Many people value giving back as one of their highest priorities. We spent a huge portion of class dedicating our time to service learning or planning for it. Not only did we give back to a local agency, a Minnesota children’s hospital, we gave back to an international agency, Masinyusane. Giving back is important for everyone, especially college students. Service learning is a wonderful opportunity to learn various new things that can be used throughout life. These service experiences have opened my eyes to new ways I can volunteer within the community, giving me more opportunities to learn and grow from. As I learned very quickly, it was very difficult to coordinate a day that worked for all of us to volunteer together or as a group. It was no surprise that a group of 20 honors students, busy with sports, clubs, academic commitments, and other activities, had a hard time fitting anything extra into their days. Although that was tough, I don’t know what was harder: picking a day that worked for all of us or deciding on the type of service we would do. After a lot of dispute, we finally found something that worked for all of us: using our time in class to make tie blankets. Before we even began our service to the community and to Masinyusane, I learned a lot about compromise, planning, and being open minded. All of these are essential when it comes to working in a group. It is constantly drilled through our heads throughout life that these values are important, but it
Serving others is a down deep way of learning more about yourself and helping others to see past themselves. Our Business and Professional Communication class participated in several service projects, which were interesting and exciting to be involved with helping others. As I am studying the major courses of Early Childhood/Special Education, our group project with the “Big Brothers Big Sister” program was very memorable to me. It was wonderful to have fun and participate in various activities with the kids. The environment was caring due to everyone helping each other accomplish different tasks. It was a great feeling to be able to share our time, talents, and hearts with the kids.
In this regard, the most important part of service to me personally is giving back to the community. Volunteering is my way of providing service to others, it is not only effective, but it’s a good way to meet people, to learn, and to develop social skills. By helping or supporting others, I learned and used new skills in communicating with people and I have gained confidence in myself through different interactions. Providing aid to a family in need or helping out an elementary teacher is necessary, because as people it should be our natural tendencies to support one another, and bring aid when aid is due. For example, at Seven Lakes High school I created the Girls for Krause Club. It was given the name the Girls for Krause club after the Krause Center; a center in Katy that fosters girls who have been taken out of their homes due to sexual harassment, parental mistreatment or mental issues. My first visit to the Krause Center was with my youth group at church. I was so touched by all the girls at the center, and how open they were about their situation. I remember one of the girls telling me thank you, for treating her like “a regular person.” This interaction gave me the incentive to create the Krause club, because I wanted to allow other girls my age to interact with these girls and bring attention to a center that wasn’t well known in my community. Moreover, creating the Krause club has been rewarding and a way to showcase
In the assigned article entitled “Why Service Learning” by Bruce W. Speck, it provides great insight as to why we need to engage in service learning. This article focused on the questions that were like the reasoning behind service learning and how does it benefit the student. One definition in the article that stood out to me was service learning being defined as a pedagogy that fosters the development of skills and knowledge needed for participation in public life. This was prevalent because it allows the student to network with others outside of the community while giving back. Service learning was created to get away from the traditional way of learning while implementing a new learning system.
From day one my mom taught me that you will get more satisfaction giving to and helping others than you ever will by just doing things for yourself. I truly believe this. Volunteering to teach swimming lessons, organizing recycled items, and visiting the nursing home are all things I have been involved in and doing each of those I have learned more and more about how important service is. Just recently my classmates and I helped an elderly woman move all of her belongings out of her home and into the 4H building for an auction. The 4H building is on the fairgrounds where I have volunteered to clean up every spring for the last 3 years. Service is very important but also very rewarding. I look toward to doing more service projects in the
Service is bringing skills to an organization to help increase the good of the organization. Taking this class and participating in habitat for humanity made me grateful for whom I am and what I have. People do not realize how much they have unless they participate in a program like habitat for humanity. When our group went to go do our service, we ended up going downtown Indianapolis. We arrived there and the people that managed this site greeted us graciously. Then we went inside the house. The house was not that big and needed a lot of work done to it. They explained the background information on the house then, we were put straight to work. First we had to pick up a ton of shingles off the ground and throw them in the dumpster. Then we had to demolish one of the walls, which I thought was the best part. Everyone working there was so grateful and thought it was their time to give back to the community. Performing a service is a great way to witness firsthand how little some people have and it feels good to give back to a great
Experiences in service offer more opportunities to be taught than for your deeds to make an impact. These experiences have established and strengthened the fundamental moral principles that I live my life by. Throughout my education, they have been challenged and developed by academics, missions, and cultural experiences. Education can only carry one so far if it’s lessons are not implemented in service to this world. Through fostering a love of people and the world, I have found that learning sparks curiosity, curiosity kindles exploration, exploration illuminates discovery, and discovery ignites
As a service learning coordinator, I worked with faculty to implement service learning in the classroom by helping teachers develop and adapt current curriculum, lead and co-teach classroom lessons, educate and train faculty in the field of service-learning. In addition, my role was to serve as community liaison for the purpose of identifying sites for individual student’s service-learning placements and larger, multi-student project sites. I worked with local businesses and community leaders interested in exploring new ways to connect students with the community and bring the community into the public school
Community service opens students up to a wealth of networking opportunities, allowing them to build new relationships within their community as they contribute. Students can meet new people, work with new organizations, and strengthen their ties to the community.” (Writers, 2012 2016). An essential question I asked myself during my project was, how does myself and other students directly benefit from volunteer work?
Today I met with Teri to present my service learning project to her. I explained to her that I had made a brochure to present all the information about depression to her and that she could keep it. I felt nervous and anxious about presenting. In my brochure I included a brief definition of what depression is, predisposing factors, signs/symptoms, complications, treatments, medications, prognosis, ways to relieve stress/anxiety, and resources to gather more information on depression. As I was presenting my project I began to feel more relaxed and at ease. I tried to make my brochure as brief as possible, so that it was easy to understand, but include all the information needed as well. I feel that I did a pretty job of meeting this goal. I went
One Wednesday, September 18, the LAA high school had their first Service Day of the year. The Upper Campus was split up into two main groups that had the opportunity to do some very rewarding project in two separate areas. The first group was chosen to go and harvest onions on a local farm, while the other group got to stay close to home and do some exciting activities with the elementary and middle school students at Livingstone. A lot of students enjoy participating in service day where they can not only serve their community , but and it can be “good to get out of school for a while” said 9th grader Ashleigh Avery.
Service learning has given me the new opportunity experience helping others and including myself. I enjoy volunteer work because It’s a way of giving back to the community, but also I’ve become confident in public speaking. In addition, volunteer work is a great rewarding experience, and it 's also helped me develop social skills, by supporting others. The contribute can make a positive impact in many ways, Barack Obama said, “ the best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the work with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” There are element that could promise will succeed in life, however, I believe to learn and discover. I will continue volunteering work whenever I can, and I strongly encourage people to join volunteer work because the meaningful impact the lives of their and help thousands of the students confront in reading. It was a great pleasure for me to contribute to the organization to the development of the community through Political Science class volunteering work. The impact that was able to make our community better future.
According to Kathleen Flecky and Lynn Gitlow, service-learning is defined as, “learning that occurs in experiences, reflection, and civic engagement” (Flecky & Gitlow, 2011). In recent years more universities are implementing service learning into their curriculum. A key concept of service learning is civic responsibility. Civic responsibility can simply be defined as your responsibilities as a citizen. As will be shown later in this paper, service learning can have many benefits not only to a student, but also to the community members
The Society for Experiential Education defines service learning as, “any carefully monitored service experience in which a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what he or she is learning throughout the experience” (Staton 1). Service learning is a great opportunity to get extra learning experiences while also experiencing the community around the universities campus. “Service learning allows students to apply what they are learning from their instructors, peers, and readings to genuine tasks that occur outside the four walls of the classroom while simultaneously helping others” (Staton 1). Universities are using service learning to expand beyond the classroom and provide students with experiences that will
As a student, I have become more aware of the needs of my community. I have always worked at being active in my community to help those in need. Most of my volunteer work revolved around collecting donations and lending a helping hand at shelters. My volunteer work did not usually involve an academic base. I was not concerned with the ins and outs of why homelessness was a problem or the difficulty women faced finding assistance to escape abusive relationships. I just knew the shelters were always in need of donations and that is where I found myself helping most. In this paper, I will describe a personal experience I have had with service learning. I will also select one service learning idea from the National Student Nurses’ Association planning guideline that interests me and describe how this type of experience will enhance my nursing student experience.
I would implement a service learning project for my third grade class based on the learning and performance objectives centered on culture (TEK §113.14.3.14). To begin, I would facilitate a classroom discussion to create an anchor chart of the heroic deeds of individuals, including military and first responders provides for our community. At this point we would begin to collect names of military families and first responders in our class. Next, I would have students work in groups to research examples of heroic deeds of the military and first responders. Then, I would have students brainstorm and create a class list of ways we can support the military and first responders. If students have a family member