The
Impact of Volunteering
Volunteering
can help shape people in who they want to be and teach them important life
lessons. Figuring out the lesson that is being taught and applying it to their
life is even more important, and finding it in a strange place is what makes it
unique. This in itself teaches people more than a traditional educational
setting would. Volunteering allows students to find a voice, self-meaning, and
a drive that goes beyond them.
Who
would ever think that volunteering could teach a person more than a traditional
school setting would? Well, many people wouldn’t and that is where the argument
begins. Volunteering helps show an individual the world. This may sound cliché;
but it’s the truth. It helps form a meaning of self-worth and independence.
Volunteering can open your eyes to career paths that otherwise you would have
never thought of. That one experience could be volunteering to meet a
graduation requirement and it changes a person’s entire perspective on things.
Imagine a senior in high school, that has almost completed twelve years in the
educational system and believes that they know what they want to do and who
they are. But, like any teenager they have been protected in the school system.
They have never really seen the world in a sense; they’ve seen it with blinders
on and through a self-centered manner. This is where a person is most
vulnerable, where they can make a change and find themselves within it. This is
one thing that the school systems do not provide. They don’t provide students
with the motive to help them and to stand up for what they believe in. As Mr. Keating, a teacher from the movie The Dead Poets Society, said, “Boys, you
must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the
less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of
quiet desperation.’ Don't be resigned to that. Break out!” This is where
volunteering plays a huge role in the entire educational experience; it allows
students to find who they are and where they want to go in life. It gives them
a voice to stand up for what they believe in. For example they may volunteer
for a local elementary school, and they find a passion for education they never
expected they would have. That the volunteering experience can change a
person’s entire mindset on who they thought they were and that’s where they
find their true voice. They find a passion that they never knew they had until
that experience.
Self-meaning
could mean a lot of different things to many different people. But, when
talking about self-meaning and volunteering together it is more geared to
finding out about what the person wants to do and where their true passion is.
This is another place where a traditional school setting lacks and where
volunteering can help fill in the blanks. Again, let’s picture a high school
senior, they believe they know exactly what they want to do, let’s say that’s
nursing, but they volunteer at an elementary school where they find something
that they never though they would. They had that “aha moment” where they
instantly knew that this is where they belonged. Now, the educational system
doesn’t really gear students up to find who they are supposed to become. They
are given requirements and guidelines and are expected to abide by the rules
set before them. Not only are they not allowed to stray far from the path that
is made, but they lose that time to learn something about themselves that would
have never gotten the chance to learn.
Volunteering can help change that. It makes a difference and allows
students to realize that they are capable of a lot more than people give them
granted for. Back to the example of the high school senior volunteering at the
elementary school, without that experience she would have never figured out
where her true passion was. She was able to find a path that was more geared
for her. This is what school systems don’t do, they don’t let students design
their own path and it is up to them to figure out where they go. The one
problem with that is that students are expected to stay on the same path, never
being allowed to venture far from it until it is their decision to find
themselves and find what they want to do. As Sir Ken Robinson, a public speaker
who discusses how schools do not support creativity, states, “Very many people go through their whole
lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to
speak of.” This is where traditional school settings fail; relying solely on
the education system to shape our students and provide them with a path to fall
is absurd. But, with a simple act of volunteering it could allow students to
find their true talent. This in return allows people to be passionate in whatever
their doing. It provides self-meaning to the job and gives more meaning to
whatever they are doing.
Having a
drive and a passion for what a person is doing provides them with self-confidence.
It provides them with the ease of knowing that they are doing the right thing
and that it feels good to give back. This is another thing that volunteering
can provide a student. Volunteering in the right place isn’t a chore. It is
something that the individual loves doing and is passionate for the cause they
are fighting for or helping. This in itself allows the person to be part of
something that is beyond them. They are making a difference that not only can affect
them, but it can affect others too. This is something that schools do not
provide. They don’t provide the student with the authority to make change. They
expect everyone to be and act the same; where in the real world that isn’t how
the world works. Again think of the example that has be said earlier, how a
high school senior volunteered at a elementary school and how that experience
changed her mind on what she wanted to do and how she saw things. She learned
something more important than school could have taught her. She found her
drive. Her drive being, making a difference as a teacher, a role model for
those students she worked with. This provided her with dignity, something that
made her sure of what she wanted to be a part of. This has a huge affect on a
person. It allows them to see themselves and gives them a glance into the
future. Just imagine being a person who thought they knew exactly what they
wanted to do and knew exactly how they were going to achieve that goal. That is
until they simply volunteer, they volunteer somewhere that suits them. A place
that they can’t wait to visit and it changes their mood when they walk through
the door. A place where they know they can make a difference and know that they
are needed. These are the things that people need. They need to know that they
can create change, that they are needed, and that they have passion in what
they are doing. Without drive, change, and the feeling of being needed life
becomes pointless; this is where people start moving through the motions.
Providing students with volunteering experiences can push them in the right
direction. Allowing them to see that the world is more than just them, they
have the power to do more and can be change. As Audre Lorde said, the author of
Zami, “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be
crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” People either
decide to be who they want or they follow the expectations of what others want
us to be. The one thing that volunteering provides a person with is the power
of knowing who they are and where they are going.
Volunteering
may seem like something that is un-needed. Something that doesn’t provide a
person with much or even anything, but this is where that idea is wrong.
Education can only provide a person with so much, but what the education system
lacks in volunteering makes up for. Providing students with the security of who
they are, what they want to do, and giving them a voice can change so much.
Volunteering can’t change everything that is wrong with the education system;
but it can help make a difference in a student’s life. It provides purpose; a
purpose that is worth fighting for.
Work Sited:
Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. By Tom
Schulman. Perf. Robin Williams and Robert Sean Leonard. Touchstone Pictures,
1989. DVD.
How Schools Kill Creativity.
Perf. Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken Robinson. TED, n.d. Web. 26 May
2014.
Lorde, Audre. [“School”] Chapter
3 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name – A
Biomythography. New York. Quality Paperback Book Club, 1982.
Web. 28 May 2014
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