The document summarizes the author's experience volunteering at her former high school teacher's classroom over Thanksgiving break. Some key points: - The author helped students with various projects as they prepared for finals and winter break. This expanded her understanding of civility. - She wanted to experience teaching at a larger high school before pursuing her goal of becoming a teacher. The experience highlighted both the diversity of students and challenges of lesson planning for different abilities. - The volunteer work gave her a new appreciation for teachers and helped her realize teaching is more complicated than she originally thought. She updated her definition of civility to be broader based on this learning experience.

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Civility
Abigail Borchert
University of Northern Iowa
Over Thanksgiving break, I volunteered with my old high school teacher, Mrs.
Marasco, at Southeast Polk High School. While I was there I was able to help the kids in
the classes do many projects. These projects varied from class to class. Since they

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were getting ready for break as well, most were either done with their project or
scrambling to finish. I was able to help come up with new ideas for them to start and
help finish up the old ones. This has helped me learn that my definition of civility can be
expanded from how I originally defined it, I will prove this by explaining my experience
volunteering.
Since I graduated from Melcher-Dallas, Mrs. Marsco transferred from Melcher-
Dallas, to Southeast Polk. Where she now teaches textiles, relationships, and child
development. She is also the advisor of Family Career Leaders of America, better
known as FCCLA. When I was in high school she was my teacher, advisor and coach.
When thinking about volunteering shes the first person that came to mind. When I ask
her if I could come volunteer in her room over break she was ecstatic.
I choose to volunteer at a school with one of my favorite teachers, because I plan
to become one someday. Although I am majoring in business management, I am also
getting my teaching endorsement. As a freshman majoring in business, I am able to get
a feel for the business experience. For getting a teaching endorsement, theres nothing
for me as a freshman. This has enticed me to welcome any opportunity that I am able to
get back into the classroom. In high school, I was a teacher’s aide a few times and
really enjoyed it, while also getting great learning experiences. Since I’ve been at
college there has been fewer of those opportunities as freshman with a business major.
When I contacted Mrs. Marsco about volunteering, I was hoping to get a feel for
what it is like to teach at a bigger school. When I was a teachers aid in highschool, I
was in classes of ten to twenty students tops. At Southeast Polk, the smallest class was
about twenty-five. Besides getting a feel for teaching students at a bigger school, I also

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went to talk to some of the business teachers there. Although that was not part of
volunteering it was extra knowledge that I received for being there.
What I expected to get out of it is what I got and more. I was able to see what it
was like in a large school setting. Now that I have experienced small school and
college, I am able to compare and contrast with large schools as well. When helping out
at Southeast Polk, I was able to see that there is much larger variety of students with
stronger talents at a larger school. Saying that there is also a wider variety of students
in the classroom. This makes doing lesson planning much harder. As Mrs. Marsco
explained and I was able to see, some students excelled very quickly and were looking
for new projects. While others were struggling to get the first one done. With this much
diversity in course it is hard to help everyone when there is twenty-five or more students
at once. Since the class was working on their last projects before finals, Mrs Marasco
was thankful that I was there to help. My original plan was to also help in the business
classroom. I was unable to do that because there was such a need for help in Mrs.
Marasco room.
After volunteering, I now have a new respect for Mrs. Marasco and all teachers.
Seeing how difficult it is to be on their side, instead of being the student. I also
understand the students frustrations with the teachers, because I’ve been there not to
long ago. This is something that I hope to learn how to prevent, while I am here at UNI.
During this volunteer experience, I discovered that teaching is a lot more
complicated than I thought. I still plan on going into teaching as my career but it did put
things into perspective for me. There is a lot more than just knowing how to teach. Such
as teaching in a way that everyone can learn, and also a pace that everyone can stay

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with. Meeting special needs, and balancing time between hundreds of students. I now
realize I have put more on my plate than I realized. I know I will be okay though
because I will enjoy what I am doing. Although it is a lot to do and limited time to do it,
the outcomes of it will be worth it. Knowing that I will be helping people learn everyday.
Getting them to a higher level of education each and everyday.
When I first defined civility I put a limit to it. My original definition was, “ Civility is
respect for someone while they are giving a speech or in front of an audience. It shows
that you are giving the person talking you time and therefore you should have enough
respect to hear what they are saying. When you really hear what a person is saying you
listen without talking trying to understand and interpret what they are saying.” This
definition is a very restricted one.
My new definition is as follows, “Civility is anything that one or more persons do
for another that strengthens the well being of another person or group.” This definition is
less specific and I believe better defines Civility. The reason I decided to change my
definition so much was because of my volunteer experience. I learned that there are so
many ways to act or speech on civility. Some ways are simple while others, more
complicated. I dont believe this can be categorized and that it need to have a very broad
definition in order to truly define civility.