Talking Points # 5

In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning~ Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

This article was hard for me to understand. I didn't really get anything out of it and it was very hard to blog about it. What I got out of the article was how the legislators view service learning.
"Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational experiences for students at all levels of schooling."
By this quote I believe that legislators like the idea of service learning. It is stating that service learning makes students active in the community while being academically challenged. I know that during my service learning I am getting an experience in a community that I am not familiar with, and at the same time being challenged by teaching/helping students in the classroom. I am using new skills and applying them to the classroom environment. To answer the question in the article "IN THE SERVICE OF WHAT?" I think that would be helping the community. For example with VIPS we are helping students better their education. In the classroom there maybe as many as 30 students and only 1 teacher so with service learning we provide the students with the same help that the teacher may provide. You are also servicing the educator as well. You provide them with aide in helping the students. In my high school students would do a type of service learning, they would sleep in cardboard boxes over night in the cold and have to heat their bodies by making barrel fires. This made them sense what it was like to be homeless.
"Major initiatives with links to graduation requirements are underway in Atlanta, New York, Maryland, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, and numerous other districts throughout the country."
I think that this is a great idea, it gets students out in the community lending a helping hand. Where I graduated from a minimum of 75 hours of community service over the 4 years was required. By having to complete these hours I got to meet many people, and by working in the schools it may help me in the future with a job. This would help students realize how some people live. They may live in poverty, or just incapable of doing various household chores. And by doing the hours in the classroom setting is what helped me decide to be a teacher.
I know that when I am doing my service learning it make me feel good when the students don't want to go back to class, they want to spend longer time with me. I love when they leave with smiles on their faces because I know that I have just changed their life in some way.