids at Ivey Ranch can’t walk or hold a pencil when we prefer to ride around in cars, and not do anything.  I was given many things in this world that sometimes I am not thankful for, and after doing this project, I thank God for giving me all the things I have.  We all have to appreciate what we have and shouldn’t judge others because of disabilities.

What I liked about this assignment was that we had the chance to choose were we wanted to go and weren’t assigned to a specific place.  This assignment is something that I will always look back on and value.  Every time I see a disabled child, I will always remember that they are awesome kids brought into this world so we can learn to respect and appreciate each other.

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Back to School: Peer Persuasion
Diana Jamous
Psychology 113: Child and Adolescent Growth and Development
Instructor: Evie Kensel

High school was an exciting time for me.  I still remember all the new experiences I had and all the people I met.  I also remember it as being one of the most important times in my life as I was setting the foundation for my future, primarily college.  Still, with all the fun there was also a lot of things to worry about including peer pressure and grades.  It was an interesting time because even though I wanted to be unique and express myself as an individual, I still wanted to be accepted by my peers.  It was a difficult task to form an identity and come to terms with a new world and new sensations, and it seems to be getting even harder these days.

When I went back to high school for my service learning project at San Dieguito Academy, I realized that kids today have so much more to deal with than I did growing up.  There are a lot more temptations in the form of drugs and promiscuity, and the increased academic pressure stemming from standardized tests and intense competition to get into the best colleges.  

My primary duties at the Academy were to be a mentor to three wonderful students: two girls in a first period sheltered English class, and one boy in a second period academic literacy class.  All three students shared similarities.  They were English as second language (ESL) students who came from immigrant families, and had Hispanic backgrounds.  They were open to working with me and shared any aspect of their life I asked them about.  The instructor was Ronette Youmans, a very selfless but firm woman who clearly loved her students and wanted them to succeed.  She filled her class with inspirational quotes and would reward students with positive reinforcement and praise.  She was attentive to their needs and comfort level and would push the kids to work hard but make sure it was something they were capable of doing.  I think having a smaller class size was beneficial, because she was able to keep an eye on her students at all times and also knew how to work with each individual.  But success is not a one-way street.  Ms. Youmans cannot do all the work for the students; they clearly have to put in the time and effort. 

When I mentored the three students, it was clear they wanted to better themselves and didn’t put up any barriers that would hinder the process.  They were intelligent and sociable but needed some guidance and support to help them understand what they needed to do in order to succeed.  They were like a breath of fresh air.  They had so much optimism and love for life but needed to channel that energy into being productive.  Like most teenagers, they were idealistic and the experiences they faced in high school were important and would shape their future. 

In a biosocial aspect, the bodies of teens are changing and their brains are developing.  It is a crucial point in their lives mentally and physically.  The limbic system reaches final maturation before the prefrontal cortex (Berger, 2006,  p.447).  This can be troublesome because it means that behaviors governed by emotions are developing prior to the structures needed for controlling those behaviors.  That is why teens usually engage in impulsive and foolish behavior; they really don’t know any better.  A student named Clark had a serious drug addiction problem.  He was in tenth grade had already gone through a rehab program.  I learned that Clark had been a very good student in seventh grade, getting As and Bs and doing very well on standardized testing.  But he fell in with the wrong crowd and was led astray.  He started doing drugs and his grades plummeted. 

When I spoke with Clark, I saw a young man who was very thoughtful and intelligent, but had low self-confidence and a muddled sense of who he was.  He made it clear to me that he did not want to continue the delinquent path but was not exactly taking steps to deter his current lifestyle.  I think he was at a very fragile point in his life, not only being a teen but also dealing with recovery.  I hope that I was able to impart some wisdom and assurance onto him.  It was important for him to realize how smart he was and that he was capable of being so much more if he applied himself.  I reminded him that he was once a great student so he definitely had it in him to succeed.

Cognitively speaking, I observed the ways in which the students were able to use deductive reasoning and hypothetical concepts in order to formulate their own conclusions about the subject material. Lydia and Sophie were very thoughtful and perceptive young women and they were very open to learning and staying on task.  Egocentrism is a concept relevant to teens because it basically states that kids at this stage of development are self-centered and feel that their experiences outweigh anyone else’s.  I did not see evidence of this in Lydia or Sophie but I did witness it a little in Clark and saw it in other students. 

In the psychosocial realm, the impact that parents and peers make on a teen are powerful and could be either positive or negative.  At this stage in their development, teens are trying to forge their own identity which involves many factors, including family and peer relationships.  I realized that a lack of parental involvement in children’s lives often has detrimental effects and this was more obvious in some cases than others.  Parents who are not aware of their children’s activities or behaviors are setting them up for further problems in developing a sense of values and self.  In regards to the strength of family influence, parental monitoring is known to be a powerful deterrent of delinquency, risky sex, and drug abuse.  When monitoring is part of a warm, loving, supportive relationship, it leads to better outcomes, higher grades, less emotional distress, and helpful friends (Berger, 2006, p. 509).  I am not suggesting that any of the kids I worked with had dysfunctional or abusive homes.  In fact, I think it was quite the opposite.  I believe that there was love and warmth, but also a sense of detachment when it came to academic support.  I don’t think the detachment was intentional.  Rather the children had working parents with a limited grasp of the English language which made it difficult for them to provide  help. 

I think that schools should take more steps to ensuring that the families of ESL students are able to participate and be part of the school experience in ways that help their children succeed.  There should be more Spanish speaking counselors made available and perhaps even school events which would help bring everyone together instead of creating a linguistic and ethnic divide.  I often wonder if the parents of ESL students are too intimidated to come forward and discuss their children’s progress.  If so, this is something that needs to be recognized and addressed.  Everyone has a right to learn and be offered the same opportunities.

I would like to conclude by saying that the time I spent at San Dieguito Academy working in Ronette Youmans’ class was an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and I feel fortunate to have been able to partake in this project.  I will never forget the three students I worked with and how much I learned from them.   I wish them all the best and I know they will succeed in life if they are just given the right opportunities and if they take advantage of them.  I would definitely recommend this site and teacher to others.  It was a great adventure for me to relive my high school days and learn in depth about adolescent psychology.

The last day of my service learning, the students gave me a hand-picked bouquet of sweet pea flowers and an Academy keychain with the words “thank you” etched on it.  I carry that keychain as part of my keyset, and every time I look at it I am reminded that despite how cool and rowdy teens appear to be on the outside, they are still sensitive and loving on the inside and have much to offer if they are given the chance to grow.

Berger, K.S.  (2006).  The developing person through childhood and
     adolescence.  New York: Worth Publishers.

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