In The Service Of What?

-Forgot to post this
The article for this week was "In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning" but Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

QUOTES
"...educators should foster a volunteer ethic and encourage youths to give something back to their school or community..."
This quote is encouraging students to learn ways to help out the community and improve their volunteering beliefs. One teacher named Mr. Johnson has many of his teaching ethics incorporated into this article. He "makes 'community service... a vital part of the government course [because] part of citizenship is the practice of helping others in the community'". From a personal viewpoint, I highly agree with Mr. Johnson's way of teaching, and putting students into the real world, help them in understanding the class material in a better way because their using first hand experience.


"The experiential and interpersonal component of service learning activities can achieve the first crucial step towards diminishing the sense of 'otherness' that ofter separates students..."
FOR EXAMPLE: Our service learning projects definitely changed my personal stereotypical beliefs of Providence schools. Like the students from Mr. Johnson's class, I "imagined 'horrifying children running around on a dirty campus'" but, when I got there, the school wasn't a mess, there weren't children running all over the place, they were well behaved and fun to be around. And, to a point, the school reminded me of my own Elementary school! "'Everyone at the school had good manners, and I think more highly of [the neighborhood] now."


"We do not volunteer 'to make a statement' or to use the people we work with to protest something. We try to see the homeless man, the hungry child, and the dying women as the people they are, not the means to some political end."
I like this quote and I feel this same way. You need to see these people as PEOPLE and not just what they are portrayed as from the outside. Just like, when you see a LGBT student, you shouldn't look at them and see them as a gay person. You should look at them and see them as a person, just like you. Someone that has a personality, likes, dislikes, feelings and their own issues and problems. We don't volunteer to be able to use these people as examples. When we volunteer we look at these people and see them as other people just like us!


I was looking for something to post to my blog for this article and I saw this picture...

I  thought it was very interesting. It is saying that we only remember a small amount of the things that we say hear and read. But we remember 90% of the things that we say and do and those things include actually going out into the world and experiencing life as a learning experience. its definitely a positive and rewarding experience to be out in the real world and participating in service learning projects, you actually learn/see real life situations.