Omars Reflection
Brooke's Reflection
When I first switched into this class, all I knew was that the title was “writing through community action and public service” or something along those lines. I expected the class to just be about writing about our community service experience. I was excited because I did a lot of community service in high school, mostly dealing with softball which is my passion and I figured this class would be a no brainer. Little did I know we would actually have to volunteer, and for organizations that had absolutely nothing to do with softball or sports. That was a foreign concept to me but I accepted the challenge. Thankfully, I was able to volunteer with the Boys and Girls Club, an organization in which my softball team has paired with in the past to help out. The research papers and journals were a bit repetitive and annoying, but then again any homework assignment is for the most part annoying. I had a pretty poor outlook on the whole situation until I actually began to volunteer. As I began to write my research paper and start my volunteer work, things started to fall into place. The information I was looking up online directly correlated to what I was learning while volunteering. Volunteering was a simple task and I liked interacting with the kids so that was definitely my favorite part of the research paper/ volunteer service combo. As I talked to more kids, the more I learned and the more I realized that I was actually helping kids and making a difference. Kids would tell me about their day at school, their sports practice or sometimes even their families. Many of the kids made me laugh and I had fun while tutoring them. This class has forced me to change the way I think about communities. Back home, many of the kids I coached and worked with came from rich families and had nicer things than me, yet they were 7-10 years younger than me. I was used to disciplining and being strict with the softball campers because they thought they were better than everyone else and that led me to the false illusion that kids these days were just getting brattier. I was totally wrong. Working at the Boys and Girls Club, I met so many kids who would die to have just some of the things most of the kids back home had. But the most shocking part for me was that the kids were as humble as could be. They weren’t whinny or bossy. Instead they were sweet, innocent, funny, and many of them were braniacs. They often beat me at their “times tables.” My volunteer service turned around my outlook on communities and kids for the better. Other than volunteering, my favorite “assignment” part of the class was definitely the media campaigns. I had the freedom to create whatever I wanted and how I wanted to. It was fun to design my own posters, brochures and even a billboard that looked so professional for the Boys and Girls Club. Although the media campaign was the most fun, and my personal favorite assignment, I definitely learned the most from the research project. I never realized the true correlation between poverty and crime until I really researched it. The numbers in Tallahassee alone were staggering. From seeing Tallahassee’s such high numbers of poverty and violence to seeing the Boys and Girls Club of the Big Bends such high numbers of success stories was totally astonishing. If I had to change anything about the class, I would increase the amount of time we were required to volunteer because I felt that if I learned so much from just five hours, I could learn an innumerable amount with more time. But more time volunteering would be a lot harder to focus on other college courses as well. Overall, I liked this course and it had its ups and downs. I would take it again if I had to and maybe again by choice if I had more time to devote towards this. It was definitely an experience to remember and unlike any English coursework or even community service I have ever done.
The first day of class, I expected to write about the topic of community service and public action. I did not expect myself to actually go out in the community and volunteer as well as right a research paper. I also did not expect myself to look up information about the Boys and Girls Club and how they developed to who they are today. I thought this would be more of an easy and laid back class, but there was plenty of reading assignments and journals that had to be done in order for us to be kept busy throughout the semester. But as of today, I understand that the volunteer work was relevant to the class as a whole in understanding the coarse topics. With the journals, research journals, readings, and research, it all adds up to help make our projects and especially our research paper a success. My experience helping the young community at the Boys and Girls Club helped me understand how much of an impact I can have on the community. Though I only volunteered for five hours, I felt like I have accomplished multiple tasks during those hours of service. With tutoring the elementary students and motivating them get their homework done, made my research paper a success as well as understanding the true meaning of what the Boys and Girls club’s true foundation. My reading over the semester was not as hard as I expected, but it was interesting. The differences between community services helped me understand that there are different ways of giving back to the community; whether it may be short term service or long term projects. Also, I had a better understanding on the progress of writing and things that would help me through my draft process. My writing has improved spontaneously given that this class had assigned the first research paper I had ever written. Before I was use to writing persuasive and explanatory essays, but writing research papers introduced me to a new world of writing and helped me improve as a writer. My community service organization taught me the positive example the staff members can have on the Boys and Girls Club. There are some staff members that seemed mean to the children; however, she was looking out for their best interest. If it was not for here, they would not do any homework or learn anything that could better their future. One positive role model can make a positive impact on a club member’s life. Overall my class helped me have a better understanding of life outside my educational environment. Though I am continuing my education, I am now aware that there are still children that still need the motivation to progress throughout school. The young generation will always need some sort of guidance and motivation to reach their goal. This class did reinforce my way of thinking about the young community and how they may have the potential to become successful but need the motivation to push them. This class changed me because I did not know how much of an impact I could have on the club members. As the semester progressed I bettered myself as writer through revising my assignments. The beginning of my second project, I was a little dry, but as my research paper progressed my writing had gotten better. Overall, this project has taught me to write a research paper. Given that Project two was the first research paper I had ever written, I was able to turn out successful. Though I learned about community service and public action, I was also able to strengthen my writing skills by writing my first research paper as well. If I designed this class I would change the four projects to three. When writing each project, I feel like I am reiterating everything I said from the project before. The thing that I learned most in this class is the foundation of the Boys and Girls Club; I never would have thought how much of an impact they had on their communities. I thought it was more of a business rather than an organization that benefits the young community. Also, when I was tutoring one of the club members I had learned how much one person can impact a child’s life. With him struggling with his multiplication and word problems I knew that I could make a positive impact through aiding him in his time of need. When I helped him with his homework I felt like I the motivated him to excel in life one day. Maybe one day he could impact someone’s life like impacted his.
At the beginning of this semester I was not even enrolled in this class. I was enrolled in a different ENC 1145 class, however after attending the first day of class I decided that I wanted to transfer out of that class. When I checked my other oppositions ENC 1145 “Writing through community action and public service” was the only other available class. I decided to go ahead and transfer thinking that I would be writing about past service experience but when I showed up for class I found out that would not be the case. We would have to volunteer at a local organization for at least five hours. At first I was not to worry about this because I have volunteered in the past so to me it was not that big of a deal. However, when I got The Boys and Girls Club I did get a bit worried. Even though the Boys and Girls Club was my first choice I did not realize how far it was and I was stressing out on how to get over to the club because I did not have a car. In fact the first time I went for the interview I took a 20-dollar cab ride, which coincidentally was only the cash I had on me. I ended up having to wait an hour and a half for someone to pick me up. Luckily none of my other trips were as hectic as my first. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed my time volunteering. It was great being able to help kids with their homework as well as being able to get to talk to them and realizing what you are doing is leaving an impression on some of the kids that you are tutoring. For instance on the second day that I went I saw one of the kids that I had helped the last visit and he came up and said hi to me and asked me if I could help him out again. This really showed me that the kids really do notice what you are doing and appreciate those that help them. As far as the actual workload for the class I came in with an idea of what to expect for the class based on ENC 1101 which I took over the summer. I was pretty wrong on assuming it would be the same as I quickly saw as the semester progressed. For instance I did pretty much little to no reflective writing such as journals or process memos in ENC 1101. So for me writing about my writing was a pretty strange concept to get use to. While I thought that the process memos were sort of busy work for me at the end of a paper I could see why a teacher would want to know how and why their students wrote their papers. However the rest of the course was well done in my opinion. I had written a research paper in high school but it was nowhere near the requirements of the one that is required for this course. There was no real need for worry in my opinion because it was pretty well explained and pretty much all any stress I about trying to find good academic sources for the project were pretty much explained at the workday that was held at the Johnston Digital Studio. This research paper was by far the biggest project I have ever worked on and I really learned a lot from it. I learned how to properly research a certain topic by reading academic journals and getting first hand evidence for the paper. It was interesting after doing research on my organization and then actually going out and volunteering in the organization. I thought it was nice to see all the information that I had read in effect as well as seeing differences from what the organization says they do and what people write about them to what is actually going on. All in all I think that the curriculum was effective in teaching me how to write a decent research paper as well as getting a sense of community action and public service. The media campaign as well as this project where nice ways to incorporate everything that we have learned in different ways. It definitely taught me how to use my computer better because prior to this I honestly did not know how to make a poster, a brochure or a wix website. The only thing that I maybe would change about this class is the amount of reflective writing that is required. Honestly I feel as though half the class is writing essays and the other half is writing about those essays. But I am not a teacher so maybe I don’t see the benefits of it but it did get a bit repetitive towards the end of the semester. Overall though I feel as though I know more about writing than before I took the course which is the most important thing for any course.
I remember the first time I signed up for this class, I was a little disappointed because since I did summer term at FSU by the time sign up for fall classes rolled around almost all the classes were already full. I remember how I basically didn’t have any choices. I knew I had to take ENC1145, but what topic, I had no say. I chose one of the last classes that was still open and it was the one on writing about community service and public action. I thought that the class wouldn’t be too bad because over summer my ENC1101 teacher also made a strong concentration on writing about the concept of “community”. Basically all my summer papers dealt with that topic. Coming into this class in the fall I had no idea what to expect. It startled me at first when it was said that performing a few hours of community service was a must for the class. But then I realized it wasn’t bad at all, because performing community service for the class is kind of necessary in order to properly be able to write about it. I was psyched when I got paired up with the Boys and Girls Club because I absolutely love getting to work with children. Being able to go off campus and get involved hands on actually ended up being my favorite part of the class. Getting to work with the children at the club is so eye opening. And no I am not exaggerating when I say that. By eye opening I mean that children can really surprise you. I was helping this nine-year-old girl for example with her math homework. She was way faster at math then I was! I felt rusty! Like by the time I was just finished reading the question she already had an answer ready! Besides getting to help the kids with their homework it was also cool that I got to talk and interact with them I asked them questions and had pretty good conversations with the kids. They are so young but so ambitious. One girl pulled out her violin and she wanted to show me how she played. Another girl told me how she was singing in a play her school was staging. One girl, who was a little older, middle school age to be specific, told me how she wants to go to FSU when she is older and eventually go to law school. The club really seems to motivate the members and make sure they are on the right track and emphasis the importance of education. I think it is good how the club makes it important by stressing that the children get their work done first before they do other things. Habits like this are important to embark in children at a young age. I enjoyed my time at the club though. Although it was short, five hours really isn’t that long at all, I felt like having the opportunity to get involved made my writing after a lot more interesting and more enjoyable to do. Because at first just researching about the organization online and reading articles about it online is not the same as actually getting to volunteer hands on. I have to say in my opinion though I found some of the writing we had to do for the projects was a bit repetitive. I felt like in my journal entries and in the ethnography and just in general a lot of my “experience” I had to reiterate and find new ways to describe the same thing. If I had any future advice for this course it would be to maybe make it a little less repetitive, maybe have students volunteer with an organization and write about it while also exploring all the other organizations that the class is working with and write about them too. But then again that could just make the class harder to manage so maybe my idea isn’t to good. But looking at the class now the way it is I learned more than I thought I would originally. Overall the class was well rounded in terms of us getting to not only write, but to also volunteer, show our creative side and even learn how to create a website. I think that aspect was definitely pretty awesome. Getting to learn how to write a research paper, learning how to use different types of media for creative projects and learning Wix. I have never used wiz before so it was definitely something new and out of my comfort zone. I really enjoyed the class though and volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club was by far my favorite part. I got to be a part of a child’s life even if it was just for a few hours.
Kevin's Reflection
