Service Learning Reflections in order of Weeks
Week 1:
The reflection I have on this Service Learning Project is that it creates an image on my mind, saying that I will have to contribute to my community in some way in order to create a better soul, togetherness of the community, and unity in issues we face everyday as Humans. The reason I chose this issue is because I have lived with an overweight/obese population for over a decade and I say we put it to a stop. Obesity does not disgust me, but if Americans keep living with unhealthy habits, then they will see their death at a sooner date due to lack of exercise, bad cholesterol, over portioning, bad blood pressure, and poor self-esteem. I mean like I said earlier before, I am not mad or disgusted, I am just trying to help out our country by doing my part and encouraging healthy decisions. I have tried to contact the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to try to volunteer as a helper in this issue, but no one has responded to my calls or my 3 messages I left for them. I personally chose this topic because I do not want to see my family die at a sooner rate because of their decisions on life’s unhealthy habits. How I am going to help out is still unsure, but as soon as I am contacted I can try to help make dieting plans, exercise plans, fun activities for 30 minutes a day, or play with the kids to ensure that they are having fun while learning to be productive.
Week 2:
My third week in Critical Reading 101 Online has been a pleasant insight on what would be happening next for me in this class. I have arranged a schedule with the YMCA club of Ahwatukee to be volunteering in their programs that deal with exercise and play for all ages. As far as working in the gym they have there or for example; being a time-keeper for the children playing in the club’s basketball auditorium. The main issue regarding my quest to volunteering so far was the fact that every organization I called and talked to either was full on capacity of volunteers or in some cases, did not even pick their phones or get back to their clients who left voicemails.
The tasks that have been asked of me at the YMCA has both helped me physically and mentally understand that what I do there, can make a difference. I have worked a total of 3 hours altogether so far just doing simple but relevant tasks. My tasks have included: time-keeping, cleaning the gym room’s equipment, organizing books in the children’s room, reading to children in there as well, cleaning the floors of the basketball courts, and pursuing front counter checkins for anyone coming to the club.
In my opinion, the “hurrah” moment that I had achieved later on in this week has been a very difficult one to receive. I finally had contacted an organization that would actually let me help out in any way possible that relates to my issue of concern, and that would let me volunteer for how ever many hours I need and some.
Week 3:
In regards to the third week, it has been an exhausting week as far as tasks and objectives being asked of me. My week has consisted of countless hours doing homework for all of my classes, working community service hours at the YMCA, going to 2 weddings that are family related, working 2 jobs that I have had since senior year of high school (both jobs together equalling out to a total of 55 hours this week). So it has been a rather busy week indeed if i do say so myself. As far as other things go, I have almost completed 20 hours volunteering at the YMCA.
To identify the homework that was given to me, I had to research into media and find supporting evidence, claims, arguments, and scholarly in text citations to verify whether an argument or issue is valid. The media that I have been reading about has affected me in some ways that I look at things now. It’s almost as if the government or some higher power makes these things to try to get people to buy things or support something that is being dispersed in our world through the news, internet, televisions, or things like Facebook. I have a clear sense on how to distinguish between illogical claims and fallacy filled arguments because of this week’s assignments.
As far as my issue that I am trying to figure out about America is going, I have come a little closer to my research through volunteering. By helping the kids play and keep the time of how long they play in the gymnasium, I can contribute to fixing the obesity levels in our younger generation. I also have been cleaning the gym to keep a safe environment while people are trying to better their lives through exercise and activity.
Week 4:
This week has been exhausting and I have almost reached a limit of my breaking point to where I officially become insane. I have had to rush to get all my shifts covered for a family camping trip outside of Payson, in a town called Strawberry next weekend. The reason I did not schedule the days off sooner is because I was just notified about two days ago about the trip and how it is only family going. My parents are forcing me to go no matter what options I once had. Of course, as far as the community service learning project goes, I have completed 3 more hours as a volunteer helping control the tempo of activity in the YMCA. I have been a time-keeper for a while now, and recently I have been moving around back and forth to different sides of the gym to help out wherever it is needed most. I have written most of my service logs up to date, but I am struggling on finding more about my issue in America.
These assignments for the week have been tedious. In all honesty, I love the method of the course’s design where the next assignment relates and adds on to the last. In my opinion though, I would have loved to have more time to do the assignments for the prior week. It is very difficult to juggle 2 jobs, an online class, full-time credit hours at MCC, and a girlfriend all while trying to gain somewhat of a social life.
Sorry for my little vent I just had a paragraph ago, I have had little sleep and a lot of struggles in the past week.
Week 5:
My overview of the following week is very open-minded as far as the struggles and obstacles that I have been through. This week could have been a lot better, but I am not complaining about it at all due to the fact that I turned in all my assignments and paperwork due before a little camping trip I am going on. As far as doing volunteering and participation goes for the issue I am looking to further resolve, my work has been important for the YMCA. I have been making little exercises and tasks for the children to accomplish as goals and having them doing it in wholes so that they could work together on it. I have been setting up coaching times as an assistant for some little boot camp training that has been going on there, and I have been helping out during the Basketball games that go on during early saturday mornings. The staff has been pleased with my work for I have been making friends and helping to do what is right in society. I am not being all into myself, but I believe that with the work that I have been doing we can soon see improvements to lives all around the community. I am still going to be finishing up a little more sessions to volunteer for whatever is needed help with, but I am soon coming close to an end with my service learning.
Week 6:
For starters, I have accomplished a series of things involving getting all my classes work turned in and helping out the community with volunteer work. Wherever I have been going this week, I have asked to help out in any way. For the most part, I have been turned down in my offers, but some people have accepted my request so I should be starting to help here and there with local business complexes and facilities designing exercise plans and diets for employees. Other than helping around the local neighborhood, I have still been doing work over at the Ahwatukee YMCA as the same jobs I did in the past weeks before. I have been cleaning all over in the gymnasium, I have been dusting off Televisions in the workout room, organizing books in the kid’s play room, clearing the pool of junk and debris that floats in it, and helping to assist at the rock wall when someone wants to climb it. I am about half way done with this class, and I have found that I am learning a lot about my issue I have been researching and stuff from the class. The main things I have learned from class so far is how to design a better flow of paragraphs through the connections of words used and how to properly distinguish how to tell what forms of paragraphs were used. I plan on learning a little more dealing with that we are only half way through this class.
Week 7:
This week has come and gone by quicker than I can recall. I have noticed most of the kids around my town had Fall Break and that there were children running around everywhere like our town had an all-week carnival or something. Besides making my reflection of the week sound like a blog on an elderly person’s website, my week volunteering went overall well with the exciting events that happened. The tuesday that I had classes was the day that we started planting trees and random plants all around the facility. It was an amazing day and we had a lot of little helpers(children that go to the YMCA) helping around with the digging and softening up the soil to plant a new tree. That was one of the activities that we designed for some of the kids, other than that I just held my similar duties from the weeks before of just making sure that everything was in order. I stocked towels for the people in the gym, I cleaned the basketball court and made it free of balls, and after I had finished that, I went to help out checking people into the facility at the front counter. My week was not a complete waste and I did accomplish a lot of things such as starting the foundations of some relationships with a lot of people at the YMCA and organizing future activities for people to do around the gym on their free times.
Week 8:
This week has been a busy one indeed pertaining to the assignments involved. Not only has the number of assignments increased, we just began to start on our group projects for Project Hope. The project that I have decided to pick was the before and after results of some individuals that took struggles to lose weight and achieve success. I have gathered up some family members such as my brother, my sister, and my sister’s daughter to help me interview and conduct polls of research in regards to the issue I am concerned about. The activities of gathering this information has been time consuming and a lot of things happened all at one time this week. For starters, I have been informed of depressing news that my Grandfather Gary Jones is slowly passing away and the Doctor told him that after his surgery he only has about 2 weeks or less to live. So my project needs to be coming close to an end soon because I am making a trip out to see my Grandfather in the city of San Jose, California.
Most of my family is coming along for the ride including the members of my group for Project Hope. As the week is coming closer to an end, I have finished all the assignments due and hope to get an early start tomorrow on the issue that our group is concerned about.
Week 9:
As far as getting the group work and the project together, I believe that I am getting things to flow and organizing things to fit into my schedule. Either from work at 2 jobs, school full-time, and/or community service work, I have been able to maintain a steady balance of determination in getting this class done. I have maintained keeping up on the homework as due, the tests on My MCC, and keeping a good attendance of community work to oversee my issue.
Working the service learning hours has gotten to be enlightening and I have learned many new ways to live a healthier life. I have developed relationships with numerous amounts of people in just last the month alone. By gaining these new relationships, I have changed people’s thoughts and opinions on their body’s ideal weight. Working hard and following through with correct exercise forms, a person can achieve an ideal look for themselves. The organization has helped me find numerous way of activities that can strengthen the lives of individuals by gaining community awareness and also has some forms of working your body out. The activities that I am talking about were digging holes to plant new trees, cleaning the gym with some elbow grease involved, and climbing the rock wall to clean it whenever it got dirty.
As the final project approaches, I am almost certain that I can maintain my composure to finish it on time.
Week 10:
This week came and is went very quickly which made it an intense experience volunteering and finding concerns to the issue. Putting together the group project was a very difficult task to achieve in the subject of finding participants to observe the change of obesity. For 3 days out of the week, my group decided to make a field trip to random places such as local gyms, organic grocery stores (such as AJ’s), and Mesa Community College Campus to research the topic of obesity. Through testing participants with various procedures such as greeting them as they came up and asking if they could fill out a survey about their weight if they felt comfortable enough to do so. Being unbiased towards the subject, we surveyed 50 individuals from all around the places we went to and came up with results on self reflection, issues of health, and awareness concerns. The survey included questions that involved the participants to know if they are aware of the problems that come from a poor diet, lack of exercise, being overweight, and bad habits. For a little example, most people can assume that cigarettes can cause cancer. Well, what most people didn’t know is that it can also cause heart disease, Acute myeloid leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome (for pregnant women). That is part of a bad habit that can cause major consequences any time smoking is done. That is the awareness concerning to the health problems Americans can see through walking into major cities where a broad population exists.
Finding solutions to these problems is the concern that we were looking for in the surveys. We wanted people to realize that every action that do can affect their health, which sometimes can lead to obesity.
Week 11:
What did I learn from taking an online Critical Reading class? I have been informed and introduced to numerous things in my time that I took this class. The mainly important rules that I took out of the lesson’s were being able to distinguish a valid argument, finding symbolism in ads, and learning communal values through volunteering your time to benefit a better cause. In some parts of the lessons, the description of a paragraph and how its set up was mostly review for me because I am taking a Philosophy class that covers most of the same basics. Just from attending this course, I am much more aware of flaws in an author’s proposal argument or ad that is highly dispersed in cities throughout the world.
The tools that can be accessed easily to determine whether an argument is valid can be learned through lessons taught in Critical Reading 101. Through learning these tools, people are less susceptible to conforming to a believe that the author wants to illicitly prove.
From volunteering my services to the local YMCA of Ahwatukee, I have endured many lives with my presence and have increased some positive communal responses. I’ve worked several hours to motivate people to live healthier lives, which in turn; helps their sociological and psychological thoughts upon things. Donating time to help others in the community can really put a perspective on issues in the world. Figuring out which issue that is most abundant in the world is the issue that most people should sought out to endure and embrace it. By setting up plans and brainstorming thoughts, one can overpower a habit and fix things just by a change up of their schedule. For instance; I did my project on finding healthier solutions to bad habits such as eating and the epidemic of obesity. I found that through the knowledge that I already know from taking classes and eating properly, I could spread my education to several members of my community and furthermore assist them in good healthy choices. It was definitely an amazing way to meet new people and to help others out in times of need.
The ending of this class has come about way too soon and I have learned a lot just from volunteering my services in my community.