Hello and once again welcome to my blog about LING 1900 and my wonderful experiences with it. First and foremost I must speak about how fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this opportunity. No I am not being a brown nose, I honestly and 100% truly believe in it. I think you guys should advertise it more. I had no idea that this was a program at CU and I know many other students that would both love to take it and who would benefit greatly from it. I think it is an amazing opportunity because not only do you get life experiences, but you also get credit for it. Now that is hard to come by! Which by the way, I want to especially thank you guys for working with me so I could continue with the program I was already working with.
With LING 1900 comes a lot of learning. You learn a lot about working with others, both the child and the parents, and you learn a lot about yourself. I have learned to be more outgoing. This is due to the fact that I need the courage to actually walk up to the parents and ask if I can read with/to their child. I have also learned to be more patient, not the “cliché patience is a virtue,” but the patience with a child who either might not want to read or might be having trouble reading. Additionally, LING 1900 has actually taught me a lot about working with children. I am thinking about becoming a teacher and this is an excellent opportunity to explore what age group I would like to teach. Through this experience I have come to learn that I work best with children around the age of eight. My patience has not yet been perfected for kids younger then that and my entertainment skills are not nearly perfected enough for kids much older then that.
I think all students could benefit from this class. LING 1900 is a way for students to get involved in the Boulder community and learn the importance of volunteering. I think LING 1900 is especially useful because it proves that almost everyone has time to volunteer. Although I can’t prove this I am fairly positive a number of students who have taken LING 1900 or are currently taking it will continue to volunteer in the future. Sometimes it just takes that extra push (like giving credit for a class) for a student in college to realize the impact they could have and that they do in fact have time to make such an impact.
That is a very nice thing about volunteering at Clinica Health Center, there are no strict hours, you can come and go as you please. Although I have come to have a pattern of going mostly on Tuesday morning, if I cannot make it then I am welcomed to go sometimes later in the week. This is especially nice in college where you might have a test later on the day you normally volunteer or you want to go into office hours. Which does bring me to my next point. Kira mentioned that you guys were thinking about partnering up with Clinica Health Center for LING 1900. Although I have enjoyed volunteering at Clinica Health Center, like I said in my previous post I think I would enjoy my time someplace else. I think that I would enjoy volunteering at a place that had more structure when it came to reading with the children. While volunteering I provide positive reading experiences for children in the pediatric waiting rooms, and model reading aloud for parents. My duties as a “Reach out and Read” volunteer are very important and I don’t degrade them at all, I just feel like there are better ways to go about it. Because of the fact I volunteer in a waiting room children come and go on a regular basis, meaning I can’t build a relationship with them, something I think is very important. This is important because it builds better role models and makes kids excited to show their advancements in reading. Secondly, there aren’t always kids, meaning I can be sitting behind a desk with the secretary for an undetermined amount of time waiting for a child to walk in the door. This time waiting could be put to better use at a different reading center.
