Students learn life skills through volunteering

By Zoe Vikstrom,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

Campus clubs designed to track volunteer work have always been popular among DHS students. Juniors Cassie Archer and Penny Zheng have managed to make their volunteer work meaningful, while picking up a few life skills along the way.

This summer, Archer and Zheng spent hours devoted to helping children. Zhengworked as a camp counselor, and Archer in a nursery.

Zheng volunteered at the UC Davis Aggie B Camp, an outdoor camp run by UC Davis designed for kids between the ages of seven and eight. Her duties included supervising the kids, playing and organizing camp games, and watching over campers when they took the occasional trip to the UCD Rec Pool.

“I learned how to interact with a wide variety of kids with different personalities and needs,” Zheng said.

Zheng believes that working at the camp was not only helpful to the community, but also benefited herself.

“Most importantly, I learned how to think on the spot. For example, if a problem came up, or a kid had a request that I didn’t know how to respond to, I had to come up with a solution or answer quickly,” Zheng said.

She was able to use her volunteer hours for the California Scholarship Federation club.
Archer volunteers with a much younger group of kids. She works at the University Covenant
Church in a nursery with children ranging from three months to two years.

She has volunteered at the church for almost four years, originally starting in the preschool next to the nursery. She works every third Sunday for the 11 a.m. service.

“I usually work from 11 to 12, and [I] help out parents who want to attend church without the company of a screaming baby,” Archer said. “By working in the nursery I have definitely learned to become more patient, because if a baby is crying, getting angry at him or her isn’t going to help.”

Archer and Zheng agree that the best part of working with kids is forming friendships with them.

“My favorite part of working was playing that big sister-type role,” Zheng said.
“It is just really special when you find that one toy that they really like to play with, or that one thing to do to calm them down,” Archer said.

While Penny and Archer were spending their time with kids, Penny’s sister–junior Annie Zheng–was engaging with adults.

During the month of August, Annie spent time volunteering in her dad’s lab at UCD, studying material science and engineering.

“I got to help him prepare samples of materials to investigate and then watch him alter the material’s properties,” Annie said.