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Community Reflection Paper

Hattie Clapp completed 30 hours of community service volunteering in elementary school classrooms. She spent time in a 2nd grade classroom, 1st grade classroom, and art classroom, helping grade papers, organize materials, and assist students. This experience helped her learn about classroom management, student relationships, different teaching styles, and how to build an organized classroom environment. She discovered the importance of getting to know each student and their needs in order to help them learn and the challenges of maintaining organization with many students. Overall, the experience provided valuable insights into effective teaching methods and confirmed her desire to become a teacher.

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341 views2 pages

Community Reflection Paper

Hattie Clapp completed 30 hours of community service volunteering in elementary school classrooms. She spent time in a 2nd grade classroom, 1st grade classroom, and art classroom, helping grade papers, organize materials, and assist students. This experience helped her learn about classroom management, student relationships, different teaching styles, and how to build an organized classroom environment. She discovered the importance of getting to know each student and their needs in order to help them learn and the challenges of maintaining organization with many students. Overall, the experience provided valuable insights into effective teaching methods and confirmed her desire to become a teacher.

Uploaded by

api-525728887
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Hattie Clapp

Community Reflection Paper


In order to complete my 30 hours of community service, I decided to go to my elementary
school. When I heard that we had to volunteer, I knew exactly what I wanted to do so I talked to the
principal at Sioux Valley Elementary School. She helped me work out a schedule that consisted of
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the classroom. On Tuesdays, I spent time in the 2 nd grade classroom
for the first half of the afternoon and the 1 st grade classroom for the second half. In both of these
classrooms I got to interact with the students, help grade papers, and organize class materials. On
Thursdays, I spent the afternoon in the elementary art classroom. I really enjoyed interacting with the
students while they did their work. Some students really struggled coming up with ideas so I got to help
them as well. I really enjoyed experiencing the differences between the classrooms.

This experience relates to my professional growth as an educator in many ways. I got to know
what to expect when it comes to grading papers. I had no idea that teachers had so many papers to
grade each and every day. In the first-grade classroom, I mostly got to grade math assignments which
was interesting sometimes. There was a child in the classroom that struggled with switching certain
numbers around or writing them backwards. In the second-grade classroom, I got to grade both math
and reading assignments. I enjoyed doing this because it helped the teachers out and gave them more
time to build on the relationships with their students. This showed me that grading the assignments is
important because you can see which students are struggling with certain parts of an assignment and
how many students are struggling. If too many are struggling then you know you have to go back to it
and try to help them improve.

By being allowed to interact with the students, I got to experience what it is like to be asked for
help as if you are the teacher, the one with the knowledge that these students need to learn their task
at hand. It was a lot of fun to be allowed to help these students and work one on one with them as well.
I got to know them and what they struggle with in school. You figure out the kids that have tempers and
what triggers that as well as how to calm them down. Figuring out these kids was like a puzzle. You are
given information about them piece by piece and it is your job to put it all together and figure out what
helps them learn to the best of their ability. I didn’t realize how important it was to build a relationship
with students until it was time to actually do so.

I learned that having an overly organized classroom is really handy but it is a hard thing to keep.
With so many kids running around, you need to know where things are so the kids don’t have too much
time in between lessons because with too much time they get a little crazy. However, because you have
so many kids running around it makes keeping your room organized very difficult. This made me think
about my future classroom and how I would want to arrange it and have it organized. This helped me
grow by showing me what works and what doesn’t when it comes to classroom layout and organization.

While spending time in the art classroom, I learned that students need to do their own thing. If
you are always helping them and they don’t actually need it, then you are teaching them learned
helplessness. They need to learn to be creative on their own and find details that they want to add to
make their artwork worthy of the grade they want.

In the end this experience was very beneficial because it showed me a variety of different
things. I got to see different methods of organization, different types of assignments, and even different
Hattie Clapp

personalities of the students. I grew in my knowledge of what I want to be like as a teacher and I
enjoyed every minute of it. I am very glad that I had this experience.

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