This course is part of your Spanish language learning experience, and offers you the opportunity to interact in a personal way with members of the local Latino community, thereby enriching your understanding of Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language. As a community-based learning experience, the course provides students with career-related experience working collaboratively with community agencies to address community concerns / issues.
To fulfill this requirement I was able to work in my own community which is in Salinas. I worked at the library at Roosevelt Elementary School in an after school program called the Homework Center, this program was created by members of the Cesar Chavez Library, which is also located in Salinas, as an aid to students who do not get the help they need with homework at home. Almost all the students who attend the program are Spanish speakers so I was able to communicate with them in both English and Spanish. The students go to the library as soon as they get out of school, after that we take them to the cafeteria to get their "Super Snack", once they are done we head back to the library and we start working on the homework. As tutors we only facilitate them with they homework, we don't give them the answers we just help them in figuring out the steps. In doing my community service there I learned a lot about my community and it reminded me of why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place.
A very important assignment that we worked on in the class were the pre and post reflections. For both we had to answer a set of questions and first we had to answer them in the beginning of the semester and then at the end. I saw a great amount of change in both essays which reflects how much I learned in the class and how I connected everything outside of class.