I posted 100 flyers throughout the campus about my teaching event in various academic buildings, residence halls, and bathrooms to capture people’s attention. At the bottom of each flyer was information about a teaching event to learn about homelessness.

My teaching event was a success. We met in the Women’s Center . A total of twelve people who attended. Ten of the twelve people who came were my friends. Two of the twelve people were students who I had never met before. I felt happy, excited, and to some degree surprised that two girls who I did not know came. I met my goal of having 10-20 people attend.

The event lasted a little over an hour, which was my goal. I began the event as planned, sharing a little about myself and the course. I then went around the room and asked people what they hoped to learn from the event. I took notes to ensure that I would address their questions. Some questions by students included the homeless population demographics, causes, what groups have more help, information about homeless veterans, homeless youth, and solutions.

I then started to address their questions with using both experience from my internships and information from the Hunger and Homelessness course. I would also check back in with my audience periodically asking them if they had more questions or needed clarification.

I also left sometime at the end for students to come up and ask more questions one-on-one. I had some students ask about volunteering and I handed them a handout of the local agencies provided by the class website.

I chose to teach topics that students were interested in. I wanted the student audience to take initiative for their learning. I wanted them to be interested in the event and I wanted it to be as informative as possible that is why I based my event off of the student generated questions.

Sometimes you do not know who will be affected by what you do. I had one person approach me for assistance because her friend is going through domestic violence. In that moment I felt that my teaching project had been a success in a way that I had not imagined. I felt to some degree honored that she felt like she could talk to me. I shared my knowledge from the experiences that I had when I worked at the domestic violence shelter. I also gave her a brochure about resources for domestic violence victims in Redlands.

I suppose this is a lesson in teaching because you might think that you are going in one direction; yet you might have a more meaningful experience than expected. When you offer something by teaching it can go in an unexpected direction; in a way that was better than imagined.