Community Service Reflection

Brittny Cornell

Over the years I have visited the Banquet in Sioux Falls to volunteer to help

prepare and serve meals. It is a great service in our local area that many benefit

from. Last year, I volunteered with their backpack program. The program helps

families with children from preschool all the way through high school with new

backpacks and a full school supply list of items for the year.

Going into the Banquet to volunteer for this program, I was surprised at the

vast amount of donations they had received. I helped at different times of the

program and got to see and help with each step. First, we separated the materials,

and backpacks that were donated by item and grade. Then, we got to go through

the supplies and start filling the backpacks up. We kept the backpacks separated by

grade level as we worked. After the many, many backpacks were filled, online

registrations came in for families in need of the school supplies. Many sheets were

printed out for each family showing the children’s grade level and genders, to better

help us to pick out a suitable and fun backpack for each one. This year families had

the option of coming in to pick them up, or have them delivered to their homes.

While I didn’t participate in the delivery process, I was able to help hand out bags

to the kids that came in. The kids, especially the younger ones, were so excited to

see what kind of backpack they got and all of their new school supplies. There were

so many colors, some with their favorite super heroes and others made with

colorful fur or even bright sequins. The kids immediately dug through their bags!

They would talk about how excited they were about their new school stuff and
going back to school again after missing so much time due to some of the covid

restrictions.

While a lot of the volunteer work I did was behind the scenes, I was fully

aware of the importance of this program. There were a couple of years when I was

younger that I too needed to rely on this program for school supplies. It was a

humbling experience as an older student, receiving the backpack, but when I was

younger I was just so excited for the backpack and new school items for the new

school year. Both times though, I was completely grateful that there were people

caring enough to provide the items and donated their time to be able to help.

Doing most of my work behind the scenes for the kids while volunteering

relates directly towards my professional growth. It allowed me to experience, first

hand, all of the hard work being done for a later outcome. As a teacher, there is a

considerable amount of work done behind the scenes. Making lesson plans, finding

materials, planning activities, and creating visual lessons to name a few. There’s

grading papers, planning for parent teacher conferences, keeping open

communication with parents, individualized lessons, and the list could go on and on.

The students usually only get to experience the end result of all the work. This

allowed me the experience of hard, busy work, for the benefit of the kids.

Through volunteering, people come together as a community. Drawing on my

own experience and education at Dakota State University, I know that each school

can act as a small community helping each other out. That small community can

then extend to other schools in the district. Outside of schools, the community can

also include people in the surrounding area, volunteers and arguably most
importantly, the parents or guardians. This experience helped my professional

growth directly by working with others in the community and helped me build

professional contacts whom are also in education. This also helped me connect with

the community on a personal level, being able to visit with parents and students

around the community.

Finally, I think this experience helped me connect with more people outside

of my everyday interactions. I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. While I

have been this way since I was young, I’ve worked hard to become more

comfortable socializing. When taking a course this last semester, we talked a

considerable amount about parent teacher conferences, which made me feel

anxious. However, speaking with all of the parents coming in, it helped me feel

more confident in my future ability to lead conferences and speak openly with

parents.

Overall this was a great volunteer opportunity for me to participate in. I plan

to return and participate next year in the backpack program. Hopefully meeting

more people in education and to be able to connect and conversate with more

people in the community. This program allows kids to have one less worry about

returning to school and hopefully it helps give them the confidence and tools to

participate in their new school year.