Volunteer Experiences 1 and 2:

Volunteer Experience #1: Art Club and Homecoming
October 3rd-7th, 2016

For my first volunteer experience, I have a variety of experiences that have somewhat lumped into one overall experience. While working at Havre High, I have been working with both Art Club and Pep Club on numerous activities. For Art Club, we have had a few meetings regarding upcoming plans for the year and have begun fundraising for events such as Montana Art Interscholastic (MAI) by hosting the concession stand at a freshman volleyball game. The work with Art club is ongoing and I am expecting that we will have at least one or two more meetings before my experience at Havre High for student teaching will be concluded.

Along with working with Havre High’s Art Club, I also volunteered throughout our homecoming week, which took place the first week of October. For this volunteer opportunity, I was able to participate in helping the Juniors with their class float, helping the freshman class decorate their hallway for the hallway decorating contest, and help in designing and painting the homecoming royal court signs for our parade. I really did enjoy these different opportunities because they allowed me to work with a variety of my own students and to also meet some new faces. While helping with the construction of the junior class float, I was able to see many of my art students outside the classroom, and really see them within a different element. What I think I enjoyed most about helping them with their float was that they still viewed me as their teacher throughout the experience, but then also after homecoming I noticed more and more of my students feeling more comfortable with me and felt that by pointing myself out there to help them with the task of building their float with them, I was able to bond and enhance my relationships that I was developing with them.

Next to helping the juniors with their float, I also signed up to help the Freshman Class with decorating their hallway. It has become a great tradition at Havre High for there to be a competition amongst the classes regarding decorating their designated hallways, and it is the faculty’s responsibility to help them with this task. Different faculty members sign up for different roles with this, like clean up, class advisors, and aids to help with decorating. My cooperating teacher and I signed up specifically to help them with decorating the hallway to properly map out their theme, which was the Freaky Freshman. The Freaky Freshman theme was meant to resemble that of a Halloween theme, and they sure achieved this.

What was incredibly heartwarming about this experience, was the fact that the freshman class had so many helping with this project. They had nearly fifty students helping out with the decorating which turned out to be more than the other three classes (Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors) combined. The Freshman class was so excited for this opportunity because this was a chance for them to really show what their class was/is going to be made of as the years continue for them in high school, what was fairly need about this experience was that the upperclassmen ended up being so impressed by the Freshman that they were start to get a bit nervous that the freshman were going to take place in this completion. One thing that was very nice to see with the large group of freshmen volunteers, was the fact that it wasn’t just one particular group of students working on this or one particular “click” as some may say. We had such a variety of students working on this task that it didn’t matter if they were technically considered to be a part of the working class or middle class, or it didn’t matter what their religious status was or what their ethnicity was, we had students participate in this from all different backgrounds, and they came together to get the project done and do a good job with it. There hard work did end up really paying off for them and although they ultimately took 2^nd in the contest, this was a big win for them because in the past years, freshmen have come in in last place typically.  next to the Seniors who took first but they were still very excited about this win.

Among all the roles the freshmen played in this experience, I played the roles of helping with certain decorations, motivating students to get their jobs done or even helping them find a job if they were struggle with trying to figure out what they should do next, my role was more so as an advisor or supervisor of theirs to help them stay on track, because they only had a total of three hours to complete their hallway.

 My final duty in helping with homecoming was designing the Homecoming Royalty Signs for the Royal Courts floats. Being that each couple had their own floats, they all needed at least one sign stating their class and names for display. This was kind of a last minute task I was asked to do, but I really enjoyed doing it either way. With all of these volunteer opportunities there was certainly a variety of diversity to be noted. Being that I was for the most part working with such large classes, I was working with both female and male students, students who would be considered to be a part of both working and middle class status for socio-economic status, and also due to the fact that Havre has a higher population of the American Indian, there was also a large number of students of this ethnicity who were participating in these numerous homecoming preparations.

I’ve always loved homecoming, whether it was during my high school years or during my time at the University of Montana when I was actually in charge of organizing homecoming for my sorority, either way, this was a fun volunteer experience for me because it’s something I’ve always enjoyed as a student myself.

Volunteer Experience #2: Special Education Art Class
September 5th-November 18th, 2016

Prior to the beginning weeks of my student teaching, the Director of Special Education came to me asking me, if I could be interested in potentially helping out with a Special Education art class as a replacement for my 6^th period class. I was incredibly excited for this opportunity because it gave me the chance to work in both my preferred areas of concentration since I am working towards both my art and Special Education student teaching experiences; and although I won’t be starting my Special Education Student teaching until November 21^st, I felt this was a perfect opportunity for me to still be working with Special Education and in a sense get a jump start at Special Education in general, and I am so glad that I said yes to this opportunity because I have learned so much from these kids.

Before, I explain what this experience has meant to me, I’d like to explain what exactly my role is in this opportunity. Monday thru Friday, for 6^th period, I go down to one of the Special Education classrooms to meet up with the kids and their primary teacher. Their primary teacher, prepares their art assignment by choosing a correlating theme for the entire week and choose different crafts that are associated with that them. During the month of October, we used themes like pumpkins, ghosts, and bats. Their primary teacher likes to choose themes that are related to the current month, so that they can develop and understanding or enhance their current understanding that certain characteristics are associated with particular months. I serve as another teacher for the students essentially, I typically make a teacher sample for them so they can see first-hand what they are making, and help guide them through the process of making the craft themselves. Their primary teacher is there of course along with one to two different paraprofessionals, but there have been numerous occasions where I or the paraprofessionals have had to really get the lesson started because their primary teacher has been in a meeting or has to handle a certain situation, which has been kind of exciting for me because it has given me an idea of what it could be like working in a Special Education classroom in the future.

Working with these students has truly been an amazing experience for me, they have so much personality and spunk, they have truly become one of my favorite parts of my day. And what has been most exciting, is seeing how much the art they have been creating has become a part of their day that they look forward too, but also it has become a therapeutic aspect to their day as well. I have seen some of these students having incredibly difficult days or just having a tough moment, but the moment they realize they get to sit down and work on their art projects, it’s like something just clicks inside them and allows them to escape into their own world. It’s incredibly heartwarming to witness this happening with them because it shows me how much power art can have in changing your emotions and have such a dramatic effect on your everyday life, but especially how this artistic has become an opportunity for the students to really dive into their creative freedom and self-expression, and show off their talents with that.

Something that I am very excited about with this volunteer experience is the fact that their primary teacher asked me if I would like to develop and entire week of lesson plans for the class during my final week of student teaching at the high school. I am very excited for this because this gives me even more of an opportunity to really work in both my areas of concentration, but also allows me to essentially run the class period. Because I have developed such a great relationship with each of the students in this class, they are actually equally excited for me to take over during my final week as well. We will be incorporating a color there lesson into their art projects to help them develop an understanding of the primary colors and how mixing certain colors together, will produce a new color, like mixing blue and red together will produce purple. I believe they will respond very well to this lesson very well, especially since they enjoy their art class so much, I am just overjoyed to see what the end result will be with their projects.

Being that I am working in a Special Education classroom for this volunteer opportunity, a clear note of diversity would be the varying exceptionalities that are present within the classroom. Along with the fact that I am working with both males and females within the classroom, another note of diversity would also be the fact that both physical and developmental exceptionalities are present within this classroom as well. With this in mind, we also have a variety of ethnic groups present within the classroom we have students who are considered American Indian, Caucasian, and Asian within the classroom.

In any classroom it really is safe to assume diversity within different groups of ethnicity, exceptionalities, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. In volunteering with these different opportunities I truly have realized how diverse our schools actually are and that in fact you must assume diversity in any situation that you may be present when working in the educational system, especially since many instances of diversity may not be as obvious as one may think.