In Service of What? Extended Comments

Extended Comments on Mary Abby's Blog

This week I decided to do an extended comments piece on Mary Abby's blog post "Kahne and Westheimer: Reflection" because I felt like I could really relate to it. The quote she pulled out of the Kahne and Westheimer was a great way to explain what we're doing each time we all go off and work with our sturdents:

…such service learning activities seek to promote students' self-esteem, to develop higher-order thinking skills, to make use of multiple abilities, and to provide authentic learning experiences.

The fact that we get to go into schools and document experiences with teaching children is really awesome. Before we can even student teach, we're given the opportunity to introduce ourselves to a bit of the day to day environment of the school. We're able to work with students who are underprivileged and open our minds to a wider array of teaching experiences.

Students in the article came back with whole new opinions on the areas where they worked in and became better people as a result of it. I think that's a big part of what we're doing with Service Learning. We're broadening our minds and opening them to new areas which is super important as educators. We need to be able to work with students and understand the areas where they grow up in versus the world we grew up in. Without growing as educators in that respect, how can we really relate to our students? 

Mary Abby also linked to an episode of the television show, "World's Strictest Parents." I remember watching this show all the time when I'd stay home from school or school was cancelled for a snow day. I watched the scene of Andrew working in the homeless shelter and agree with Mary Abby. It does kind of go hand in hand with what we're doing as volunteers. We're working with students with a different way of life and we're developing into better people. Everyday, we're going into our schools and finding ways to help students. 

I really felt like I could connect to Mary Abby's thoughts on her post and that's why I felt the need to expand off of her ideas. It's really cool to understand how important our service learning projects are not only to the kids we're helping, but also for us!