Volunteer Experience: Husky Club

           

          Student teaching in high school has been a great experience thus far.  I always thought that I would enjoy teaching high school students more than elementary students, even though I do love working with any age group of children.  However, I was extremely excited when I was given the opportunity to volunteer and help out occasionally with Belt School’s after school program: Husky Club.  Here, I was given the opportunity to work with elementary students and practice my teaching skills with a different age group.  This has been a great opportunity because I have discovered that I really enjoy working with elementary students and I have been able to put some of my college education, which focuses on all age groups, to a practical purpose.

            Husky Club is an hour-and-a-half after school program that runs Monday through Thursday every week of school for elementary students.  Additionally, there is a summer program that lasts a few weeks for elementary students as well.  The program has existed in Belt for many years, now, and has become a natural part of a student’s life.  In Husky Club, elementary students participate in a wide range of social and practical skill development activities.  Mondays are usually game nights.  Occasionally there is iPad night, where students can play educational games on iPads.  Usually, though, there is some sort of craft or hands-on project. 

            There are different age groups in Husky Club as well: K-1, 2-3, and 4-5.  When I volunteered at Husky Club, I worked with the Kindergarten and first graders.  Every day starts with a recess outside on the playground for the first half hour of school.  Then, students are given about fifteen minutes to work on homework.  Then, for the last forty-five minutes of homework, the activity takes place.  As seen in the photo, I am playing Crazy 8’s (and later, Slap Jack) with a student during game night.  The other instructors and I divide ourselves amongst the class and play different games and activities with the students.  I really enjoyed playing cards with the Husky Clubbers.  They were very enthusiastic about playing games with their friends and me.  They always had different suggestions about which game to play next.  At the end of the day, all the clubbers and I wound up playing Simon Says.

            Husky Club is funded through a grant that is available only to Title 1 schools.  Participants in Husky Club come from a variety of different socioeconomic and family backgrounds.  Some students come from ranches, other live in the apartment housing in town.  Two girls are living with their grandmother, who is helping raise them.  The children have no hesitations in sharing their backgrounds, and it becomes apparent quite quickly that the students come from a range of diverse lifestyles.

            This was a great experience because I was able to see children interacting and received some hands-on exposure to the earlier stages of childhood development that we discussed in my college classes.  I also realized (or remembered, perhaps) that I really enjoy working with elementary students.  They are very enthusiastic and excited about every project and their energy is infectious.  I really enjoyed working on hands-on activities with these students and it made me want to incorporate them more into my high school lessons.  Crafts and practical activities really engage students and get them thinking differently about the material.  Hands-on activities can still be applied to high school classrooms, it’s only objectives that may change.   Just because the students are younger in elementary doesn’t mean that approaches to education have to be different.  School should still be engaging.