When I first went to Escuela Vieau for the service learning orientation I was excited to volunteer, and to learn more about the Hispanic culture. During orientation we learned about the Boys and Girls program and all of the activities they hold for the children every day. We also got introduced to the staff that we would be working with, and got a tour of the school. It was nice to see the place where I would be volunteering, but it was still hard to know for sure what it would be like.
Once I finally got to work with the children, I got a better understand of the program and the people in it. It was a little difficult since I haven’t had to do elementary school homework in a long time, but the fact that the textbooks were in Spanish made it even harder for me to understand, and the students were not able to fully translate what they said. So I’m still getting used to that part of the tutoring.
For the second half of my time there I’ve been working with arts and crafts where we have been making squares that will be used for a quilt. Each student gets to help design a square with puffy paint and then write a reason that they admire their family, or a particular member of their family. The arts and crafts teacher speaks mostly Spanish, which makes communicating a little bit difficult, but she is very nice and has been overly thankful to me for helping her with the project. The students that I have worked with are similar to kids that you would find at any elementary school, the only difference is their ethnicity and the language that they speak. So overall, I would say that I have learned a little bit more about the Spanish culture so far with the quilt project since the art teacher was very enthusiastic that it emphasized the importance of family.
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