Our first day at St. Anthony's Catholic School was an awesome experience, and I know everyone is excited to be able to head back there tomorrow and Wednesday. When we arrived, we immediately got to join in on recess which was a great intro to the kids. From there, our group split off into different grades of students. My group of ASB members were with 5th graders and we were helping them with their math homework. It was an enlightening experience in many ways. I was surprised with just how excited the students were to have us there helping, and how happy they clearly were to have extra people in the classroom to tutor them. There were probably 15 students in our room, and one teacher. That means on a normal day, when we weren't there, they'd probably struggle to be able to get enough personal attention from the teacher. They were all just so happy that we were available to help and that we were taking our time to explain everything to them properly and in a way that was helpful for their learning. I could see how much our presence was appreciated when we had to leave, and the children were sad. It was hard to tell them we had to go, but was easier once we saw how happy they were after finding out that we'd be back tomorrow and Wednesday.
After we ate dinner tonight, we went to Target and spent about $150 on sports equipment and other supplies that we saw were needed. I could tell everyone really wished that we could have bought even more, because there's so many great things that these students could benefit from. It will be a great experience tomorrow when we get to hand deliver these items to the children and see their excitement.
Overall, our first day of service in Washington D.C. was and extremely positive one. I for one feel very fortunate that we have 2 more days at all three site. I've done other community service projects in the past that were only one day, and would have loved to have been able to return the next day and continue the great work. I definitely feel like the rest of the ASB group is excited about the next two days and are going to try to make the most of it. We all met for about an hour tonight to reflect on our trip so far, and there were some great conversations had about everyone's experience. It's good to know that everyone is getting something different out of the trip, and also that they are all having a positive experience.
Below are some photos of my groups classroom/students at St. Anthony's.
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