How To Write A Community Response Paper

Over the past three months, I have learned about the many aspects of a community through both classroom education and field experience. In the classroom atmosphere, I was first introduced to the greater meaning of community through various activities and assignments. Once we had been well introduced to the concept of community, we were released into the “real-world” where we were assigned the task of engaging in the professional field in a community. In this response paper, I disclose the experience and insight I gained through my field placement and class seminar. Reflecting back to one of the beginning classes, we were assigned with the task of creating a project that represented who we are and those who we believe to be major players

These assignments included reading the books Hand to Mouth: Living in a Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado and Tuesday’s with Morrie by Mitch Albom, along with a few additional articles. While constructing the response papers to the two assigned books, I began to understand that each book was a story representing a role that each of the authors had in their unique communities. These two books also presented the reader with the impact community had on the authors. For Linda Tirado, community appeared to have allowed her to fall through the cracks, no matter what role she embodied in her community. While Mitch Albom discovered that he had more of a responsibility to those in his community than what he had originally imagined. The articles also provided stories about the roles others played in their communities and their thoughts about

As well as the purpose that the members have in the community. We each have a place in our community or communities, but it all depends on what we choose to do with our community that dictates how our community gives back to us. After completing the majority of the class seminar, it was time to spend eighty or more hours in a community observing and interacting with other community members. As a Criminal Justice major, I chose a job placement at the Chittenden State’s Attorney’s Office on Cherry Street in Burlington Vermont. In this office, I would be assigned multiple tasks such as filing, reviewing, observing, and organizing criminal cases. While in the State Attorney’s Office, I spent a fair amount of time filing cases alphabetically, pulling files in preparation for court, scanning closed felony cases into the computer system, preparing boxes of closed felony cases for scanning by pulling staples and clips, and performing miscellaneous tasks around the office. The majority of my time was spent in court observing arraignments, status conferences, merits hearings, motions, and trials. I also had the honor of observing Emmet Helrich, the lead advocate of the RICC (Rapid Intervention Community Court)