Service Learning Project Reflection

I have learned so much about myself and families during this project. Coming from a small town, I was not exposed to many of the experiences that I had during this project. I also learned that I had many unknown stereotypes of what I thought families should look like. Throughout this project and this course I have changed my perspective on many topics and my plans as a future teacher.
During the service learning project I participated in many of the events offered. I helped at Caze Fall Carnival and Chili Cook-off, Boys and Girls club Halloween Carnival, and Foster Parent Night Out. I loved every single one of them. Each experience was unique in its own way and I learned something different about myself and families from each one.
At the Caze Fall Carnival, I had the opportunity to work in the kindergarten booth which was a cake walk. We had a popular booth because many people played and tried to win cakes and other sweet treats. I noticed many of our participants were actually parents and grandparents rather than the students. We also had many families that would participate together to increase their chances of winning a treat. During this event it was fun watching how the families interacted with each other and with the staff at Caze. I could tell after …show more content…
This event opened my eyes and made me realize the type of stereotypes I had for foster children. Before going to this event, I had in my mind that foster children were going to be trouble makers and the parents would be rude or uncaring like how some movies portrayed them. I am not sure where this stereotype came from or why I thought these children would be different from how I grew up but they surprised me. I could not have asked for nicer children. They were polite, they listened better than many of the children I know, and I could tell the parents appreciated having the