Service Learning

Service learning is a great way to connect students in school with their own community. It is a great way for all students (or even grown adults) to grow and reflect in their education, while doing something meaningful for their community. By adding service learning projects in our curriculum, we can bridge the gap between school things and community things and create more unity. By doing these projects students may find something they are interested in and did not know it, like volunteer work. Service learning creates opportunities to collaborate or to work with those that are not in the classroom, building on their teamwork skills. This is a great way for students to also see issues within their community and ways small changes make big impacts. Hopeful this also gets them interested in helping out their own community. While there may be a lot of benefits for students, there are also benefits for teachers (and preservice teachers.) Such as learning about issues within their community and feeling the reward of making a change.

All through high school, I was very involved in an organization called FCCLA and we would do projects that connected us with our community. I really found these projects valuable, and learned many lessons from these projects, like being organized, being responsible, and ways to work together. One thing I will never forget from one of these projects was the impact in made on my heart. (We were collecting shoes for Soles for Souls, which gives shoes to those in other countries that need them. We did it halloween night and instead of trick or treating for candy we trick or treated for shoes. This amazing lady in our community, had not got the memo but jumped at the chance to help others. She literally took the shoes off her feet and gave them to us. If that doesn’t speak values, I don’t know what does.