Helping at the Church Preschool

Working at My Church Preschool

Hello my name is Shilpa Piontek. I am a freshman in college. I go to the University of
Central Missouri. I live at home, so the college is about a
five-minute drive for me. I am visually impaired but that does not
stop me from dreaming my dreams and following my career to become a
preschool teacher. I wanted to become a preschool teacher ever since
last year of my senior year of high school. I took all of the child
development classes that was at my high school and I also took this
class called worksite. The worksite class allowed me to go to my work
or volunteer anywhere I wanted to in my hometown. I decided to
volunteer at my church because it was close to my school and also
where I lived. I helped at least an hour a day each week because I
had sports that I had to go to after school or else I would stay the
whole time at my church preschool. I am stilling helping out at my
preschool every day. I also work at the preschool too. I will
volunteer on the days that I am not working and sometimes I will come
in early to help out before I actually have to work.

I love helping at my church preschool because I love seeing all the children and
seeing how they interact with the adults and the teachers. I am also
still learning how to handle the children and how to talk to them,
where they can understand what I am saying. My responsibilities are
to take and make sure the kids are safe. I have to make sure they are
being well behaved too. My biggest challenges are talking to the
children in a way that they understand and also to have the children
talk to me like they are big kids. When I talk to children, it is a
struggle for me to understand what they are saying half the time. My
biggest ratification is seeing the children be happy whenever they do
something amazing. What I have learned from volunteering at my church
is learning how to go up to a child and just speak to them and see
how they are doing.

When looking forward into the future I am hoping to see many young kids helping
out at the church preschool and hopefully they want to become a
teacher when they grow up. What forward looking to me mean is that
you can see the positive of the outcome that you put into it. I can
see the positive of me learning and using the skill that I learned in
my future teacher in me. What I foster in the future is seeing many
people be part of a church that will take and care of each other for
the goodness of their soul. If I were to come back in ten years, I
think my volunteering would have made a difference to the kids that I
was working with and seeing them become the same person that they
were in preschool. I am passionate about helping children and I do
like to learn how to interact with kids with different disabilities
and functioning skills. I love learning with children and see what
they learned from going to school.

Shilpa Piontek

Thank you so much for allowing me to tell you how I give back to the
community!!