Childhood Observation Essay

In eleventh grade, my AVID teacher Mrs. Jara assigned the class to complete a learning service project, in which one was to give back to the community by completing twenty hours of volunteer hours. At first, I was stumped of how I could give back to Stockton, my community, in a meaningful way since this city was impoverished and filled with crime. Thinking back to my previous research paper on poverty, I remembered that education was the key in determining whether one was living below or above the poverty threshold. At my educational level, I decided to assist toddlers early in their educational career, and thus, I volunteered at the Hazel Hill Child Development Center at San Joaquin Delta College for my service learning project. Exceeding
the minimum requirement by volunteering over 80 hours, I thank my education for inspiring me to improve community by assisting both the children and teachers. Despite their parents attending San Joaquin Delta College in hopes to improve their life, many children, aging from two to four, at the Hazel Hill Child Development Center belong to the lower and middle socioeconomic class, which already presents a disadvantage in their educational opportunities compared to those children from high socioeconomic class families.
According to Janet Hopson’s article, “Infant Intelligentsia: Can Babies Learn to Read? And Should They?” (2012), “In the first three years of life, a child of welfare parents hears 974 different words in daily conversation (9.6 million total), the working-class [parent’s] child [hears] 1,498 [words] (19.5 million total), and the child with professional parents [hear] 2,176 [words] (33.6 million overall).” As a result of the disparity among these three classes, the children of welfare parents struggle in preschool while children professional parents learn with less difficulty, since their parents expose them to a larger vocabulary. Therefore, the children of lower socioeconomic families perform worse in their early education, and a difficult start in a child’s education prompts lower performance in school, even throughout his or her high school years as stated in E. N. Junn and C. J. Boyatzis’s book, Annual Editions: Child Growth and Development
(2014).
In order to shorten the gap between these two classes, I read many books to children after snack time, and some children even attempted to read their favorite books back to me. During free time, I would converse with the toddlers about their weekends, dreams, and birthday party plans. At times, a child wanted to learn how to write, and I devoted my time teaching this young student how to form his or her letters properly. As a result of my volunteering, one additional child received exclusive attention in hopes to improve his or her education and to inspire him or her to continue learning even after high school.
In addition to benefiting the children’s lives, I assisted the passionate and hard-working teachers at the Hazel Hill Child Development Center by writing important details of the children’s behavior, setting up meals and activities, and cleaning. At this preschool, the teachers trusted me to write notes on the daily behavior of children, including interesting dialogue and activities they completed successfully. While such assistance may not appear crucial, I helped clear up these teachers’ time and effort, which was directed toward planning table activities, talking to parents, or filling out important paperwork. Therefore, I would relieve these teachers from feeling overwhelmed by the work to do in a preschool classroom of at least 20 energetic toddlers.
Even after volunteering so many of my mornings to this facility, I job shadowed an ECE permit teacher at the Hazel Hill Child Development Center for five hours, since my AVID teacher assigned the class a career exploration project. From these experiences, my education has benefited the children and teachers by enriching their education and relieving the stress and time in teaching toddlers, respectively.