It is beneficial for the students and the schools to continue to participate in events or continue to work with sites or organization that have been successful in the past. Those are relationships worth maintaining as you can develop more opportunities for learning and work with eachother to enhance the program.
I agree. Not every opportunity will fit every student. It's important to understand the student's learning needs before helping them choose an appropriate site.
A major consideration is whether or not a site has needs that students could meet based on skills they have been learning. Be willing to look beyond the surface needs of a site. I do a lot of volunteer work with a no-kill dog shelter. Most people think about walking dogs, grooming, and cleaning kennels. However, fundraising efforts can utilize skills of business students in marketing--among many other areas. IT students could assist with websites, creating databases or spreadsheets. Office technology students could design brochures and fliers. Sites that can utilize skills in multiple courses or majors may make for a more successful long-term partnership.
I would also want to know more about the reputation of an organization before getting students involved in a project. Is this a group that has a solid reputation in the community or have there been problems associated with the group?
Some of the criteria should include relevance to program and curriculum; ability for the community to benefit; a project that is realistic and achievable with clear start and end dates for the student
The difference between service learning and community service has been helpful to learn about.
Thanks,
Diane
I agree, developing and maintaining relationships creates potential opportunities to enhance the learning program for the student and intstructor
Service learning sites should be relevant to what the student is learning. If the student is in culinary school, the service site should have food preparation, ordering, or service.
The site should be approved by the school and/or state/fed/local government. We wouldn't want students learning from an illegal or unapproved source.
Finally, the site should be willing to make sure that the student is actually gaining valuable experience. The above criteria can help with this, but the management of the site should also take some ownership.
In choosing a site for culinary students there are many opportunities for learning sites. The site should be chosen through investigation or through some kind of approval process but there are plenty of opportunities for students to gain knowledge and experience through these kind of service programs. For example, every season we take a group of students to work on a non-profit farm that provides tours and learning opportunities for children as well as providing food for needy families on a weekly basis. The students get to learn about sustainable agriculture while helping the farm by working in the fields, planting, clearing, and caring for the animals. This provides the perfect opportunity for both service to the community and knowledge of subjects within the culinary industry.
A learning site should give students a realistic insight of the industry to prepare them for what is about to come.
It is important that the opportunity is relevant to the student. It should be something that they are interested in and that they can apply to what they are studying. It should be experience that they can take with them.
One criteria is to make sure that the site is within the community. Students should have easy access to the site. Another criteria is proper equipment. Does the site have the right tools to provide the service? For example, a culinary student would need a working stove to saute.
For our massage program, in the past, we have gone to nursing homes and the army base. Over the years, attendance has started to decline. In our particular circumstance, my suggestion would be to hold students accountable for their commitment, as well as choosing new places to do their services. Find something a little more exciting. while these other places are not unimportant, perhaps a change might inspire more ambition to be apart of these community services.
This is an area where program advisory boards can be extremely useful. Our advisory boards understand the issues and needs within our communities. They can specifically target agencies and services that can benefit from the school's resources (knowledge and people-power). One of our senior citizen centers was short on activity aides, resulting in a number of our students volunteering at the site. Parenthetically, a number of students were also enrolled in our Gerontology course, thus providing a dual benefit opportunity.
Must be related to schools goals.
Should be achievable by participants
Should have a desired outcome from the service performed.
I agree with the topics discussed in this lesson as I am a clinical instructor and our students get oppurtunity of service learning by practising what they learned inschool settung on sims and they get to feel real life situations and there feedback tells us that thay start as timid and scared students and finish as confident students with trust and confidence of helping and making difference in people's life.This is great.
