Lessons from an Eight-Year-Old by Viviana

Lessons from an Eight-Year-Old by Viviana - October 2013 Scholarship Essay

Every week I would walk in the door only to be swarmed by fourth-graders fighting over who got to hug me first. “I need help first!” insisted one. “Sit next to me!” pleaded another. I sat in a chair that was much too small for my size and at a table under which my legs barely fit. They handed me a wrinkled sheet of paper with a list of twenty simple words. “Number one: school. Number two: apple,” I recited. Pencils rushed frantically across the paper as the kids raced to see who was the fastest. Granted, once I finished correcting the spelling tests, the highest scorer received the coveted “high-five.”

For over two years, I’ve started my Thursday afternoons by volunteering at a local elementary school. At first, I thought it would be simple and that it wouldn't influence me or the students much at all. What I never realized is that I continued volunteering because I was doing something that I truly loved. For me, Thursday didn’t just mean that it was almost Friday. Thursday meant that I would go back looking forward to the kids’ positive attitudes, the hug attacks when I walked in the door, the smiles when they figured out how to multiply three-digit numbers. I couldn’t help but fall in love with those hyperactive eight- and nine-year-olds who had to be reminded every five minutes to use their “inside voices.” Despite the age difference, they treated me as a best friend. Each visit, there was some new gossip and a fight over who got to tell the story. “‘So-and-so’ has another secret boyfriend or girlfriend,” they giggled. Over time, I watched my little stars grow up and venture off into the scary new land across the street called “middle school.”

What pulled me in the most, though, was the fact that the school was located in an underprivileged neighborhood. The STARS after-school program provided a place for kids to stay so that parents could stay at work a bit longer. And, as stereotypical as it sounds, many of the kids were Hispanic. I wanted more than anything to inspire them, to help them take advantage of their education so that they could succeed later on in middle school and high school. If there was one thing that I wouldn’t allow to happen, it was for them to be limited by their surroundings and by what others thought of them. I knew that my goal couldn’t be accomplished with every student I talked to, but it was an indescribable feeling hearing little Betsy boast, “Miss Viviana, I want to go to college like you!”

Just one hour a week. That’s all it took to help out a local school, to inspire little kids, to inspire myself to be a role model for others. Whether or not my efforts paid off, I will never know, but knowing that I put a smile on a little girl’s face is all that really counts.