4. Fourth Class, April 29

THE BEGINNING OF OUR SERVICE LEARNING PROJECT

Once the assignment was finished and checked by the teacher, the topics with common worries were grouped like this:

According the topics above, the class was organized in four teams, in order to work on the research component. From now on, Access students have to document the nature of each context, exploring the issue on the Internet, publications, newspapers and more, so they identify the specific problem.

Besides this, students learnt how to gather their own evidence by creating a survey following these steps:

• What to ask?
• Who to ask?
• How to obtain the data?
• How to use the data obtained?  
• How to present the data?

This evidence should be used to determine a baseline against which they can measure their impact. Being able to do this, students will realize how much of a difference they can make and raise their sense of efficacy and desire to volunteer and make a real impact.

3. Third Class, April 1

LET’S INVESTIGATE!

Access students observed and analyzed videos about Service Learning experiences in USA identifying IPARDE components in each of them: 

o   Inside of our classroom: “I’m special” Service Learning project made by primary school students who studied a novel called “Wonder”. Reflection: “Share our similarities, celebrate our differences” M. Scott Peck.

o   Out of our classroom: “Shoes for kids in Africa” Service Learning at Woodbury middle school. Students recycled jeans and made shoe pieces to send them to shoemakers in Africa and help kids to avoid diseases on their feet. Reflection: “If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it?”

o   In our community: “Real food farms” Service Learning project made by college students that go against food deserts. Reflection: “Make a balance in learning, helping and returning something to the community”.

           Access students started to give their firsts steps identifying community problems that they might  potentially address.

    Picture: Thanks to Maritza Navajas Library at the CBA, Access students reviewed the newspapers collected during March and April and they identified the various strengths and challenges at the global, national, state, and local level by reading the articles in the newspapers and listing them.

-       Continuing in the line of investigation, students received the assignment on select a community problem according to their principal worries and the brainstorming created in the class, in order to establish common worries, problems and similar student’s perspectives. On the community problem selected they applied the first 3 components “IPA” in a SL project, as a first individual SL trial.