Oceanside SUN -- A Volunteering Opportunity

On Faculty Orientation Day this year, I attended a workshop on community service, where I found out, among other things, about a volunteer day taking place one Saturday in September in Oceanside; the objective was to help clean up a neighborhood by picking up garbage, painting houses, and cleaning whatever needed cleaning. I posted the volunteering opportunity on Blackboard and offered my students extra credit if they chose to participate and offered a little more if they were willing to write about their experience. I had done a couple of volunteer days before with Habitat for Humanity with only a couple of my students opting in each time. This time, however, about 15 ESL 36 students (resident and international) signed up and joined my son and me for the workday.

Our day started at 7:30 a.m. and ended at around 1 p.m. with a community lunch. The project was well attended by other Palomar students, Mira Costa students, and people from various organizations. I had requested that my students be grouped with other students from Palomar College (in this case with Judy Wilson's social psych group) in the hopes that my students might connect with some of her students. Although little outside interaction actually took place, it did give many of the students in my group a chance to try out volunteer work as well as a chance to have something to add to their college resume; they bonded amongst themselves too. Of course, the opportunity to give to our community brings with it a variety of intangible rewards, some of which we have yet to explore fully; my goal is to continue to engage them in processing their experience via their writing.

For their optional writing assignment, I offered them a few questions to respond to if they weren't sure what to write:

1) what you had expected before you showed up;
2) what your dominant feeling was before we got started (nervousness, fear, excitement) and what drove that feeling (not knowing what to expect, being worried that you wouldn't know what to do, etc.);
3) what your dominant feeling was as you were given your first assignment (excitement, fear, disdain, etc.) and why;
4) what your dominant feeling was as we were finishing up (fatigue, joy, pride, etc.) and why;
5) any questions you have in general about the work we did; and
6) your cultural perspective about what you saw and what you did.

I also shared with them my own response to the day. I have yet to receive any papers from my students, though I know that a few are in the works. When I do receive some, I'll ask if I may share some of their responses here or on my webpage. In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of the photos from our day, go to my webpage (http://www.palomar.edu/esl/shaylasweb/esl102.html) and scroll down about halfway until you spot "Photos from Oceanside SUN" and "More photos." Enjoy!

Shayla