In the Service of What?
Ali Kleinebreil
Reflection
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article and agreed with a lot of the points that it made about service learning. I absolutely love service learning and I think that when it is used correctly it is a great tool to both enhance learning and help the community. I think that this article poses an interesting question about what service learning should be. I personally feel like service learning should be anything that both relates to your education and benefits your community in someway.
I think that what we do in this class is an awesome example of what service learning should be. Our service learning relates perfectly to what we do in class and gives us hands on experience in the field we are pursuing. This article made me think a lot about this class and how it is structured in a way that does benefit both us and our education and students in surrounding public schools. The schools we go to may not be perfect and sometimes do need extra help so us being there does benefit them in the same way it contributes to our education. By going out and getting field experience we are given the opportunity to gain real knowledge and solve small everyday problems in classrooms.
The second paragraph on the sixth page discusses how service learning benefits those volunteerings' education and I whole heartedly agree. Even if we get put in classrooms that need more help or more control, we are still learning. We have the opportunity to see what we want in our future classrooms. We can see firsthand what works and what doesn't and how it may not always be the same for every kid. I think its also a mutually beneficial relationship because some schools need more help and just having us in the classroom one day a week benefits the students. Having that extra body is one more person that can walk around and offer assistance to the students that may not be struggling the most, but can still use that extra help.
I definitely agree that one extra volunteer matters. I can only read to a couple students at a time so it is good to know when I spend time helping one child there is someone else helping another.
ReplyDeleteI was one of those students that needed the extra help. I think extra help would be helpful in schools, because sometimes one teacher is no enough.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the service learning we are doing now is multi-beneficial from field experience to seeing how we can improve. I have seen a lot of students who have come out of there shell a little bit throughout my visits and feel that the volunteers coming in weekly has helped.
ReplyDeleteI love your valid points about the importance of service learning. You were right when you said its a both-ways kind of learning experience.
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