"In The Service of What?" By: Kahne and Westheimer Reflection

While reading this piece I had a hard time staying focused. I had to read some pages even 3 or 4 times before I understood what I was reading. What I got from this article was the importance of doing some kind of service learning in a community. They give examples of two different age groups in school who do some kind of service learning. The older group, which are 12th graders they go out and get themselves their own services they can do for their community. While the 7th grade class comes up with something together on what they could possibly do for their community. It's mentioned that even though these are two different approaches to getting children out into the community they are both ways of getting children out of the classroom and into the community.

There were a couple of things that I found interesting that this article mentioned. The first thing I found interesting was when it was mentioned that students who talk about their service learning get more out of it. It made me realize why it's okay for our class to take almost the whole period to talk about our service learning. It helps us share the fun things we are learning, or even some of the more shocking things that might be happening. By hearing the stories of our peers it helps us find things we may relate to or even help our peers overcome something that is happening in their service learning.

The second thing that really stuck with me was the "thousands points of light" that George H. W. Bush came up with. So I went and did further research on it. I liked the idea of a whole organization that works with nonprofits to encourage people to volunteer in their communities. I found out that "Points of Light" has more than 250 affiliates in 30 countries, and has "partnerships with thousands of nonprofits and companies dedicated to volunteer service around the world. In 2012, Points of Light mobilized 4 million volunteers in 30 million hours of service worth $635 million" (wikipedia).

 I was able to relate to this article because growing up I was always doing some kind of community service. I was a girl scout in elementary school, and we would go sing in nursing homes. Then when I was older I volunteered at my brother's boy scout meetings. Then in high school I volunteer couched my youngest sisters softball team. Also in high school we had to do a senior project, and for mine I made care packages for children in foster care. I took time and did teddy bear drives and raised enough to get donate to DCYF.

Reading this article I could absolutely relate to it because of the volunteer work I have done throughout my whole school career. I think it's a great thing to be apart of and I think it's something that should be somewhat required for students. Not only does it help the student learn to be apart of the community but it helps the community become closer together.





This is Bush's inaguaral address in 1989 when he mentions the "points of light"

Comments

  1. I also had a hard time staying focused on this reading which is why I decided to use Colleen's blog post this week for extended comments.. I like that you went beyond the reading and did further research on things you thought were interesting.

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  2. Reading this article I struggled wit reading it, which is why I went onto to reading colleens blog to help me write and reflect on mine. Which ended up on me using her blog this week as my extended comments. I like your blog also because had lots of connections that could be made.

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  3. Nice way to relate to the article describing all the community service you've done as well.

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  4. Ok Kelsey, not related to this post, but I'm working on the chart and entering data into each box. Do you have any idea why one box works and another one wouldn't? When I hit enter for box C it expands it to almost the whole size of the page. UGH! LOL>>>

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  5. I also had trouble getting through this article but you made it seem easy to turn it into a blog so good job on that! I like that you included a video onto your blog

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  6. Nice job Kelsey. I also had trouble getting through this article but managed to eventually get it. I too have done many years of volunteering and community service and related well with the article.

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