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review and comment on the below posts. Your comments on these postings should show your engaged efforts to facilitate both self-directed and collaborative learning. More specifically, your comments can include but not be limited to the following:
1- List and explain the reasons you agree or disagree with the colleague’s perspectives. It can be beneficial to invite colleagues to examine opposing viewpoints and to explore alternative perspectives.
2- Share your personal thoughts or personal experiences regarding the issues/topics under consideration.
3- Pose one or more open-ended questions to facilitate a more in-depth inquiry into the issues/topics under discussion.
I need 4 lines paragraph replies for these posts, each post one paragraph reply:
—- post one —-
If service learning were carried out how it was described in the article, I would be for service learning. When a service learning project serves the people and there is something to be learned from the experience then you know that it was a successful experience. I enjoyed reading The Butterfly Effect article and really thinking about the steps that they explained along the way. I really do feel that when children or people in general feel passion for a cause and are given the tools/resources to make a difference, they can be unstoppable.
My personal experiences with service learning place me against service learning. I have done numerous hours of service learning and none of my experiences ended up being what they should have been. The assignments were unstructured and some of them were not relevant to the classes I was taking. The university just seemed to place us anywhere they could because their course required service learning hours. For one class I was placed at a daycare and the teacher had me spend a good amount of my time there cutting paper towels in half because the teacher said the kids didn’t need a whole paper towel to dry their hands with and she had me wash out bins from different activity centers. I was offended that the daycare teacher thought that I was there to do her busy work. Obviously, I didn’t learn much other than what not to do if I ever have someone doing service learning in my classroom. My intention is not to be disrespectful but I feel that most of my service learning experiences were a huge waste of my time. My time as well as the time of my peers would have been better spent doing some community project that actually meant something.
—– post two —–
There’s not shortage of arguments to support the use of service learning in the classroom. There is of the course the end result that generally community members will benefit from a local class attempting to fix a problem. However, as this is a class on educational philosophy, the focus should probably be on how the experience helps the students themselves. The article by Ponder and Lewis-Ferrell illustrates many of these advantages. For example, students will learn to understand the definition of citizenship and, perhaps more importantly, learn that they are capable of a making a significant difference in the world. This sets students up for a future of being good and productive citizens. Furthermore, in the process, students will learn to be excited to come to school and attendance will improve. If done correctly, service learning can also contribute to the curriculum in many, if not all subjects. In the recycling program example included in the article, the authors gave very valid arguments to explain how the process helped students with language arts, social studies, science, mathematics, and technology skills. I also can appreciate the scenarios students were put in that echoed many situations they may end up participating in as adults. Examples may include calling or writing local businesses, or giving presentations to large audiences about their proposals. By integrating a service-learning program, students are given the opportunity to genuinely participate in these “real world” scenarios. These types of opportunities are not something they would otherwise be exposed to in a traditional classroom.
I do not believe that educators should abandon service-learning projects because they contradict existentialism. This is likely because I personally don’t consider myself to be an existentialist educator. However, if a student truly felt that they did not want to be part of the experience, I suppose the teacher could design an alternate assignment, so as not to make it mandatory.
As a teacher, the main argument I would have against using service learning is the time constraints. I struggle each year to make sure I am hitting all of the content standards I am assigned while working around fire drills, assemblies, snow days, long weekends. Although I think students would benefit greatly from a service learning project I think it would be extremely difficult to incorporate one into my class without sacrificing content material that I am mandated to teach by the state.
———- post three ———-
After reading “The Butterfly Effect: The Impact of Citizenship Education,” I had a new found understanding for what service learning is truly about. Prior to reading this article, my only ever experience of service learning was as an undergraduate when I was required to complete 10 service learning hours for one of my classes. My service learning experience was nothing like that of the classroom in the article. My experience consisted of me going to a school for an hour a week for 10 weeks to listen and help students read. There was no real connection to civic engagement or social betterment other than the fact that I was a member of a community coming in to that school. With this experience that I have in relation to service learning, I would not recommend that the service continue. I do not think that what I was required to do served the purpose of service learning at all. There should be guidelines that must be met to determine if the proper service learning is being met. Service learning should not be something that you are just told to do; it should be based on student interest and involvement and actually have to do with civic engagement. Referring back to the article, if I had that classroom’s type of experience with my service learning, I would be all for promoting service learning in all schools. I liked the way that the teacher challenged her students to research and pick a current issue in their community which promoted student interest right at the start of the learning project. I also liked how it was the students who seemed to run the show and it was not teacher-directed, yet the students still learned so much. Those students in that particular class learned more about their community, government, and citizenship all the while helping a good cause, than most do in a class based on citizenship. Being active in a service learning project is a great way to get students involved in their community and understand how our society works. This is the way that service learning should be implemented in the classroom. Therefore, my stance on service learning is that, if done right, it should be incorporated into our K-12 education.
