In the Service of What?

What I’ve learned from Service Learning

Service Learning, its an opportunity to make a difference on kids and gain knowledge from the experience. I’ve learned so much from the kids at the MET different backgrounds a new way to utilize your mind, not only do you have to work hard, you get the experience to learn if you actually love what you are doing in your internship. One student actually came up to me and asked me to help him out by sharing and liking his Facebook page for the internship he works for. Hope Actions, which is a non-profit organization which is “A social enterprise company, raises the collective consciousness of Rhode Islanders through stories and characters that inspire economic growth.” Now the students job (well his project) is to create a four part mini-series with the super hero (their mascot), Hope Man. He is helping the non-profit organization get noticed and gain appeal and return he is learning what he loves, to complete his exhibition. Even the teacher is involved where he actually is in the video for the students project as an actor.

 Hope Actions (Feel free to like the page)

Now the same goes for what we do in our Foundations of Education class, we are taking what we learn in class and take it and put it to work while helping the teacher teach and spreading our knowledge. We are utilizing this service to gain an experience while not getting paid in anything but knowledge and it is a rewarding feeling helping the kids. Its so relevant to what we learn in college that the MET has a wonderful system where they get introduced to Service Learning really early in ninth grade.

Similarly to the senior project where we were only required to do like twenty plus hours these kids spend two entire days a week doing it so at the end of the school year they could have well over 100 hours of experience a year figuring out if thats what they want to do the rest of their lives. Where as we were required to indulge in this way of learning for a little bit of the final year of school. I believe that this gives us a stronger connection to community and a large sense of appreciation for giving a helping hand and you gain more from the process.