I can’t say I have done a lot of service for the outside community, but in high school I did a lot for my school that I think made a significant impact.  I was in a leadership class along with about 30 other students like myself who simply cared about the environment of our high school and how we went about day to day activities there.  We had a variety of responsibilites such as cleaning up the school before the new school year, painting, posting up posters to make the school look more exciting, organizing events (such as carnivals, volunteering activities, sporting events, competitions, assemblies, etc.). I did this all of my Junior and Senior years of high school and put a significant amount of time into it, all for the purpose of bettering Thomas Jefferson Student’s high school experience’s, along with my own. 

I would have to say I am proud and also very glad that I got so involved, but on the other hand it could be frustrating.  When puting so much work into something, you don’t always get the positive response that you strive for.  Some high school kids can be so selfish, and deffinitely did not appreciate our work as we hoped they would.  All the same, I have no regrets about doing what I did, and it made my high school experience better as a whole. 

I think that this experience will help me with the service learning I am about to do.  The boys and girls club is a similar atmosphere as a school. Where youth come together, and a place where we can have fun and learn about one another.

I participated in the Santa Claus breakfast through school.  It took place at our local park called “Carrie Blake Park.”  It is an annual event and I participated in it two years.  I believe it was during my sophomore and junior year in high school but I maybe mistaken.  We could do several different things that ranged from holding the door open, placing people at tables to eat, serving juice and coffee, and what I did was taking peoples tickets, ordering their food, and picking it up and taking it to them. 

I actually really liked doing this.  It was fun for me because of the hussle and bussle.  You were constantly working, trying to get peoples coupons as soon as possible and making sure they received their food once it was done.  I guess the part I enjoyed the most was the work, being a waitress for a day, and of course we got free breakfast and honor society hours which we all need 10 of per semester.

I don’t think that service will really help me very much in this coming service.  The two services are so broad and different from eachother.  You are serving in both but in different ways.  In my first one it was more of a fast pace service.  It wasn’t really important that you talked or got to know the people you were serving but rather to get them their food so that they had a pleasent experience.  In this upcoming service it’s more about quality rather than quanity like in the other case.  You are to be more focused on the people you are working with.  Rather than serving them food your serving them with your time.

I’m not going to lie- my biggest effort on the service learning front was done in blatant self-interest. I didn’t get hired to work at the Kennewick Parks and Rec Summer Fun Day Camp, so I volunteered (with the hopes of someday being paid).

It all worked out- by mid summer when parents were sick of their kids, and kids were sick of their parents, and the camp was over-kidded and under-staffed, I got paid at least a few days a week. And the last two months of the summer, when the craft lady had enough and called it quits, I was hired full time.

Until those momentous points in time though, I volunteered. 8am to 3pm out in the sun, with awesome kids. It was epic. 9-10 year olds make great friends- they thought my car was cool, and didn’t rub into too bad when they dominated me in dodge ball.

I’m pumped to get to work with kids again. I think they’re phenomenal people. A lot of the kids I worked with last summer (and will hopefully work with again next summer) we’re from underprivleleged, low-income families (the camp is run through the city, and offers a lot of scholarships). I was amazed by the way these kids dealt with split families and trials. And 9-1o year olds don’t see in terms of race, money.. it was refreshing.

Neat!

The community service that i will be talking about is my trip to Tijuana to build a house for a family. It was two summers ago through young life. There was a group of about 30 kids and 30 adults that went down many of whom were close friends of mine. The “house” as they called it, was more of a shack which we built in a little under 5 days.  All the supplies were given to us and ready for assembly.  We poured a foundation built studs and then stuccoed the walls.  This experience was incredibly positive for me.  Not only did i learn immensely about the poverty that exists so close to me, i also was able to help out a family in need by providing them with a new place to live.  In addition to this it was a very fun trip.  As with most service learning positions, I had no idea what to expect going into the situation.  But with a positive attitude and the knowledge that you are going to be helping someone who is in need, i feel that the situation will often turn out to be positive and productive.

I took part in many different service activities through out high school, however, I can’t seem to recall any of them except when I volunteered at a local elementary school in Olympia.  I volunteered myself for the annual Centennial Elementary School Fair.  I enjoyed giving my time because it was a simple fund raiser for the school and they needed volunteers to run all the different stations for the children.  I ended up being the security guard and my duties were to walk around helping anything that needed help.  That service experience might help me in this class because I worked amongst elementary school children.  I considered it a very positive experience and I ended up doing it three years in a row.

     Well, I’ve done quite a few different things for service in my life but my favorite one was doing “Backpacks for Kids.”  It was a program that provided backpacks and school supplies to all the kids in my school distict that were on the free lunch program.  It was held at the local Ford dealership in Issaquah and a whole group of my friends and I went down there one saturday morning and handed out all the goods. 

     I felt that this project was very productive and very postive.  It was eye opening to me that there were kids that I was going to school with that did not have it as good as I did.  It reminded me to not pass judgements or make assumptions about people, because you really don’t know what their life is all about.

     This service experience will help me at the Boys and Girls Club because  I will be encountering kids with different backgrounds.  Whether they are poor or disabled or whatever, I can’t just go and make assumptions.  I just want to go and do good and make a difference.  It doesn’t even have to be a big difference, it could just be that I made their day better by playing a game of bball with them or helping them with their homework. 

In Colorado, there is a mandatory Outdoor Lab Program where sixth graders go up to the mountains for a week and learn about the natural world. Obviously high school counselors were needed.

My senior year, i did that. Went up and taught the kids for a week about rocks. That week meant constant contact with the kids. Helping them with class, extra activities, and overseeing their dorm, as we were way up in the mountains sleeping in cabins and whatnot. I went to outdoor lab despite the fact that I despise children. annoying little runts….but i digress! After the week I thought it was a productive week as going up there helped with leadership skills, and learning how to deal with kids. Of course, my outlook still hasnt changed. still despise them, but i’ve learned how to control them, which is a plus.

I think this will be very relevant to the service learning here, as again, i will be dealing with kids, but at least it isn’t a full week straight, and there will be adults present all the time, so i doubt there will be any problems.

One of my favorite service learning experiences was my volunteer service at a hospital in India during the summer before my senior year. I worked with my uncle in his hospital and helped with taking blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and other basic medical procedures that could easily be learned. This experience was very positive and productive because it allowed me to help those in need. I worked with the families of the paitients and saw some of the conditions these people were living in. I believe by doing medicine you can help those less fortunate than you as my uncle is doing and being a part of that was amazing. This experience will carry on to my other service learning opportunities as many of the same skills will need to be used when dealing with children. The same respect needs to be given to the children as was given to the paitients. You have to be paitient and work through problems together. Although these two services will be very different, they will also be very similar.  

I volunteered at a soup kitchen during high school.40 Hours of community service are required for high school graduation. I recall these experiences as required but satisfying to do with friends. Those service experiences are similar to the service learning component of this course in that it is required to complete the course so I will do it without complaining.

As you are already aware, English 121B is a service-learning course. In this class, you are required to spend twenty to forty hours during the quarter at a local Boys and Girls Club. The idea here is that your service-learning will augment your academic learning. For example, rather than abstractly speaking about how the technologies and media that we use ostensibly impact communities, you will instead have the concrete opportunity to use technology to articulate your service-learning experiences and speak for, about, and with local Boys and Girls Clubs. Such concrete opportunities should not only enhance your academic learning, but also increase your awareness of how your academic work here at the UW intersects with public practices.

But wait. What’s service-learning anyway?

For this in-class blog (to be written on Thursday, January 10th), please write briefly about some sort of community or volunteer service that you have performed (e.g., helping a friend, participating in a local organization, or tutoring a student). Or, if you prefer, you can reverse the dynamic here. That is, you can write about a time when someone volunteered to help you, presumably when you were in need of some help. (Of note, this experience needn’t be “positive,” per se. Be honest here.)

As you write, please mention the following three things:

• The specific context of the community or volunteer service (e.g., the who, what, when, where, and how)
• How you now recall that service as an experience (e.g., negative, positive, productive, or unproductive)
• And how that service experience might help you approach “service-learning” in this class.

No need to write formally here, people. The function of the blog in this class is to collaboratively log, discuss, and feed back into class activities, service-learning, and sonic culture. Get your ideas out for conversation and polish them in the response and major papers.

Before you publish your blog post, please categorize it under “#1 – Service-Learning?”.

And, of course, since this is your first blog post, ask me technical questions. After all, this isn’t a computer science course, so I’m certainly not assuming that you have “blogging proficiency.”

Thanks!