Voices:
They Don't Pay You To Do That?
By Carrie Kiskila

This summer, I had the chance to go home to California and visit friends and relatives I had not seen in a while. As usual, they all asked, "So what are you going to do when you return to Chicago?" When I explained what I do as a Lasallian Volunteer teaching sixth grade at San Miguel School, their response was, "And they don't pay you to do that?"

Those who know that this is now my third year of teaching sixth grade at San Miguel gave me a sideways glance and asked, "You mean you're still doing that volunteer thing? We thought that was only for one year. Then, didn't you say at the end of that year that you were only going to do it for one more year?"

"Yes," I answered. "But really, this is my last year." I was unable to convince them.

I don't quite know how to explain what being a Lasallian Volunteer has meant to me, or why it has turned into a three-year commitment. I know the statements in the Lasallian Volunteer brochure are true: meaningful work experience, spiritual development, making good friends. But I also know that those phrases fall short of describing the real experience.

Here is what it's really like:

• In the first five minutes of my first day in class, I realized that the lesson plan I'd spent three hours preparing would not work at all.
• For the next 30 days, I had the same experience.
• Unexpectedly, I found out that the Brothers can be really goofy and that some of them are really good dancers.
• I learned to express myself in community meetings because, God knows, no one else would do it for me.
• Watching another person grow and triumph taught me how to grow and triumph with them.
• I came to know a student who on the first day gave me an unwelcome stare, then a few months later came to me crying. He came to me because I had shown him he could trust me.
• My mom brags about what I do.
• A seventh grader told me he read the book I picked out for him in two days. Then he told me it was the first book he had ever completed. Then he asked me when we could pick out another book.
• I now live in the kind of neighborhood that previously I had only seen in the news.
• I started this Lasallian experience knowing very little about the teachings of Saint John Baptist de La Salle. Now I want to be a part of the Lasallian experience for many years to come.

I've told my friends back home that as I start my third year, I feel like the grandmother of Lasallian Volunteers, which of course I am not. That would be Karin McClelland (SMC, Class of 1990), current Director of the Lasallian Volunteers.

Carrie Kiskila is a graduate of Saint Mary's College of California. This is her third year at San Miguel School in Chicago.