Volunteering with Refugee Children Makes an Impact by Daniel

Volunteering with Refugee Children Makes an Impact by Daniel - April 2022 Scholarship Essay

My work as a tutor for Solutions in Hometown Connections helped to advance the organization’s mission of building confidence and promoting independence for recent immigrant families in the DC area. As the child of immigrants myself, I readily empathize with the struggle that comes with having to learn an entirely new language and culture, and this led to my decision to choose SHC from among many tutoring options. During my time there, I was able to successfully teach younger students important skills, such as staying focused, critical thinking, and reading comprehension. I also helped guide them in discovering and utilizing their own individual strengths, something I became better at with experience.

Furthermore, as a tutor, I have been challenged by many students who need some convincing to put the required effort into classes or subjects that they find disinteresting or not particularly useful. Assisting unmotivated students with their coursework is difficult enough in person, but the problem is greatly amplified when tutoring virtually. I addressed this challenge by finding indirect ways to increase their focus. For example, one day, I was tutoring two elementary school brothers in math and they were constantly losing focus throughout the session. I decided to offer them a deal: for every five questions they answered correctly, I would solve any problem that they could come up with. As expected, they gave me very difficult problems such as nine digit multiplication. During the next session, they were both very excited to get into the math questions and seemed truly thrilled about improving their math abilities.

Successfully encouraging these students reinforced my belief in the importance of being flexible and confirmed that my passion is to help and see others gain greater motivation and maximize their potential. I was happy to see increased confidence in each of my students and truly believe that their experiences will stay with them and contribute to future successes. I was thus able to contribute to SHC’s impact while also continuing to learn about my own abilities and strengths, which now include assisting fellow students who have struggled with the educational changes brought on by the pandemic.