Michael Padron

Major: Bilingual Generalist EC-6

Service Learning project: 

The Civic Engagement scholar program was established to do exactly what the name states. Throughout the entirety of the semester, we, as scholars engaged in various events that helped the community in many aspects of what true civic engagement entails. We were presented with a project, “Trickle-Up” Service Learning P, in which we were to collaborate with professional faculty from our university. I had the honor and privilege of working with esteemed music professor Mr. Javier Balboa. Since Mr. Balboa teaches music at an elementary setting –musical director of Putegnat Elementary – and I being an Early Childhood education major, working at a public school was destined to be. We met one Saturday morning at Putegnat Elementary with 30 students from his class to accomplish one thing – beautify the school in our efforts to make it more Earth friendly.

It was quite a sight to see all the students walk in that morning with their brightly-colored flowers, decorative native plants, and shovels. We met in the music classroom and we all presented to each other brief research we had done on our specific plants. The reward that we as future teachers experienced was extraordinary. Working with such enthusiastic students made the tears on my jeans and dirt on my new sneakers all worthwhile. We not only planted seeds of beautiful marigold and sunflowers but we planted seeds of hope to our future leaders of this community. The children experienced something incomparable that morning and left with a sense of accomplishment, something we did not intend for them to leave with. Overall, my Tickle-Up project was a success and is definitely something to look forward to every semester.