Siriben Somboon discusses their experience volunteering with Baan Rachawadee, a community service club that cares for physically and mentally disabled children. They have volunteered with Baan Rachawadee for 4 years. Siriben explains how their emotions and mood have impacted their performance and perception while volunteering. Specifically, they perform better when in a good mood and perceive the children differently when stressed or unhappy. Siriben also reflects on how theories around emotion, perception, reason, and language have helped them better understand and communicate with the children in their care.

1. Siriben Somboon
Student: Hello My name is Siriben Somboon. I’m seventeen years old and I have
attended ISB for about 7 years. I was born on July 11, 1994. I am taking senior seminar
this semester. In senior seminar, we learned about 4 ways of knowing. Language,
perception, reason and emotion. We used 4 ways of knowing to govern how we take in
and interpret things. Today I will be talking about how different ways of knowing have
affected my learning experiences in the community service field.
Interviewer: What is a specific example of your learning experiences in the community
service that have affected you as a student?
Student: A specific example of my learning experiences in the community service that
have affected me as a student is Baan Rachawadee community service.
Student: Baan Rachawadee is a community service club that helps physically or
mentally disable children on Wednesday from 2 pm to 4 pm. This club brings physically
or mentally disable children to school and we take care/entertain them by walking them
around the school, taking them to the library to play games or take them to the art class
to draw or paint.
Interviewer: Why did you choose this experience?
Student: I choose this experience because I have been doing Baan Rachawadee for
the past 4 years. Baan Rachawadee has influenced me in many ways. For example,
making me understand more about people who are very different from us. These people
are unable to perform a simple activity that normal human could, such as walking, eating
or talking. Helping less fortunate people have always been my interest because my dad
always tells me how fortunate I am and I should help less fortunate people.
Interviewer: Therefore, in reflecting and giving us an overall introduction about Baan
Rachawadee, how has emotion affect your understanding of the experience in Baan
Rachawadee?
Student: Emotion has greatly impacted me on my understanding of the experience in
Baan Rachawadee. When I was in a good mood, I was able to produce a better result
than when I was in a bad mood by taking better care of the children and being more
patient when the children need something. This connects to the James Lange theory,
that how my performance is affected by my mood. I also have more motivation in doing
something when I am in a good mood.
Interviewer: What theory could explain your performance?

2. Student: Yerkes Dodson graph is a graph that shows the relationship between arousal
and performance. It shows that as you increase your arousal, your task performance
also increases, but only to a certain point. After that certain point, if you increase your
arousal, your task performance would decrease. This theory helps me understand more
about how much arousal I should have to performance the best.Too much/little arousal
would lead me to lower performances. For example, when I was stress about school and
I went to do Baan Rachawadee, I didn’t perform as well as when I wasn’t too stress.
James Lange theory stated that emotion come after physical stimulus. Since most of the
Baan Rachawadee children are mentally/physically disable children, they use body
language/face expression to communicate with me. Through body language/face
expression, I can understand their emotions. For example, when they don’t like a toy,
they would throw the toy away or scream which then make me realize that they don’t
like/fear the toy.
Interviewer: How has your emotion affected your perception when doing Baan
Rachawadee?
Student: I tend to lean forward to selectivity of perception when I was in a bad mood
when I did Baan Rachawadee. When I was in a bad mood and stressed about the exam
or homework, I tend to concentrate more on thinking about my homework and exam
rather than paying full attention toward the Baan Rachawadee children. Instead of
concentrating on the kid and looking at their face expression, I tend to distract myself
and ignore their face expression and find them as pushy and selfish.
Sometimes I based my perspective and opinion on by existed expectations when I see
new Baan Rachawadee children. I expect them to be similar to one of the Baan
Rachawadee people that I saw. For example if the new Baan Rachawadee kid can walk,
I expect he/she to either cannot talk or problem with their brain. If the new Baan
Rachawadee kid cannot walk, I expect he/she to have a normal brain, but problem with
his/her body.
Interviewer: How has your emotion affected your reason when doing Baan
Rachawadee?
Student: At 3:30 pm, we have to take the Baan Rachawadee children back to feed them
food. One time, before 3:30 pm, one of the Baan Rachawadee children told me she was
hungry. I was not supposed to give the Baan Rachawadee child food until 3:30 pm, but I
felt sympathy for the child. That time I bought the child snack and I regretted it. The child
didn’t want to eat the prepared food at 3:30 pm.
One of the reasons why I gave the Baan Rachawadee child snack that time was
because I used inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the reasoning that goes from
the particular to the general. I have been seeing many children eat snacks before dinner
and they could finish their dinner, so I assumed that this apply to everyone. I thought

3. that the Baan Rachawadee child would be able to eat food at 3:30 pm even if she
already had snack. There is a problem with this reasoning because I make a conclusion
from a small sample and try to apply it to a particular situation.
Interviewer: So how has language affect your understanding of the experience in Baan
Rachawadee?
Student: Since it is hard to communicate with the Baan Rachawadee children,
sometimes I just use body language and expectations to communicate with them. For
example when I was feeding the child food, when the child raised his/her hand, i just
assumed that the child needed water and I just give him/her water. There is a problem
with relying on body language since there are a lot of expectation and confirmation bias
since the meaning that is being passed on to other people through body language might
be interpret differently.
Interviewer: What did you gain from doing this community service?
Student: I gained to be more patience and I knew that by doing a small thing to help
others can make a difference in someone else’s life. For example, by doing Baan
Rachawadee every Wednesday, the children could have fun; enjoy their day at the
school and they would look forward to come and enjoy their day every week.
Interviewer: What do you know about yourself that will change how you approach
learning in the future?
Student: Through the studies in Theory of Knowledge, I know that emotion can affect
my performance in community service. By using emotion and reason, I could choose
what to do that is best for me. I need to have a balance between emotion and reason to
choose what to do in the future. First it was hard for me to communicate with the Baan
Rachawadee kids, but after going through these theories, I was able to communicate
better with them and understand more about them.