May 9, 2014 Culminating Reflection

For my Capstone Project, I volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club Paradise Valley. I chose this place because there are up to 50 kids that attend there and I thought it would be a great experience to volunteer and supervise and assist the kids with whatever they needed. In the future, I want my career to be involved with working with kids. During this project, I had to learn how to communicate with the kids and interact with them because I was new and I didn't want to be a stranger to them. It was difficult communicating with them at first but once days started to pass by, they got used to me and communicated with me. I wanted to build a relationship with the kids and not be strict with them. What I did was at times I would try to act like a leader to them and show leadership skills so they know how to behave and listen and other times be a friend to them and play with them and have fun.

What I gained from my Capstone experience was that it is not easy working with kids. You have to think things through, especially what you are going to say to the kids and learn how to approach them to get them to pay attention to you. Also, I learned how to have better patience by being more calm and understanding and watching how my mentor would deal with the situation. I learned to understand that kids are way younger than me and their mentality is by far different. They do certain things because they yet have to learn how to behave. I also learned how to handle situations when doing projects because things would get hectic and in the beginning I would not know what to do because there was too many things going on. When I first went to the Boys and Girls Club, I was nervous because of how the kids were going to act towards me. I was not able to communicate with them because I had poor interacting skills. I began to talk to them and got out of my bubble and interacted with them later on.

The challenges I have encountered during this experience was dealing with patience with the kids. I have always had a bit of patience so I was not able to handle it in the beginning. Once I began watching how my mentor dealt with the situation I started to do the same and it would work. Another challenge I faced was leading activities and hands on projects. It was difficult getting the kids to listen to instructions when I would be doing a project with them. Many kids would ask me multiple questions at the same time and I would not know what to do. I learned to have leadership skills and made them behave properly by asking me a question one by one. Once time passed by, they would listen to me more which was great because I was not getting frustrated and impatient. Also, they would leave everything a mess and it was hard for me to get everything organized like how it was before. What I did was politely told them to clean up after themselves and they payed attention and did what I had instructed them to do.

April 30, 2014

Yesterday I went to the Boys and Girls Club and unfortunately, it was going to be my last day. For yesterday, the kids just did their homework. After they were done, since it was extremely hot, my mentor decided to play with the kids and poor water on them. I assisted with the game by lining up the kids and making them go one by one. The game was very simple and easy. We had a bucket and a ball, the kids had to throw the ball in the bucket and if they were able to do that, the person that is sitting on the chair got water dumped on them. Many of the kids got wet because it was easy to make a score and they were really hot so they wanted to make it in. If no one would make the ball in, the kid that's sitting down in the chair would sit until someone makes a score. I thought it was really fun and a nice way to interact with the kids and seeing their reactions when they got water dumped on them was just priceless! I enjoyed being with the kids and I'm glad I was able to do this experience. I learned interacting skills and gained a bit of leadership skills because it's difficult controlling the kids and making them listen to instructions. After we had our fun, we played other games. Later on, they all came to me and hugged me and said bye. I'm most likely going to come back and visit them!

Time logged for this session: 2 hrs
Total time logged: 33 hrs 30 min