Talking Points #5

1. “In addition to helping those they serve, 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 – all goals of current curriculum reform efforts.” The theory of a service learning project is not simply to give a service to a community, but to develop new societal skills. Service learning projects, such as those we are doing in class, provide a gateway that gives us insight to educator experiences. We not only help the students that we are working with, but we develop the most rudimentary skills that we will need when teacher, i.e. interacting with children.

2. “By finding and engaging in community service activities, Mr. Johnson explained, students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using the community as a classroom.” When students enter the community, and work with those less fortunate, then the veil draped over white privilege may be lifted, and those students may realized how unequal many of our current societal norms are.

3. “[Ernest Boyer] endeavored to create ‘a new Carnegie unit,’ the requirement that all students take part in volunteer activities in either their school or community as a condition for graduation from high school.” I agree with this school requirement. I believe that students need to have experience in the ‘real world’ before they leave school. Have students work with other people, who are not privileged, like the students may be. Students need to be able to work with people (i.e. the homeless, the poor, and the disenfranchised) to advance society in the world that we live in.

It seems as if our class is comprised of a mix of the two methodologies that are discussed in the reading. We are all working in the same field, working with students, but we all work individually, within our own schools. I’ll take the time now to reflect on how we have progressed in class. We have discussed white power, and privilege, and the differences among different races, and social structure. Now, after reading this, it seems as if it is our responsibility to go into our own classrooms, as part of our own service learning projects, and project what we have learned to our students. We need to observe white privilege, and silenced dialogues, and then work to correct it.