Post Service

                Overall my experience volunteering with world relief was a great one. I enjoyed getting to know the family we were assigned and I’m glad that I had this opportunity because I think it was a great learning experience. I learned many knew things about the culture of this family and it has really opened my eyes to the differences between my culture and theirs. My main goal in the beginning was to have them learn something from me, even if it was something small and I think that we accomplished this. I wanted this experience to be a good one for them and I wanted them to take away something from me, Kaelin, and Hailey that they might not have gotten from going to actual ESL tutors. At the end of our observations hours I feel like we became friends with the family and we taught them how to make cookies and had a really fun time with them.

 

During my observation hours I noticed many reoccurring themes throughout the experience volunteering with world relief. One very broad theme was the way that my family communicated. When we went there for the first time the family was obviously a little shy, but the type of communication that we participated in was mainly actional. There was a lot of us asking questions and getting no response or just blank stares. However, as the visits went on the communication developed into a more transactional view with all members of the family. The last time we went to their house I could easily ask any of them a question and I would get a response or another question to clarify what I had just asked. They made more attempts to get our questions right as well; instead of shrugging their shoulders or saying “I don’t know”, they attempted to get it right. Another theme that goes along with this is the idea of moving from the impersonal to the personal. Otherwise known as the social penetration theory, I could definitely sense that there was more self-disclosure between us and them. Language was still a really large barrier and it was hard to maintain reciprocity with them when we didn’t exactly understand everything they were saying. We didn’t get really close with the family because we only spent a little time with them; however, the mom, Tahgreed, did start telling us a lot about her baby and the doctors’ appointments that she had coming up and Baneen started showing us the stuff she works on in school and the dad really opened up a lot because in the beginning he really didn’t talk to us at all.

 

Another big theme I noticed was the way the family was adjusting to living life in America. When I first met them I think they were moving into the initial adjustment phase of culture shock. They seemed like they were just getting used to living here and they didn’t exactly know everything and at times I could tell they felt uncomfortable around us. When the translator came to their house the first time we were there I could tell that Saad, the dad, just felt so much more comfortable. The more we went the more I noticed that they were adapting to the American life style, but not necessarily assimilating to it. They put an American flag on their wall and a map of the United States as well and the last time I went to their house I noticed that they had decorations for Easter, but I’m not exactly sure if they celebrate it. This shows me that they are trying to accommodate to the American culture and starting to accept the traditions that we have while still maintain their own.

 

One other theme that I thought was relevant to my experience at world relief was nonverbal codes. This played a huge role in our time with the Abdulhasan family because there was such a gap in the languages that we spoke and none of the words in our language were even remotely similar to theirs. Nonverbal codes such as paralinguistics and kinesics were very important in the way that we communicated with this family. When having a conversation with them it was very important that we maintained good eye contact with them and made sure that what we were saying matched with the physical gestures we made. When we first volunteered with the family, the parents didn’t really speak any English, they knew how to say “hi”, but they didn’t know what “how are you meant”. So when we said “hi, how are you” we usually had a really happy look on our face and they smiled and nodded back. I remember one time we went to observe and Saad was trying to tell us that they were having an open house and when we asked him if we wanted to leave we had to use a lot of hand gestures and motions pointing to the door because he didn’t understand what we were trying to ask him. I would have thought that as the family learned more English we wouldn’t have to use as many hand gestures, but we still used them a lot our last visit. Paralinguistics didn’t play as big of a role as kinesics did because although our tone of voice and the way we said things did make it easier to understand if we were asking a question or if we were happy or interested, but because of the language barrier it still didn’t get us closer to understand what they were saying or vice versa.

 

This experience has definitely shaped my future interpersonal interactions not only with people of other cultures but with people of my own culture as well. It has taught me to have patience when I’m teaching something to someone or explaining something.  I also have a new found appreciation and admiration for families who leave their home countries and start over in a new one. I know that it’s a hard thing to do, but the family I observed really took the whole change in a great way and they still had time to laugh at each other’s mistakes and I can infer that this whole experience has brought them closer together as a family. I am really happy to know that I could have helped them even though it was just a little bit. I also know now that the words I say aren’t always what communication is about. It’s about the context and the way it’s said and how you say it and the gestures you use to express what you want to say. I also learned that everyone is a different type of communicator based on their personality and you have to pay attention to this when you are getting into relationships with people because knowing how they communicate will help you better understand what they are trying to say. interpersonal communication is a lot more complicated that I originally thought and I think an experience like this one is a great way to better understand not only another culture, but to better understand how to communicate.

During Service (#3)

During our volunteer hours today it was a little more of a relaxing have fun day because Taghreed was really tired and starting to get more baby pains and both of the kids were a little high strung from being inside all day. However, this gave me more opportunity to notice subtle things about the family and the house. The kids got our names right away this time and then we colored for a little bit. We found out that the kids really like to do mazes and they both got pretty good at them which was exciting.  We also did another power point where they had to write down the word from the screen and then tell us the letters. Both of the kids were pros at it this time and sometimes the dad would even get a couple right and he usually doesn’t join in our activities so that was fun. During some of the down time I noticed one of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, masculinity and femininity. In this family the father works and the mother stays home with the kids and does all of the house work. These are the traditional roles of man and woman, however, today I did notice that Taghreed was really tired and kept holding her stomach and instead of still making her do all the house work Saad noticeably stepped in to help, which I hadn’t seen him do before.

                Another thing I noticed today was the ascribed identities of each member of the family, particularly the mom and dad. It was easy for me to tell the type of person they were each trying to identify with and how they wanted to be known to other people. The last concept I noticed as I was observing the family was ethnocentrism. It wasn’t a mean form of ethnocentrism but none the less I would classify the event that happened as ethnocentrism because they kind of laughed at our culture a little bit.

                In regards to the masculine and feminine component of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, I mentioned earlier that this family does adhere to the traditional 1950s gender roles. Saad, the man of the household, works and Taghreed, the mother, must provide moral support for her husband as well as take care of their children and the house. Both of them don’t speak English very well so I would assume that even if Taghreed could speak English she wouldn’t be looking for a job, however, she is also eight months pregnant and will need to care for a baby soon. It is very clear in their family that the women and men’s roles are separate, whereas in my family the roles are more similar. My parents both work and they both clean the house and take care of me and my siblings. Earlier I discussed ascribed identities which are labels given to you by other people. From the way Taghreed acts I can tell that she is trying really hard to be a good mother and to be hospitable towards me, Kaelin, and Hailey.  She always makes sure that we feel welcome and gives us food and drink without us asking for it first. This could also mean she is just a really nice person, but I also think that this shows her ascribed identity. As for Saad, I believe that he wants people to think he is a good dad and he is also trying really hard to know English so that he can teach Taghreed. Also, I noticed that when we first walked into the house there were some kids’ toys lying out on the table and he got really embarrassed and put them away. This shows me that he doesn’t want people to think his family is messy because it was only one toy on the table and their house is surprisingly always clean, whereas in my house it is easily disrupted by all of the belongings my family has.

                Lastly, an event occurred that really confused me at first and all three of us didn’t really know what to say when it happened. For our power point this time we focused on food instead of animals and for the letter h we put ham. The dad, Saad, happened to look over and tried to ask me that he wanted to see a picture of the ham so I showed it to him again. He actually wanted to see a picture of where ham comes from. When we finally understood we found a picture of a pig online and showed them and they all started cracking up. We had absolutely no idea why they were laughing and we were so confused that we just started laughing with them. I did a little research and it turns out that Muslims cannot eat pork because it doesn’t come from a kosher animal. I think this may have been the reason they were laughing but at the same time they were laughing at the fact that we do eat pig in our culture. Apparently they don’t agree with the eating of pig.

During Service (#2)

We visited our family for the second time and the experience was a little different because we didn’t have Kelly there to show us what we need to do. However, I think we did a really good job of engaging our family in the activities we conducted and I would even say that they learned something from us. One thing I noticed right away was how much more American their new house was. It made me believe that this family was leading in to the acceptance and integration phase of their initial culture shock, where they were slowly getting used to this new culture. We started out the first ten minutes or so going over everyone’s name. I thought it was really interesting that this time around it was easier for them to remember our names after not see us for 5 weeks than the first time we had actually met them. After this we did a little coloring with the two kids Baneen and Mustafa. I paid a lot of attention to the behavior of the kids and noticed a lot of similar things that happened between my brother and me when we were younger. We colored for a while and worked on colors with the kids and then we moved into power point that Kaelin and I made.  All we basically did was pick an animal for every letter of the alphabet and put them into a slide show.  For example, for the letter A we put the word ape and had a picture of an ape. We read the letter and the animal out loud and then had them write the word ape on a piece of paper.  During this exercise I noticed that Baneen who is eight years old, had moved into a more transactional way of communicating. It is definitely easier to hold a conversation with her now than when we first met because she was able to understand us better.

The next activity we did had to do with the alphabet as well. Kaelin and I made flashcards of the alphabet that showed both the upper and lower case form of each letter and we went through them a couple times and had them say each letter out loud. We ran into a little trouble with this because Baneen know all of the letters except a few and she was proud of herself for knowing them, but it didn’t give Mustafa and Taghreed a chance to learn as much.  After this we moved into money. I brought some change with and we taught them that a penny equals one cent and a nickel equals five cents and so on. This proved to be a little more challenging for all of them. We spent a while on this activity and I still don’t think that any of them quite grasped the concept. Overall, we had a really good time with the family and there was a lot of laughter between us and definitely less stress than the first time we visited. This makes me think about the attributions I made of Middle Eastern families and the stereotype I put them in and how I was wrong.

In relation to the family being in the acceptance and integration phase of culture shock, I observed how comfortable the family was this time I visited. They seemed to have the groove of things down and they didn’t seem as shocked by the things me and Kaelin did, although they were still curious. Also, their apartment that they just recently moved into seems more like the home of an American native. They still have their religious paraphernalia, but they didn’t have the drapes over the doorway and the kids toys were left out. Also, the father Saad, was Skyping someone from back home and to me that shows that they have almost completely adapted to an American style of living. Like I mentioned before I noticed that the behavior of Baneen and Mustafa was similar to that of me and my brother. They would push each other and tease each other and I think this shows that other cultures have the same relationships with their family as we do, but I just have never witnessed it before. They behave similar to us in other ways too that I guess I never really thought about. For example, the kids got really excited when their dad came home and he teased and played with them just like my dad did when my siblings and I were younger.

When I talked about Baneen moving into transactional communication I meant that when we ask her questions now she interprets it and them formulates a response that we then have to interpret. It’s not like this all the time because there are still a lot of things she doesn’t know, but I can definitely tell she is getting there faster than the other members in her family. Toward the end I also mention how Kaelin and I laughed and had a really good time with each member of the family. From the very first email Kelly wrote to us about this family, I was a little scared because I had this image in my head of a stern and silent family where only men were allowed to talk. I had basically attributed this family into a stereotype using the group-based mechanism. This is how I viewed Middle Eastern cultures as a whole. Now that I have gotten to spend time with this family, I have observed how much they are like my own culture. They are a close family and have a lot of fun together and aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves when they make a mistake, which is exactly how my family behaves.

Something I learned this time that would be beneficial for next time would be splitting the family up and doing more one-on-one based teaching. Taghreed, the mom, really doesn’t know her alphabet or how to write and so I think if one of us worked more one- on-one with her than she might pick up more information. Another thing that I learned was that we have to be very careful how we show them things. For example, our power point had a font that made the a’s look different and that really confused them because they thought it was an e. The same thing goes for the picture of the ape. They thought it was a monkey and it got a little confusing because we don’t want them to think that monkey starts with an a. I think for next time we just have to do very basic and low context pictures so there isn’t room for interpretation on what they are.

During Service (#1)

When I first arrived at the house I was extremely nervous. I really had no idea what to expect and I was concerned that I would offend the family by doing something that is normal in my culture, but not in theirs. When we first walked in we had to take our shoes off and we were led upstairs into what I considered their family room. It was interesting because over the mantel of each room there were drapes hanging, almost like doors and I was confused as to why they were there. Kelly later told us that it was part of their customs to hang drapes over door frames. For the first twenty minutes or so we worked on names. This took a while because the three of them had to learn four American girl names that all kind of all blended together. After that we broke out into groups because it is easier to interact one on one, especially with the children. I worked with the oldest child, Baneen; Kaelin worked with the youngest, Mustafa; and Hailey worked with the mom, Taghreed. Kelly gave me Pooh Bear flashcards to work with, which turned out to be a great tool because it was fun and interactive for Baneen. One concept that I noticed was in play was interactional communication. Our text book defines this as, “…includes the receiver in the communication process, and it recognizes that the receivers provide the senders with ongoing responses.” However the book later mentions that this process is still focused on the sender. The sender has to adapt to what the receiver says to be effective in influencing the receiver.

We worked with the flash cards for a while and then we joined Kaelin and Mustafa and went over animals in a children’s book. After we were finished with this we got craft supplies out and made Valentine’s Day cards, which was a lot of fun because they didn’t know what to do at first, but then we showed them and they loved it. Something I found interesting was that Baneen often had to help her mom. She wanted to write the word ‘love’ and Baneen wrote it on a piece of paper so her mom could see. This just goes to show how quick kids pick up on things and how much parents have to rely on them. One last concept that I can apply to my experience is facework.  Facework is defined as “actions people take to deal with their own and others’ face needs. This played a role when the mother, Taghreed, got really flustered when another male (their translator) came into the house and she didn’t have her head scarf on and she was also in a long-sleeved shirt and pants so she had to put both the head scarf on and this long robe before the translator was allowed in the room to see her.

As I mentioned above I think that the communication that best described Baneen and I was interactional communication. I say this because for the most part she would show me a picture and I would tell her what it was and then she would repeat it. She wasn’t giving me much feedback and there was often times a delay as she was trying to figure out how to form the word in her head. Also, after we had all the cards laid out on the floor I would point to a card and ask what it was and she would either say gibberish or say the wrong word. So I had to constantly interpret what she was saying and think of something else that would maybe jog her memory. For example, for the word bee I would make a buzzing sound and she would remember that was what sound a bee made. Also mentioned above I talked about facework. The example I gave about the headscarf and robe can even be more closely related with the term face-threatening. Taghreed could not let  a male other than her husband see her without the headscarf or robe on because it would ruin her face has a Muslim woman. It is also a symbol of her religion which I also learned from the thirty days video that relates to being an extension of Mary the mother of God.

I learned many things that will definitely help me the next time I go to visit the family. First of all I know that teaching English to someone who doesn’t speak it is very hard. I have to be really careful of what I say especially if I use a slang word. I need to speak proper English with them so they don’t get confused. I also learned that their customs are very different and I would never in a million years want to offend them. For instance, the mother gave us all tea and a muffin and even if I didn’t like it (although I did) I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying so. All I have to remember is to be really polite and patient with the family and to definitely have fun with them.

Pre-Service

I am one of those people who are very passionate about service work. I loved volunteering at home and it pains me to say that I haven't been able to do as much since I've been away at school. Due to this, I am really excited to work with the refugees at World Relief. My main hope is that I can be of service to the family that I will be helping and that we both learn something from each other. I want to make a connection with them so that they feel like they aren’t just in America because their country doesn’t want them. They should feel like they belong here and I want to contribute to that.

I don’t have many assumptions for this service learning experience because I haven’t really done anything like this before, but I can assume that the family will be really nice and very open to do things with me and the girls in my group. I think that because they are refugees and they have had to deal with a lot of adversities in their life and they might be a little wary at first. But I am sure they are in a stage where they are comfortable with volunteers now and hopefully will be open to learn things about American culture.

As Kelly said in her presentation they are mainly serving people from Bhutan, Burma, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, and Iraq. I know a little bit more about Cuba because I learned in high school about their political and economic issues and I did take four years of Spanish (even though that’s not Cuban), so I feel like I can relate more to that population. However, the refugees coming from Bhutan, Burma, and the Democratic Republic of Congo I don’t know as much about. I know that in Iraq they were having a lot of problems which is obviously why we had troops there, but I don’t know much about why the people were forced to leave their country. I am ashamed to say that I don’t know more because I really feel like I should. I think it’s important to know what is going on outside the U.S. so that I can help more. Also, I can assume that this population of people is very appreciative of America because we have helped them start a new life where they don’t have to worry every second of every day if it’s going to be their last.

Like I said before, I absolutely love helping people. It is one passion of mine that I am very proud of and I don’t mind bragging about a little. To me this experience will be life changing. Not only is it important to learn about other cultures, but it’s important to experience them in real life too. I am really interested to see how these people have adapted to life here in America and I admire them for making the most of what they’ve had to deal with. I really do think that this project will open my eyes to a whole other world that I haven’t had the chance to experience before.

How does service relate to learning?

Service relates to learning in a lot of ways. In my eyes, service is the best kind of learning because you really gain valuable experience from actually going out and participating. Servicing others allows someone to really connect themselves to the bigger picture. I have had a lot of service opportunities in my life and I have learned so much from being in the situation, first hand. I have learned things that books can't explain and teachers can't lecture. Not only do you gain knowledge about the people you are helping, but you also learn things about yourself that you may not have known before. For example, I volunteer at a food pantry back home and the first time I went I was really scared because I saw all of these people that came in with barely any clothes and they all looked like they hadn't bathed in a while. To be honest, they terrified me. Since that was my first time I really didn't understand what these people have been through and once I volunteered a couple more times I learned that they are people just like me, but they have been through some very unfortunate events and they are just trying to get food and clothes for their families. I also learned what goes on behind the scenes at places like this food pantry. I got to see first-hand, all of the paperwork that goes into running a place like that and I got to see how hard the other volunteers worked, especially the people who run it. One other thing I took away from this experience was the feeling it gave me to help my community. There really aren't words for it. Like Kelly said in her presentation, "service allows you to be part of something bigger that yourself." Service and learning go hand in hand because you are able to see yourself in something bigger than just a classroom setting, you're living it.