Hannah Smith

Community Service Reflection

Community service provides volunteers with the opportunity to not only become active

members of their community, but also to participate in activities that leave a lasting, positive

impact on their community and society as a whole. Honestly speaking, I was incredibly unsure

and filled with doubts upon entering the university setting. I doubted my own academic abilities

and questioned whether or not my educational goals were worth pursuing. I felt that my own

course of study paled in comparison to my fellow peers and I began to question if the teaching

field was truly what I wanted. During my first semester of college, I reached out to a local

elementary school and was put in contact with a first-grade classroom at Medary Elementary

School. I immediately fell in love with the students and developed a close mentoring relationship

with their teacher. Unexpectedly, I ended up volunteering 50+ hours tutoring and giving one-on-

one instruction to students within the first-grade classroom. I recognized the passion and

devotion that each teacher at Medary Elementary possessed and implemented in their day-to-day

routines with their students and I knew that the teaching field was my calling. As “overused” as

the phrase may be, I recognized that I truly wanted to make a difference in the lives of my future

students.

I completed a variety of activities and jobs throughout the many hours I spent in the first-

grade classroom. From one-on-one instruction with students to the many conversations I had

with the head teacher regarding her own teaching experiences, each responsibility and interaction

had an invaluable impact on my career as an educator. One of the most profound experiences I

had within this classroom was with a student who had come to the school from Haiti. I had
begun volunteering weekly in the classroom in September and felt like I had finally established a

“routine” within the classroom. This student began attending Medary after the holiday break in

December. His family had moved from Haiti only weeks before, and the student spoke only

French. The first few weeks were difficult and overwhelming for both the student as well as his

teacher. Not only was this teacher responsible for the educational success and wellbeing of 20+

students who were each at their own level of academic understanding, but she now needed to

assess the prior knowledge of the new student, catch the student up to the classroom’s current

curriculum, and find a way to communicate with the new student due to language barriers. As the

semester continued on, I began to search out ways to connect and communicate with the student.

He was unable to complete a lot of his coursework as he did not necessarily understand the

content that the teacher taught to the class each day. One of my main responsibilities that

semester was to work with this student and go through each activity and assignment with him on

a one-on-one basis in order to gauge his level of understanding of the curriculum content and to

help him complete assignments. As we sat in the hallway one afternoon, I pulled my phone out

to look up a word that I was attempting to communicate to him but was having difficulty

conveying in English. After showing the word to him in French, he motioned for me to give him

my phone and he began to type in simple words in French and so that the translator read them to

me in English. After a few back-and-forth translations, we found ourselves giggling in the

hallway at the silly pronunciations of the words in each language. This simple moment of

communication and connection had a profound impact not only on the relationship between the

student and I, but as well as my future career as an educator. It felt as if the student had finally

been able to showcase his own unique personality and the natural childishness that was often

overlooked due to the communication barrier.

 Overall, this community service experience provided me with the opportunity to create an

unexpected relationship and to better understand the barriers that prevent teachers from creating

these meaningful relationships. Volunteering allowed me to further experience my future career

in a “real world” setting and to participate in activities that I am interested in and that benefit my

community.