My Community Service Experience

I put my 10 hours of community service in at Passaic. My mother is a 2nd grade teacher in the Passaic Public school district. I decided to spend my 10 hours helping out her students. My mother teaches in one of the worst areas of Passaic. Her students are the children from the projects and other low-income housing developments. Her students are at a real disadvantage. I thought that this was a place I could do a lot of good. My mom has been very sick and I have been going to her school twice a week for the past few months to help her out. When I could not find community service at Arts to do she said she could really use my help. I already knew some of her students.

She told me to come to her classroom twice a week after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She wanted me to help her students who were low achieving and at risk of failing. She introduced me to her students as a "reading buddy". Each day I would meet with at least two children and spend twenty minutes with each child. While this was going on my mother would be holding extra help or detention. My mother's classroom is really rather large. All of the desks are in the front of the room. To the back of the room is a reading center. There is a large carpet were kids can sit and read or little tables along the edges. That is usually were I would spend my sessions with her students.

I would sit with the children and have them pick out a book. I would try to get them to read to me. It was usually very hard for them. I would make them read along with me and sound out the words. Sometimes it was hard to get them to keep their attention on the books we were reading. Since my mother always had a lot of other children in the classroom there was always something else going on.

I really enjoyed helping out at my mothers school. I went twice a week for about two months. I grew attached to some of these kids, especially the ones who I seemed to help. I really didn't want to stop going. I am probably going to go back very soon.