Community Service Learning Placement

The experience I encountered during the service learning project was great. Throughout the weeks allocated for the service learning project, I tutored grade two and three pupils from three different schools under two agencies. The names of the agencies are Lion Catcher and MLK Community Center. This project gave me the opportunity to work with little kids for a long time. This provided me with the privilege to help and work with people who are enthusiastic about learning. Through my colleagues and me, we were able to achieve the goal of the service learning project. One of the goals is to work with minorities who needs help. This goal does not benefit our clients only but us also, it helped us organize and improve the way we think about supporting our client and managed good clinical judgment.

It is also a “boundary spanning” activity in that it requires active involvement from people both within and outside of the classroom context, often resulting in participant contributors who represent a variety of generations, ethnicities, social groups, and experience levels (Billig and Furco, 2002, p.vii). Service-learning is designed to reduce the boundaries between an institutional campus environment and the community around it. It is designed to connect learning to real experience through service and reflection (Ball and Schilling, 2006; Becker, 2000). As a baseline to facilitate this development, service-learning is distinct from other types of community service and civic engagement experiences in that the service-learning experience must not only have a service and reflective component but also be clearly tied to the curriculum through learning objectives and theoretical underpinnings (Bloomquist, 2015; Pritchard, 2001). As Barbara Holland, former Director of the U.S. National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, shared, “Service-learning is all in the hyphen. It is the enrichment of specific learning goals through structured community service opportunities that respond to community-identified needs and opportunities.” (Kenworthy-U’Ren, Taylor, and Petri, 2006: 121).

My experience has been consistent with what we learned in class. This project brought light to the horrifying abuse that large number of children go through at a young age and this service learning project allowed me to better understand their suffering and their need for assistance. My service learning project made the course material relevant, because I could now better understand the necessity to provide support and comfort to children at a young age.

Service Learning is learning through experience to gain sociological observation, concepts, and theories so I decide to do my service learning hours in one of the two high schools that is part of the Oceanside Unified School District. The name of the school is called El Camino High School. El Camino High School is a high school that is located at 400 Rancho Del Oro Drive in Oceanside, California. It has over 3,000 students currently attending. The school’s mascot is the “Wildcat” and their colors are gold and red. El Camino High School is a public school that is part of a system of free public education that is maintained at a public expense for the education of students who are part of that community or district. El Camino High School is a place is a public school where students are coming out of middle school and are

I participated in service learning at Fraser school in Richfield. Starting in September I helped out in a toddler age classroom every Thursday. Fraser school is a preschool setting for infants and toddlers. Besides getting the children kindergarten ready and offering a somewhat typical day of daycare/school, Fraser offers occupational, physical, and speech therapy. Some of the children have disabilities and some do not, Fraser is not discriminatory and they provide care for anyone. Some of the things I did in the classroom were prepare snack and lunch for the children, play games, participate in art projects, music, and reading, and play games with the children. The two teachers really appreciated my help, as I was provided an extra hand for them while they prepared daily activities. Playtime was usually hectic for the group and it needed to be closely monitored. I was also able to keep the children safe and keep a close eye on the total of twelve toddlers during playtime. My experiences at Fraser helped me understand many topics we talked about in our Intro to Sociology class. A few topics that stood out to me the most were the idea of social integration and many of the functions of the education system, the three stages in the development of self, institutional discrimination with minority and group divisions.

I did not know what service-learning was until I read the articles assigned for class. The articles along with going to the Harpers Ferry Job Corps orientation really showed me what it was all about. The reading and the class presentation have challenged my first thoughts by giving me a better understanding of what service learning is. Service-learning goes a couple of miles further than community service. Service-learning allows students to help the community, as well as learn about something. For example, my Education class is going to be tutoring students at Job Corps. Our class is providing the Harpers Ferry community a free service of tutoring to those who need it while hopefully my peers and I will gain a solid understanding of what it would be like to teach one-on-one. Service-learning has three main components: community service, instruction, and reflection. Those components work well together and make service-learning seem like the perfect answer to helping education grow into a more progressive way. However, students need to have a high responsibility, they have to take the initiative, as well as make choices. If students do not do that, the success of service-learning will be lacking.

“Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities” (Learn and Serve America National Service-Learning Clearinghouse). This assignment gave students the opportunity to go outside of their comfort zone, which is typically the classroom and see what the “real world” is like. As Gandhi would say “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others” (Gandhi). I believe that this project really allowed us to appreciate what we have because many people are not as fortunate. During this service learning project I had certain expectations going into the project, but in the end, my results were not exactly as I expected.

I will be doing my service learning placement at Mesa Middle School here in Las Cruces. I will be working with the two social workers at Mesa, Lorraine Guillen and Robert Reyna. At Mesa Middle School they offer a variety of services for their students. They provide crisis intervention, they work with the parents to help facilitate support in their children’s school, they develop intervention strategies to help increase the academic success of their children, and they assist the parents in accessing programs available to students with special needs. They assist the children in understanding and accepting self and others, and finally, they help the children with any physical or emotional needs that can possibly be interfering with their academic success. I plan to use many of the teachings from the first four chapters to help me be effective in helping offer these services to the students. One of these skills is how to work with angry, resistant, or aggressive clients.

Some social problem and issues that I may encounter in this service learning is lower income children are not getting enough funding for their school; therefore, there are not enough teachers or staff to teach the kids. Classroom may be overcrowded which can lead to the lack of affection teachers have for their students. For example, teachers are too busy taking care of a big group of student that they don’t have time to pay attention to each student individually. As an elementary education major, I’m planning to volunteer at the Boys and Girls club because this club is a nonprofit club. They are

Upon starting my undergraduate career at Saint Louis University, I immediately began serving as a volunteer tutor at Sherman Elementary School in St. Louis. I had been involved in community service for as long as I could remember, but I had never felt that I was not accomplishing the task that I set out to do. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me at Sherman Elementary. While I was tasked with bringing lagging students back up to the pace of the class, I most certainly failed at achieving this goal. It seemed that I was working, week after week, with the same students on the same problems. In hindsight, I think that my failure to build a strong rapport with my students was the primary problem. Since my background rests in a rural town

The service learning work I decided to do was volunteer at Cane Creek Elementary school to help with their after school programs. I ended up volunteering at this program for thirty plus hours during my fall semester. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the school and the students. In this program, I assisted other teachers with snack time, students’ homework, and recess. When I first started volunteering, I was put into the third to fourth grade class. In the beginning, I was hesitant on how to deal with the students and how everything worked during this after school program. However, after a few times of volunteering at this school, I was able to learn exactly where to go and what to do.

In order for service learning projects to be successful it is important to establish partnerships with families, parents, and community organizations. PBL projects must encourage and even require students to be engaged in hands on activities or services that meet the needs of community. Service learning and PBL projects and activities cannot be completed through lectures but must actively engage students. By incorporating both of these methods of teaching and learning students are able to learn from the experience as well as meet project requirements. Through using these instructional strategies teachers are able to data about the students during observations, conferences, and informal assessments. These informal assessments allow the teacher to assess where students are and what they have learned, while also allowing the student to gain more knowledge about the topic. It is important that PBL and

Service learning includes enhanced opportunities for learning and exploring the educational field. Also, developing a personality, social skills and gain hands-on learning experience about the environment of English Language Learner and their needs. From increasing my knowledge in academia and materials, I learned more about communities and the people in our society. From service learning, I learned to develop critical thinking and problem-solving while tutoring a student in math, reading, writing, and vocabulary. It was my responsibilities to make sure the student understands the materials. Furthermore, I was able to enhance my skills, especially in areas of communication, collaboration and diversify with cultures and communities. In service-learning, I got the opportunities to test my skills, interest, and values in a potential career path,

Volunteering has been something that I truly have enjoyed doing in the past few years. I began volunteering when I was in highschool, mostly because we had to meet a certain amount of community service hours in order to be able to graduate. In highschool I was also involved in many clubs and sports which required for us to do fundraisers and other volunteer work. For example,I was a member of the National Honor Society where we did a lot of volunteer work in our community. I have been able to volunteer at many different places such as schools, festivals, sports tournaments, and at churches. Thanks to all of this, I was able to graduate high school with over 100 volunteer service hours.

For my service learning, I was assigned to work for America Learns at an elementary school in Roxbury. America Learns works with students from kindergarten to third grade, the program is structured to offer both tutoring and an additional activity each session. The activity is intended to teach the children critical thinking skills, diversity and cultural awareness, and experiential learning, as well as help to improve basic reading skills. Twice a week each tutor works with a student through the entire program, both homework help, and the activity. The goal is that throughout the weeks of the program the tutor and student will build a relationship that benefits both parties involved.