last post

            Sadly, this is my last post. After a long semester of working with 826 volunteering, I could say that I’ve actually learned a lot. Coming into this experience, I had no idea what I was getting into. This is mostly because I no one ever told me this would be a service learning course, but, in the end, I am very glad it was. Before working at O’Bryant school, I did not have very much experience volunteering or even tutoring. I’ve always seen myself as a bad writer and hearing that we were about to have to teach these kids, who were barely any younger than I am, how to write seemed like a difficult task.

            When the first day came along, it did not seem any easier. I did not know how to approach the kids, or even what to do once I had. The training session that 826 provided us barely prepared me for what I was actually going to do. All they taught us about was what to say when talking with the kids, or what not to say, or how to help their writing. In the end the only thing they really need to prepare us for is that awkwardness when approaching a kid, teaching them to write was simple because they are high school kids, they are completely clueless, and you only need to teach them the basics. My first day I felt so weird just walking up to the students, kneeling next to them and saying hello, so awkward, it made it hard to teach.

            By the second session, I started getting into my groove. There are things you are supposed to do once you kneel that the training session never taught me, such as kneeling to their eye level, introducing yourself, having a conversation, creating a sense of comfort so the student will be more talkative, and better yet that helping them is just rewording their sentences. The students are really smart already, all I really have had to do was make them understand that their writing is their own, not the teachers’, and to write their theses for something they believe in and are interested in. My main method for trying that was to make sure the student always explained to me their thesis out loud, without looking at the computer, and then dig into it further by questioning some of their points making them elaborate and discover perspectives they have not seen. These were my intentions; I hope I was successful in them. I came with this strategy simply because it is something somewhat do in my own writing, and that’s minly how I learned from them. Being understanding of what it is I do in my writing, allows me to do it better. Now when I write I try to always see each point from as many perspectives as possible as my make my arguments more thorough.