Do you think it’s a burden or is it helpful? My opinion of this topic is I agree with the community service that we have to do as an honor student. In high school, anyone on National Honor Society had to do at least twenty hours of community service a year. It not only makes you feel good as a citizen, but it’s helpful to the community. One thing, I do wish that was different was the fact that you do it every week for two hours. I wish you could do it once a month for eight hours. As a college student, I have already seen how much work we have to do and it would be so easier to just do it once a month. It would also be less stressful to worry about getting transportation every week. But, on a brighter note, where to volunteer?
Do you want to volunteer with the elderly, kids or the homeless?
For the elderly, we can volunteer at Marland Place. We would help the elderly with everyday activities. Their mission statement is “Everything we do at Atria is focused on helping our residents live life to the fullest. We strive to provide the highest quality services and accommodations; a choice of activities to nurture the body, mind and spirit; delicious, nourishing meals; and a true extended family of dedicated friends and caregivers.”
If you want to work with kids, you might consider volunteering at Bellesini Academy in Lawrence. Bellesini Academy is a boy’s Catholic Middle school in collaboration with Merrimack College. This school is for families that are in financial hardship. Here you would help teachers during the school day.
For the homeless, you can work at the Emmaus House in Haverhill. This house is a non-profit organization, open since 1985. They provide affordable housing to people in need.
I personally want to volunteer with children. To see their smiles when they learn to play baseball or get a math problem right, would make my day. Some people many think this is a burden, but I am very excited to see how I can make a difference. What do you think? Where do you want to volunteer?
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Personally, I agree with Skeelee. Service learning is a wondeful thing. However, I also believe that one has to have a certain attitude in order to fully embrace the experience. If honors students approach this as a "check mark on their list", nothing is going to be learned. All it's going to be is some honors requirement. However, if a student approaches this with an open mind, then a plethora of wonderful things can happen. I recall volunteering for the local science center as a camp counseler. It was great. I taught kids, learned working skills, and made new friendships. As cliche as it sounds, it really happened and it's all because I took a chance and volunteered.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, although I support civil service 100%, I have one criticism. As honors students we are a community. I feel that civil service will be even more effective if we plan an event in which we all volunteer together. After all, team building usually helps build enthusiasm which I think would help aid any cause that we tackle. Together we can do a lot!
I agree with some points of both of these postings. Skeelee, I agree that Service Learning is a lot of work on top of all of the other work that we receive daily. However, I also agree with Helena that it is worth it. We may look at it at first as a burden, and feel overwhelmed, but in the end I expect to get a lot out of it. I have heard how wonderful of an experience it has been for so many students at Merrimack, so I am curious and anxious to get in there myself. I am also excited to start working with children that really need people in their lives. We should be fortunate that we get to have this experience, and not look at it as Helena said, "another check in the box." Students need to start opening their eyes to bigger things than their notebook and campus.
ReplyDeleteI agree that service learning is a great oppurtunity and will make us all better individuals. We should not worry about whether or not we can fit it into our schedules because we need to be 100% focused on the children or the elderly whom we are helping. This will also be an advantage when we graduate and enter the workforce because we will all have experience dealing with people in a community. This holds true especially if your chosen career path is to be an educator, a social worker, or anyone else dealing with the young or the old at all times of the day. Service learning will make us more patient, understanding, and cultured. I personally would like to help the diasbled because I feel I would get the most satisfaction in helping them with everyday activities. Overall, service learning will be eye opening and I am extremely excited to begin working.
ReplyDeleteI’m hoping to volunteer at Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence Ma. My goal is to get a spot in the Emergency Room department and help the nurses and doctors with their daily routines. Since I’m a health science major, this experience would be really beneficial for me. I like working with the elderly, but working with children is always fun! I’ve also found that when working in hospitals (I’ve done this before), you can meet some very interesting characters! But the main goal, no matter who you see, is to treat your patient! The one thing I really don’t want to do is simply carry food trays around! I can do more than that!!!
ReplyDeleteSKeele, I agree and disagree with what you're saying. Yes, service learning is a great experience. Yes, it is supposed to help us learn. And yes, it is supposed to work to the advantage of the student. But what if this student does not wish to do service learning? Why must it be required of the course? I think service learning is a great thing, but what if I already feel like this is not going to help me? I know I'm sounding a little selfish, but aren't we also supposed to think about ourselves as well as others? I think that service learning should be made optional and in place of service learning there should be a separate assignment. I believe that this solution will suffice both the students who wish to do service learning and those who don't.
ReplyDeleteI would like to volunteer at Marland Place. I enjoy working with the elderly because it brightens my day to see them smile. I enjoy the warmth I get when I listen to their stories about days gone by. Back in my home town I used to volunteer at Hospice a place where people who are about to die stay until their death. While there, I would entertain many old men and women and they, in return, would entertain me. I think service learning is a good thing if you want to learn from it. I will enjoy it because I learn from their stories and get warmth out of what I do. Many people do service learning to boost their resumes so they will get a job or into a college. Service learning should be more than that. It should come from the heart and you should enjoy and learn from every moment.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Service learning is a great opportunity and I personally feel privileged to be part of a program that feels so enthusiastically about it. They way our teachers have encouraged us to be excited about the Steven’s Service learning rather than feel burdened by it is inspirational. I feel that giving back to communities that are different from ours is important, and as honors students we should be exposed to people who do not have it as easy as we do. Although it may seem like a burden at first, upon actually spending time at the place we pick, all negative attitudes will change. During high school I had to complete a requirement of 24 hours of community service to graduate and it flew by. I ended up doing more than was asked of me simply because I enjoyed spending my time helping people. I felt so good after and it was a feeling I just couldn’t find anywhere else. I’m sure everyone will feel this way. I am thinking about serving at Horizons for Youth in Andover. I have heard good things about the program and the people in charge. From what I understand the children who go to this program do not have a solid home to go to after school and concentrate on their homework. While there I will provide the kids with a stable environment that they can focus in and help them with their homework. So far this seems like the best program for me.
ReplyDeleteI am personally very excited for the service learning program and the experiences we will be exposed to. I think getting off campus and going into places we would not normally go will have positive effects on all of us involved. Like many of us, I was required to do community service in high school, but after a couple years, I looked for every opportunity to volunteer because I loved it so much. From my experiences, service work is not usually boring because you meet and work with interesting people who have different life experiences. But even if you do find the work tedious, the feeling of helping others doesn't change. I think that those who see it as a negative at this point will be very grateful that they had this opportunity in the end.
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that we don't know exactly what we will be doing at the particular agency we choose is very compelling. We could go thinking we signed up to do one thing and end up doing something totally different. I think this is a great way to break out of comfort zones. The name "service learning" says it all. We not only serve those in need, we learn in a way that is not possible in the classroom or even on campus. I think that's pretty awesome.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with pieces of everyone’s responses and wanted to share a bit of my own service learning experiences with you. Service learning can be a daunting task, especially for someone who may not have experienced doing service or volunteer work in the past. I transferred into Merrimack my sophomore year, but my freshman year I attended a college in Virginia where we had a class called co-curricular learning and service (we called it CCLS). It was worth something like a thirteenth of a credit, but 15 hours of service was required along with monthly meeting with an advisor that usually didn’t want to be there. It was a scary prospect for me as a freshman student with little experience doing service work, not to mention that I was hundreds of miles from home without any way of getting to a service site. To me and my classmates, it was just another requirement to get us closer to graduation. Though I had some great experiences, there was nothing to tie in what I was doing outside of the classroom with my regular classes.
ReplyDeleteThe service learning I’ve done at Merrimack has been a much different experience. Last semester I had to do go once a week for two hours to Bellesini Academy as a requirement for one of my education classes. Again, I was thinking that it was just going to be another headache and something else to jam into my schedule, but it ended up as an experience that truly enriched what I was learning in the classroom. Working with the students there was not only fun, but really helped me understand my class better.
Now that I’m a senior, I look back upon my different service experiences as some of the most rewarding parts of my college experience. I’ve taught English to Somali refugees, served meals in soup kitchens, put up vinyl siding on a house for Habitat for Humanity, walked dogs as the MSPCA, tutored 5th graders in Lawrence at Bellesini Academy, and most recently worked with Rebuilding Together in Haverhill to paint a community nursing home, among many other things. Not all of these were service learning, but doing service learning is what opened me up to wanting to serve in other ways. Yes, doing service takes up a lot of time that could be spent studying or being involved with other activities, but what I’ve come to realize is that the service I’ve done has helped me grow as a person and thoroughly enriched the classroom learning I’ve done. Sure you can learn from a book or a lecture, but learning becomes an entirely different experience when you’re out there getting your hands dirty.
Although I had no idea about the service learning component of the Honors Program before i applied, I'm actually pleasantly surprised that we have this opportunity. In high school we had to complete 24 hours of community service by the end of junior year as a graduation requirement. However, I looked at this as something that I wanted to get done and out of the way simply to graduate. I don't think I took advantage of the many opportunities given by my high school to make a difference and learn from the experiences. By the end of junior year I finally matured about this and came understand why its so important. Senior year I decided to volunteer because I wanted to, not because I had to.
ReplyDeleteI want to volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club in Lawrence. I am very familiar with this particular organization and have friends whose lives have been positively impacted by the Boys & Girls Club. My older sister and my aunt volunteer their time there and take part in their programs and fundraisers. I too want to continue on this path and give my time and energy to something bigger than myself. This is a second chance for me to take on a new perspective regarding service learning and I absolutely intend on getting the most out of the opportunity.
I would have to agree that this Service Learning part of the Honors Program is great. I loved doing community service and I am interested in working with kids at the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club.
ReplyDeleteThe only reservation about this program is that I knew nothing about it or that it was required till I stepped into the classroom. When I was invited to be in this program, I was told I would have a little more challenging work and smaller classroom settings. I didnt know anything about the service learning. Did they think people would be turned off by the idea of community service?
I want to state again that I dont think this is a bad thing, I just wish they hadnt been so sneaky about it.
I also think that service learning should be a memorable experience, given what you want to get out of the experience. From personal experience, you have to get involved and interact with those you are serving so as to get something out of it. In High school, I worked with the elderly, autistic children, and 1rst grade girls...they were all wonderful experiences that taught me a lot. But working with the autistic children was the most eye opening experience. I want to help the Challenge Unlimited Program at Ironstone Farm, where they help special needs people ride horses as a source of therapy. But considering there is no transportation, I don't know if it will work out. I am also stressed about the amount of time we have to put in at our sites. So I believe in theory, this is a great program...I just hope it will work out.
ReplyDeleteI really like this topic because, let's face it, its definitely something that has been on all of our minds. Yes, you can think of it as just another burden on our already full backs, but personally, I like it. The surprise of it, you know because no one had mentioned it before, was a little scary, but I'm happy to do it. I too, want to work with children and agree that their smiles can be the most precious reward. In my high school we had a pre-school program in the bottom floor where students interested in becoming teachers were able to advance through the program and eventually conduct lessons in the classroom. The best part of my day was seeing their faces and escaping the mundane assembly line of traveling from class to class, herded like cattle. I cannot describe the happiness I get from simply helping a child. I'm eager to start this project, but a little skeptical about the logistics. Being freshmen with no cars and a very restricted schedule this will be a hard thing to do. I'm so thankful they are providing transport, because otherwise this would be impossible. I'm excited for this because I think it can benefit both parties involved. People need to stop thinking of community service as a great sacrifice of self and that these people are lucky for their help (not that I'm accusing any of my fellow honors students of this). I can guarantee that if we allow ourselves to be open to it, we will gain just as much from this experience as the people were are "servicing."
ReplyDeleteI think that service learning is a really great opportunity. I started doing service in high school because we had a 60 hour requirement to graduate. I ended up doing over 100 hours of community service over those four years because i enjoyed doing it so much. It meant a lot to me. This year I hope to do my service learning at the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club, because I really enjoy working with children. I do think that it would be better if the service could be done on one saturday a month instead of a couple hours every week. But I do think that in the end it will be worth it.
ReplyDeleteI think this service learning component of our class is going to be so beneficial, both to us and those who we are volunteering our time to! All throughout high school I did volunteer work and I loved it. Now, however, there are so many more options at hand. I think I will end up working at either the Boys and Girls Club, or Head Start. I'm considering being a teacher when I get out of college and I feel like both of these programs would give me a good feel of whether teaching is right for me, and if so, then what age group I am most compatible with. As far as the two hour a week requirement... I honestly feel like this is not that difficult. I don't know anyone who doesn't have an hour to spare out of their day. Yes we all have a ton of homework and other commitments...but it won't be hard to make a little room in our schedule. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we could all make room enough for five hours a week, maybe even more. This may turn out to be a life-altering experience if we stop worrying about time requirements and start worrying about those who are in need.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this blog in that I feel service learning is an important aspect of the honors program. However, it is quite inconvenient to go every week as a college student. I do think that having service learning once a month for longer would be a lot easier. I am currently trying to get a job off campus and working out hours during the week is hard enough let alone telling them I can't do Mondays because of service learning. Even though I am not happy about the every week two hours, I think that Merrimack students in the honors program, should give back to people less fortunate.
ReplyDeleteI am excited to start work at a thrift store for the Lazarus House a very reputable organization. The Lazarus House has gained a lot of press over the years for all the people they help. Not only do they help give people food; they also provide shelter, job training, medical care, aids support and clothing. Without the Lazarus House, so many would be homeless. I will be starting my Service Learning next week because I am in Theology as well. I am very excited to start helping with this organization and I'm sure it will be beneficial for both me and them, even if its not always convenient.
I think that the service learning component of the honors program makes it unique. Service learning is so beneficial to so many aspects in life. Service has been a part of my cirriculum since junior high. I used to see it as a burden and a requirement. It wasn't until I was older and more mature that I realized the benefit of community service. To recieve the full benefit, you must be open to the experience. Attitude is key in community service.
ReplyDeleteI had always lived in a very white affluent neighborhood and wasn't exposed to any other lifestyle. In junior high I collected cans for food pantries and raised money for organizations, but never had interaction with the people who I was helping. My high school was in a troubled area of inner city Dallas. We tutored students from the nearby elementary school. I was shocked to hear such young children tell these stories of disfunctional family life to say the least. I also went on a mission trip to Braila, Romania. That was very far out of my comfort zone but it has been my best life experience thus far.
I agree that it can be difficult to fit community service in with a busy college schedule, but it is definatley do-able. The service learning component gives the honors student many options as far as what type of service they want to partake in.
My personal experience has been with children and I would like to continue that. It must be noted that what we will be doing is service learning, not just community service. The difference between the two is that the honor students will benefit incredibly, not just the other way around. I genuinely think that the students will benefit, as will the communities we are helping.
As everybody have mentioned above, the profitability of the service learning experience will be huge in our life. However, I do not agree with the idea of going just once a month. It sounds as it really is a burden. Another option could be going once every two weeks, but not once a month. Don’t you think that going just once a week, we can miss all the value of this experience?
ReplyDeleteJust to put an example; imagine that we have a great professor whose subject is vital in our career and that we see him or her only once a month. Not even having office hours. I think that, even though we probably learn many things, it would be impossible for us to assimilate all the necessary content in just some hours a month. We need more than just a glance if we want it to be meaningful. What do you think? As its name says, it is a service LEARNIG experience, and all learning needs a process. On the other hand, I am leaving aside every student’s the rigorous timetable, but, as another writer mentioned above, we should consider that most of the institutions have a wide variety of options
Regarding the institution I’ve chosen, after having searched Lazarus House in Lawrence’s historical background and actual activities, I am pretty sure that I will be involved there. I chose this because of its activities diversity and its timetable flexibility.
I agree with blogger. I believe that the community service aspect of the Honors Program is a great thing because it helps not only the student build character and feel better about doing some volunteering but it also helps a variety of people in surroundings communities whether tutoring kids or feeding the homeless. I have a lot of experience with community service and I find that I like working with children the best. I am interested in volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club in Lawrence. Coming from a city which had a large branch of the Boys and Girls Club, I know that it is a center that can really help children follow the right path. I think I would get the most out of my volunteering experience if I had the chance to help out there.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the the blogger. I personally always liked volentiring for different causes and this is a great oportunity for I could keep doing good for others. Its important for people to help others because you might need that same type of help and you can get it in the future as you gave it to others.
ReplyDeleteI agree that people should approach service learning with an open mind and it shouldn't just be a check mark. If you go into it with an open mind you get much more out of it. I know by personal experience because I lived for a week in Camden, New Jersey (similar to Lawrence) and helped the homeless and less fortunate. For the first few days I just thought of the experience as another thing I can put down on my college application. Then later in the week I began to take it more seriously and started to change my attitude. I was fortunate enough to take something out of this experience but feel like I would have gotten alot more out of it if I had kept an open mind the entire time. I urge all of you to look at the service learning as a truly learning experience, and not just a check mark.
ReplyDeleteI chose to work at a Boy's and Girl's Center in Lawrence because I enjoy working with children. I look forward to teaching the kid's as well as have them teach me. This should be a fun experience and I am excited.
i think that volunteering is a great thing to do, it's awesome to serve your community and help those in need. there are tons of people who need services to help and better their lives, but should you be forced into doing community service? many students can hardly balance their schedules and studying as is. the subject of volunteering should be done at a students choice and own leisure rather than the school and/or teacher making them do it as part of a class or grade. some students have mostly science classes, have jobs, and a million other obligations. i agree that someone could do 8 hours of service a month, and should do it in their own way. students should not only be able to pick their own way and time to do it, but if they even want to do it. you hear people all the time say how they dread going to do their service learning. you always hear students say they should have been doing an assignment or at a practice. in short, it should be based on time and want of the student, not mandatory.
ReplyDelete