Blog #4 (During Service)

The third week at the Lydia Home was the last week we volunteered to obtain our 12 hours. It was a fairly more focused week, without as much chaos from the children as in the past two weeks. Although our service requirement had been fulfilled after this week, Mary and I continue to volunteer because the kids love working with us and because we want to go back and continue tutoring/spending time with the children. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience and if I had to do it all over again, I definitely would, as well as recommend this experience to others.

On Monday, April 1, I worked with a 5^th grader named Jonasia first. I helped her with her math problems and corrected her mistakes on her worksheet involving order of operations. I could observe through her nonverbal behavior and language that she was getting very frustrated; her eyes were narrowing and she was pouting. When I was trying to help her, she made little eye contact with me and smiled less. This illustrates the importance of nonverbal behavior and how children use nonverbal messages to express how they feel. Jonasia usually smiled a lot and laughed a lot, always being talkative and having high eye contact. As soon as her mood changed and something upset these normal behaviors, nonverbal messages allowed this change of how she was feeling to be properly portrayed. I also worked with Keidryn, who acted in similar manners when I practiced reading with him, indicating that some nonverbal behaviors are universal.

On Wednesday, April 3, I worked with a 5^th grade boy named Raven. I worked on English skills with him, specifically nouns and direct objects. He was doing very well in these areas, so I rewarded him in verbal praise. The concept of evaluating is illustrated in this sense because I praised Raven when he would get an answer right by saying “Good job!” or “That’s a perfect answer!” This positive reinforcement was necessary for continued motivation and mastering of skills. Mary and I also played Apples to Apples with a few children, including Zay, Logan, and Autumn. The way that they acted during the game was very surprising; I thought they would act irresponsibly and crazy like the past few weeks prior to this day, but in reality, they were actually very well behaved. Expectancy violations were present in this situation, in that these children didn’t behave as I assumed they would. Children often exhibit this concept because they have minds of their own and are very unpredictable with their behaviors and actions.

For future interactions, I learned that it is important to pay attention to not only the verbal aspects of communication, but also to the nonverbal aspects. They either say more or equal to that of verbal communication sometimes, being important indicators of feelings and emotions. Evaluation and reaffirming children’s responses are vital concepts that need to be applied for positive motivation and results to show, as well as for proper skills to be learned and developed. I will make sure to let children know when they are answering correctly and doing a good job to increase their outlook on learning in general. As for expectancy violations, I now understand that children are very different from us and that what we expect of them may not be the behaviors we actually see. I will portray more signs of genuine dedication to addressing these behaviors and to correct them when I work with children, rather than by becoming all frazzled by the unexpected.