"After" Volunteering

Even though this experience has come to an end as far as this course is concerned, I will continue to tutor. Therefore, my final reflection is a bit premature, but here it is at this point, reflecting back on the hours I have volunteered thus far. The most positive part of this experience for me was watching/listening to the people I had tutored apply what we had discussed. I was thrilled to watch Max make the connection between our discussion of pumpkins to the pumpkin cake he was eating. I felt blessed being able to provide the people I worked with tools or phrases to help them order food or talk to a taxi...daily tasks that we take for granted that they were unable to communicate before coming to Presentation Lanter Center. Leaving the center each day knowing that the people I worked with weren't going to struggle surviving in an English-speaking country was great, and the most positive thing for me was knowing that I had helped them accomplish that. The most difficult part of the experience was developing methods to tutor people my age or older who were of the same intelligence as me without feeling like I was embarrassing or insulting them. My first day tutoring was probably the hardest only because it was new to me. Another difficult task was trying to translate using pictures and expressions when the picturebook wasn't sufficient. Overall though, this experience was not too difficult because the volunteers, Sr. Corine, and all the students had such great personalities and were so optimistic.