Community Observation Paper Essay Example
Community Observation Paper
Introduction to Sociology, SOCI200—B01—201230
Liberty University Online
I. What was observed during the experience?
I work at an online (virtual) public school. Every year we have what we call “Fun Day” or “Field Day” for most schools. We held this event, all students invited, at a local park in my hometown. I got to volunteer to help with it. We were there for about 7 hours. (Our team worked at the information table.) It happened to rain hard that day without stopping, so we had to move everything into the park’s gym, so it was pretty crowded! We had people from all parts of our state there: rich people, poor people, white, black, Asian, etc. Being on an online school, sometimes you feel like you are alone and there is hardly any interaction, but in watching these children, you would never know. They played with each other; they talked, and hung out in “their” groups. Oh, the cliques! You would not think that would be so in a virtual school, but it was. There were a few groups of outsiders that came with their family and kind of stuck with them or stuck with the friends they had made online. I noticed a few poor families, but to be honest, they seemed to have the most fun. We had an issue with the face painting station. There were so many children that wanted their face painted. There was this girl that never got a number to get her face painted. (We had to do that because there were so many kids!) Her mom cussed out one of the ladies that was helping with the table because her daughter “traveled all the way from Charleston to get her face painted.” I thought, wow, public schools are bad in teaching kids certain things, but it could be even worse teaching kids at home when parents act like that. What kind of things are these parents teaching? It’s almost like sports when parents get so worked up over a game. It was just a face painting. Sometimes life is not fair. Other than that issue, many of the children were really glad to
Introduction to Sociology, SOCI200—B01—201230
Liberty University Online
I. What was observed during the experience?
I work at an online (virtual) public school. Every year we have what we call “Fun Day” or “Field Day” for most schools. We held this event, all students invited, at a local park in my hometown. I got to volunteer to help with it. We were there for about 7 hours. (Our team worked at the information table.) It happened to rain hard that day without stopping, so we had to move everything into the park’s gym, so it was pretty crowded! We had people from all parts of our state there: rich people, poor people, white, black, Asian, etc. Being on an online school, sometimes you feel like you are alone and there is hardly any interaction, but in watching these children, you would never know. They played with each other; they talked, and hung out in “their” groups. Oh, the cliques! You would not think that would be so in a virtual school, but it was. There were a few groups of outsiders that came with their family and kind of stuck with them or stuck with the friends they had made online. I noticed a few poor families, but to be honest, they seemed to have the most fun. We had an issue with the face painting station. There were so many children that wanted their face painted. There was this girl that never got a number to get her face painted. (We had to do that because there were so many kids!) Her mom cussed out one of the ladies that was helping with the table because her daughter “traveled all the way from Charleston to get her face painted.” I thought, wow, public schools are bad in teaching kids certain things, but it could be even worse teaching kids at home when parents act like that. What kind of things are these parents teaching? It’s almost like sports when parents get so worked up over a game. It was just a face painting. Sometimes life is not fair. Other than that issue, many of the children were really glad to