Service Learning - Reflection

Service learning is a learning opportunity that develops skills of active citizenship, social awareness, critical thinking and problem solving (Eyler, 2002).

Welcome to my blog post about my service learning journey. I hope you enjoy the read and please feel welcome to comment.

Helping others is the way we help ourselves – Oprah Winfrey.

Service Learning Journey

My service learning initiative was an online safety and cyberbullying awareness campaign. I spent a few weeks with the Grade 7 learners and we discussed what cyberbullying is, how to respond if someone is being cyber-bullied, how dangerous the internet can be and tips for being safe online and maintaining a level of privacy. The Grade 7 learners developed posters on the content we had covered to stick-up around the school and raise awareness for other grades in the Intermediate Phase.

Once this was completed, I wanted to take the initiative further and truly expand the learning on the severity of these topics. I contacted South Africa's leading digital law expert, Emma Sadleir, to host a school presentation on the topics, educating on the legal aspects of the digital world. For a one-hour talk with Emma, the fee was a total of R11,500. I needed to find a creative way to pay for the presentation. I developed a fund-raising raffle ticket initiative to raise funds to pay for Emma Sadleir. I approached a travel company, MORE Private Travel, who donated a prize to be raffled off. The prize was a two-night stay for two adults at the Lion Sands Game Reserve, valued at R67,070. The prize had to be big in order to raise adequate funds. The school accepted my offer and the fund-raising activity is currently still being run to book and pay for Emma Sadleir in February 2020.

The successes of the project involved the learners. They had a lot of fun, we spoke of topics that were incredibly interesting to learners and they were shocked at the information that they had learnt, which for me, highlighted that they were learning something new. Additionally, the project is very sustainable as I shared all ,my resources with the Vice Principal and my content has now been incorporated into the Life Orientation Curriculum to keep teaching every year. Moreover, the posters the Grade 7's developed were done beautifully and the posters will be kept and portrayed every time the topic is taught. My biggest challenge was time constraints. Five weeks was not enough time to run such a big project and I wanted to be there to witness the entire process, selling all the tickets, tallying money raised and doing the raffle draw, but with the school's support, the initiative will carry on running in my absence. The project further benefited the school in terms of a marketing aspect. Hosting Emma Sadleir at a school ranks high status and the awareness the school was receiving on social media – because of the fund-raising event – led to increased inquiries related to school entrances.

Eidson (n.d) states that service learning projects help people to develop the skills to become critical thinkers, active citizens and organised individuals. Walking away from the experience, I am aware that my critical thinking skills have developed. I needed to analyse problems, find practical solutions and develop a plan for the solution to be carried through. The school had been experiencing problems of cyberbullying and I needed to address the problem with a practical solution and a solution that was genuinely going to work. My planning skills have improved. I needed to design and construct an entire campaign which took weeks of planning and resource development. I needed to think creatively as I developed a campaign with the best results and the least funding required to carry it out.

Additionally, my collaboration skills improved. I had countless meetings with the Principal, the Vice Principal, teachers and the MORE Private Travel General Manager. I collaborated with all the role players and synchronised communication and resources to develop this campaign. Eidson (n.d) states that service learning develops life-long reflective practitioners. I have never learnt to reflect more than in my service-learning proposal. I practised reflection-on-action skills during the campaign (Cartwright, 2011). When things were not going as planned, I quickly reflected in the moment and provided a solution. In the totality of the project, what developed most was my confidence in myself. I stepped out of my comfort zone and went the extra mile and it left me feeling very accomplished. As Oprah Winfrey states "Helping others is a way we help ourselves" I can reflect on how helping others in the service learning initiative developed me as a professional educator.