Volunteering at Calgary Public Library

Date of this reflection Date(s) of CAS Activity: Summer of 2012
Title of Activity: Being a Volunteer in the Reading Buddy program and the Cyber Senior program
Number of hours spent on this activity: 12 hours

1. Briefly describe the CAS activity. Who did you work for? What did you hope to accomplish?
I worked for Calgary Public Library. I hope to gain volunteer experience in dealing with senior and children, and to improve my communication skills with these two category of people.

2. What was the outcome of the activity? Did you accomplish your goals?

• Made new friends
• Increased sense of accomplishment
• Learn new ways to interact with seniors and children
• Lean new ways to teach using different medias

3. What would you do differently if you did this activity again?

• Spend more time volunteering because it is interesting to interact with people with different cultural and age background
• Volunteer at one library instead of volunteering at different branches, so I can get to know my coordinator better

4. Describe how this activity represents Creativity, Action, and/or Service.

• It represents Creativity because I need to come up with creative ways to teach the participants
• It represents Service because my participation represents volunteerism, and it helps children become more interested in reading, and help seniors to use technology to improve their ways of knowing.

5. Which of the following learning outcomes have you addressed with this activity? (choose all that
apply)
+Increasing your awareness of your own strengths and areas for growth
+Undertaking new challenges
+Planning and initiating activities
+Working collaboratively with others

How does the activity address these learning outcomes
For volunteering, the Reading Buddies program let me provided the children with escapes from boredom and hopefully ignited their interest in books. It helps me realize that being able to speak sufficient English is important because language is essential to communication. When I volunteered for the Cyber Senior program I found it difficult to teach the seniors to use an Ipad, especially since they are slow at perceiving the information and have trouble remembering my instruction. This presents challenge to me and it forces me to change my way of teaching such that it can benefit the seniors more.It allows me to be flexible in the way I teach and keeps me open-minded. I also planned and initiated how my way of teaching should be. I worked collaboratively with other volunteers to keep order in the library and also to help the kids in craft sections. 

I can't rotate this picture... sorry.