Community Service Learning Experience

I helped Hillary, a young refugee girl from Africa; attempt to formulate a sentence with the word “truthful” in it. She looked up at me with inquiring eyes, asking, “What does ‘truth’ mean?” I tried to come up with a definition, something that would make sense. I realized that I couldn’t because truth is a word that had been, unquestionably, a part of my vocabulary my whole life. My mother always told me to tell the truth, and that’s how I learned it. So I sat perplexed, trying to explain to this young girl what a word, that I believed would be an easy concept to grasp, meant. I am a sophomore Writing and Mass Communications major at Assumption College. For my Community Service Learning experience as part of my journalism course, I decided …show more content…
I usually countlessly worked with that student the whole hour and a half, making sure that they completely understood everything that they were currently learning. During my sessions with different students, I noticed something was peculiar. When they got an answer correct, I noticed a sparkle in their eyes, one that distinguished them from the average student around their age. Maybe it was motivation or maybe even excitement. For me, I like to believe that it was hope. Perhaps this glint had been gone for a while and is surfacing itself right now. They continued to work hard to understand, chasing after that spark of hope that remained in their …show more content…
These children have taught me that if you can’t achieve something the first time, to try again. They’ve taught me to tell the truth, fight for what I trust in, work for my dreams, enjoy the simple things, and, lastly, laugh. I’ve learned to be thankful for the life that I have lived so far. I’m thankful that education has come easy for me and that English is my first language. ACE continues to fight the constant stigma placed on refugees and immigrants every single day. In my final days working there, some students expressed to me that they were thankful to have me not only because I helped them understand more, but also because I saw the truth in