Serving and Learning Together

For our service learning my partner Brazier and I choose to pick a student from the South Boys and Girls Club. We were giving a 13 year old girl named Alejandra. Right from the beginning she was very enthusiastic and willing to work with us. That day we scheduled to meet each other every Tuesday around two o'clock. Little did my partner and I realize what an experience we were about to be part of.

Our first project was the dream careers collage. At our arrival we didn't know much about Alejandra and the careers she was interested, so we brought a wide variety of magazines. I think the hardest part of the project was finding a career right for Alejandra. She narrowed down her choices to two different options, which was either a veteran or tattoo artist. Next we looked for pictures that had to do with the choices she made. Once we found a descent amount we glued all the pictures down on to the board. I thought this was cool because it had been a while since I got to use glue.

The next project was the exploring your dream careers, In my eyes this was most educational of all the projects. Before going to visit Alejandra, Brazier and I researched the career choices from our last visit. Later we made a power point out of our research. Once done we made our way to see Alejandra at the Boys and Girls Club. Unfortunately, the computers weren't working that day so we had to reschedule. The next day was a different story, we were able to present the power point. Alejandra's job was to pick one career she wanted to stick with, she picked tattoo artist.

I'm not going to lie the next project was the funnest thing in the world but either way we made it through. The task at hand was to make a Career essay. Previous to visiting Alejandra we constructed an outline to be later used. To motivate Alejandra we brought her some candy and after that she ready to go. The outline really helped out, all Alejandra had to do was type out the essay in her own words. In the end i was happy with her essay I couldn't have done it better myself.

Finlay the last project we did was the Action plan. This project had to do with everything that we had covered with Alejandra. First she completed the action plan worksheet, with some help from us. Next came typing the actual action plan on the computer. All though this was kind of time consuming it was all worth it and I believe Alejandra will benefit from it a great deal. When we were all done we gave Alejandra an invitation to the Summer Scholars banquet. We gave our final good byes to Alejandra and we left.

So, inclusion this was a great experience for both Alejandra and us. I learned a great deal from this like if you give a kid candy they will actually do their work. Another thing I learned was that it is never to late to start planning for college. I hope that Alejandra remembers what she learned from this experience and will use it in her future. Who knows maybe Alejandra will even be a future Summer Scholar.