Volunteer Paper Essay, Research Paper

For my volunteer paper I wanted to volunteer at an animal hospital or shelter since I am majoring in Pre-Vet. Then I decided to do something different. I chose to student teach 1st graders at Mckinley Elementary. It is very surprising to me that I chose to do this. I always said that I hated kids and had no desire to ever work with them I even said I would never give birth to any kids because I hated them so much. The thing is that I actually enjoyed my experience very much. I chose this activity because I wanted to try something different that I thought I wouldn’t like. The teacher that I did this volunteer work for was my 1st grade teacher at Mckinley Elementary when I went to school there back in 1986. The reason that I hate kids so much is because had a really bad experience with them. In the summer of last year I baby-sat these kids across the street from me that moved here from New York. They were the kids from hell. They were so annoying, and ungrateful. For instance they always asked me to buy them Taco Bell, and when I did, they would say, “why did you buy me this?”, or “I want more, you better buy me more.” I hated them. I was so stressed from them that I would cry at night. I really didn’t want to baby-sit them anymore but I felt bad if I said no. So I thought I couldn’t judge all kids on those three. I had to give others a chance, and didn’t want to give up on having kids.I did many fun and exciting things while I was working with these kids at Mckinley. The first day Mrs. Aiken introduced me. She said, ” Boys and girls this is Taysha, and I was her teacher when she was your age.” They were all in awe. They couldn’t believe that I had her as a teacher. The first kid I helped was a black girl named Shontele. I helped her with her math work and reading. I taught her to group thins in Math when you are adding or subtracting. For example: Say you have ten subtract three. I told her to put ten into groups of five, then cross out three, and count how many there was left. She enjoyed that and thought it was now much easier to do her Math. I also learned the difference between what was right and wrong. The first day I went I had my eyebrow ring in and she didn’t like it too much. She asked if it was OK with my mother. She said, ” Does your mother say you can have that?” I told her no and she asked why I didn’t listen to her. She then ! asked if I still live at home, and told her yes. She said that if I still lived at home, I had to respect her because it was her house and her right to tell me what to do. She said even if I was eighteen she still had the right to decide what I can do if I lived in her house. Well I listened and took the eyebrow ring out they next day. When it was time to leave they were all mad at me, they wanted me to stay longer, so I promised them I would come back the following week. The second day I went to the class I work with the class altogether. I work on some math problems on the computer, I had to help them work the problems out in their head and when they had the answer they got to type it in and it would tell you if it was right or wrong. As it turned out they got all of them correct out of three levels After that activity I helped them write out and sound out words that started ended with (ck) like tack or pack. If they were right they were allowed to color. After I finished I then corrected papers. The majority of them got all of them right and when they did I drew a smiling face on there paper. This week I was not able to go because I had a doctors appointment. Now I miss them, they are great kids. When I go next week I am going to bring them cupcakes and stickers for there papers. This volunteer activity was so exciting. I enjoyed it so much. I think I am going to have kids eventually. I realized I should not have judged all of them as one. I know now some kids are angels. They also like me. I guess I get away from my family problems when I go there, and I it makes me actually happy.