Community Service III

On April 12, I did more service at Congregation Beth Shalom with Anne. Anne, who is the youth director, was running an end of the year program for the younger age group. She was understaffed so I volunteered to help her run her program. That night she was running a 3 hour game night and BBQ for 3-6th graders. Specifically, while Anne ran the program I was in charge of making food. I got to fire up the grill and make about 3 dozen hamburgers and hot dogs (on a lousy grill).
After I finished cooking for the kids I got to take over on watching the game. I was then in charge of making sure nobody was cheating or got hurt. Everyone had a lot of fun and this service was a lot like my first one. Much like the service I did earlier in the year with the young kids at Beth Shalom, much of what I was doing was helping shape the community and providing them with a comfortable environment. I was playing a major role as one of the social influences in their lives.

Community Service II

On March 13 I ran a social action program which focused on hunger awareness. I volunteered to lead the program at Congregation Beth Shalom with Anne we organized it jointly with three other organizations from around the Chicagoland area. The 4 hour program itself was very interesting. We began dividing the group of participants into 3 social classes; wealthy, middle class, and poor. Each class was then served ice cream. The wealthy were served promptly with their choice of toppings. The middle class was given a reasonable bowl of ice cream, and the poor received a thimble of ice cream. As you may have guessed, there were a lot more poor people than middle class, and even less wealthy. We were careful to highlight the significance of how much income affects someone's ability to obtain something as basic as food, something that many of us living relatively comfortably can take for granted.
After the interactive part of our program, we invited a speaker to come and tell us her story. She was a woman that my youth group had been working with who had lost her job, her home, and was a single mother putting her kids through school. We all listened as she told us of how suddenly she found herself out of work and struggling to get food for her family. Luckily, after a difficult struggle she went to school to learn to be a chef and is currently employed. 
Finally, we concluded the program with having every participant make a few sandwiches which we then donated to P.A.D.S. It was a very successful day and we helped a lot of people become aware of a very serious problem and we provided food for some people in need of help.

Community Service

On February 22 I volunteered at Congregation Beth Shalom to help organize and run a calendar program for 3rd to 7th graders. On this particular Tuesday night I was helping Anne run a program with kids at the religious school that would help them learn about the Hebrew Calendar. During the 4 hours that I was there, I ran a station that taught the kids all about the month of Iyar and the holidays in that month. The children moved in groups from one station (month) to the next during the two hours of their class (there are two classes, one early and one after).
While looking back on the experience I realized that I was not feeling a profound impact on my life from the service I was doing, rather I was the influence on others' experience. The point of the program was to help educate young children about the Hebrew Calendar, a lunar cycle, and help them learn about their heritage. Additionally, the program was spread out around the synagogue to help the kids become comfortable in the congregation. The entire point of the activity was to help these kids feel safe and at home within their community. The work I was doing was helping form a comfortable and close knit community for a bunch of younger kids. Also, the experience of working with kids was special for me since I want to be a teacher one day. 

Race

Racism is something we learn about in school and experience constantly. From a young age kids are taught to treat other people with respect. Everyone gets a turn doing a job on the job chart and picking on others gets you a time out. So why is racism such a problem? People do not only feel uncomfortable around people of other races or cultures, but they have even been motivated to hate them. It is scary that people's hatred for others can be driven by something as arbitrary as physical appearance. Race is a heavy topic to deal with and people tend to avoid the seriousness of the issue itself by ignoring racism or even joking about it. This point only perpetuates the growth of racism.

Book Covers

Everyone always says, 'don't judge a book by it's cover'....but when you stop and look around you may notice; a lot of books hang out with books with similar covers. Is this just some strange phenomenon that people hang out with other people with similar outward appearances? Maybe one person influences another to care more or less about their appearance? Either way, another theory would suggest that a person's social class will influence the kind of people they associate with and most likely how they will look. Some people get 'preppy' clothes, other like black, and some are into jeans that never seem to fit at the waist. However, it is not often that you see the kids in black consorting with the kid who needs a belt. Unfortunately, people spend time with people who they interpret to be from the same social class as them. Sadly this does not foster healthy friendships with a lot of diverse people, but people tend to feel more comfortable with someone 'like them.' I like to think I don't give anyone the cold shoulder, but even looking at my own friends I can say that they are all alike. And not just in appearance, but in interests as well. In many ways we are very similar; I'm not saying that in order to be my good friend you need to share my opinions and look like you're in the same social class as me.....but I guess it wouldn't hurt our friendship either.

Correctional Facility or Just Jail?

In class we watched an episode of 30 Days in which Morgan went to Prison. Throughout his time there he was treated as an inmate and lived amongst other prisoners. During his month in prison he talked with a lot of people and there seemed to be a recurring pattern; most of the people he was talking with were repeat offenders. Even more of them seemed to be getting used to life in jail. It was as if the inmates knew that being there was not normal, but they were resigned to the idea that it was all they could reach in life. Rather than taking people who have made mistakes and helping them through their problems and rejoin society US prisons are teaching criminals to get used to bars, because odds are you will be back. The number of inmates in the US alone is appalling and our society is doing nothing to help the inmates who are in need of help. Granted, some people are in jail for good reason, but many, if not most, are there as a result of a bad decision, a drug problem, or even mental problems. These are not people who need to be shut away from society, they need society's help to get back onto the right path.

AAAHHH DRUGS......is this tylenol?

Last week in class we did an activity where we took a look at various descriptions of various drugs. We were not told what the drugs were, but we were told to decide if the drug should be legal or illegal, and to what degree, based on the descriptions. When the groups got together to discuss their rankings, nearly every drug got a variety of answers. How can two people read about one thing and claim that it should be illegal and legal? Shouldn't there be some commonality between people that allows us to tacitly agree on big issues? The simple answer; no. This exercise only highlighted the point that people all act and think based on their own perceptions. Our own experiences influence how we approach new events. In a way this helps us all approach new situations, but it also dooms us to make assumptions which are more often than not false. For example, if you see someone at school dressed differently than you, perhaps in a manner which you find shocking, you would probably avoid them. You may even go as far to assume that they are a trouble maker. You will completely skip on the opportunity to meet them because you just assume they are not good for you. Without ever giving them a chance, we all selectively isolate ourselves from others.