Реферат: Community Service Trust Act Essay Research Paper

Community Service Trust Act Essay, Research Paper

Community Service Trust Act

With the passing of the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, there is increased focus on integrating student community service, volunteerism and service learning into the curriculum. Service learning can be a key to unlock our nation’s potential. Promising that national service will “strengthen the cords that bind us together as a people,” President Clinton signed legislation creating AmeriCorps. The new program, scheduled for late 1994, will in its first year

provide 20,000 young people with 7,425 in annual wages plus health benefits and child care benefits if needed and $4,725 in educational benefits in exchange for a full year of grassroots community service work.

In a Mac Arthur Foundation publication on youth service, Judy Karasik reported that America is “experiencing an explosion of youth idealism, activism, and commitment to engaged citizenship” . In record numbers, Americans are reaching out. It is no longer a matter of noblesse oblige, in which the rich reach down to help the poor. Today’s volunteers are people of every socioeconomic level helping each other. There are still wealthy philanthropists who serve those less privileged, but the women who would have served in previous generations are now working for pay at demanding jobs. They are often too exhausted to add community service to their other responsibilities

From Miami to Seattle, the United States of the 1990s is ripe for answers to the seemingly insurmountable social problems plaguing large cities and small towns. While we have almost become indifferent to the familiar litany of socital ills–crime, drugs,teen pregnancy, homelessness, juvenile delinquency–the response to many of our community problems has been a new student activism burgeoning on our college campuses. Programs range from student organizations assisting the US Marines with their annual Toys for Tots program to full-time internships in social service agencies

A week after Hurricane Andrew struck southern Dade County, Florida, Broward Community College students had “adopted”Florida City and mobilized to help survivors rebuild their community. Teams of students, along with faculty and staff, traveled to Florida City on weekends to assist in the cleanup. Back in Broward County, some of these same students mentor at-risk youngsters, tutor high school students with specific learning disabilities, act as student ambassadors to the community, and serve as peer educators providing vital HIV/AIDS prevention information to their classmates

Interior design students in Texas redesigned the Alzheimer care unit of a local hospital while classmates renovated a homeless shelter. In Colorado, architectural students redesigned a town hall. At Miami-Dade Community College, Florida, students received academic credit for producing a play performed by students, faculty and residents of a homeless center. “I learned

more from them than I have all my life” said David, a student, referring to the homeless people he worked with in the play. Student community service and service learning are powerful learning experiences for students, providing a way to effect change and address our nation’s pressing social problems. Students who volunteer receive more than just the satisfaction of helping those in need: they learn responsibility, build character, solve problems, and gain a better understanding of their

communities.

Community colleges have a unique opportunity to be on the cutting edge of this new paradigm. Speaking at a Florida Council of Student Affairs meeting, Chris Gilmore, director of the Florida Governor’s Commission on National and Community Service,urged deans and vice presidents to remember that one-third of the community college mission is service. Citing a study in which 100 percent of the students reported that their service experience was more important than their academic studies, Gilmore noted, “There is no better way to learn leadership than by leading, and no better way to learn the value of service than by serving”.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY SERVICE?

The term “community service” often conjures up visions of forced restitution, of convicted criminals sentenced to pay off their debts to society for infractions ranging from speeding tickets to felonies. For our students, the accepted definition of community service is unpaid work that everyone can do to improve the quality of life of those being served, of those serving, and ultimately of the community as a whole. The primary goal lies in attacking civic apathy while participating in activities that serve community needs.

Out-of-classroom learning programs have gained in popularity since emerging in the mid 1960s when President Kennedy urged the nation to ” ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He called upon the nation’s young to serve society in the military, community service, the international Peace Corps, or domestic VISTA programs for two-years of national service. Since that time many colleges and universities have been actively integrating student volunteerism, internships, and community service into their programs. Thousands of college students are currently working in literacy programs, day care centers, soup

kitchens, and facilities for the elderly. Very often the difference between someone failing and making it is just one person who cares about them. Student volunteers can change the course of history by touching the lives of many while gaining valuable life experience.

WHAT IS SERVICE LEARNING?

What sets service learning apart from other types of non-traditional education programs, according to Neil Merrell, director of the Center for Public Policy and Service at Mesa Community College, is that “service learning is the blending of academic study and community service.” At Mesa, says Merrell, “our goal is to encourage students to become lifelong, active participants in the community.”

Service can be integrated into a class in several ways, an extra credit option; as a substitute for a requirement, such as a paper,exam, or project; or an integral part of the course, if the class is on a related topic, like social problems. Service learning is the integration of community service into an organized setting where the servers also reflect on the meaning of their service. By combining service with a reflective educational framework, the benefits far exceed those of service or learning separately. Reflection can take place in groups or individually, in a written or oral format, by using journals or essays. In service learning the volunteer work is related to the course. The process of reflection is an essential part of integrating the service experience into course work. Through structured reflection activities, individuals develop an appreciation for the connection between their community service activities and the underlying issues of the social problem being addressed.

Trish Joyce, a Broward Community College English professor, offered a service option to students in her Introduction to the Short Story course. After some reluctance, David Manko, a computer science major, volunteered to read stories to children at the campus child care center. Joyce points to the following excerpts of David’s reflective journal as “a shining example of what

service learning is all about.”

“I told him no, that it only looked that way because the ants are so small. The children were all wondering about the crystals the ants were so interested in so I decided to show them, using a grain of sand. I told the kids that to an ant this looks like a giant rock and they are strong enough to carry them. They understood and wanted to look at the pictures in the book again… If I were to write a children’s story those are some of the characteristics I would include… Each experience I have with the children, I feel I have shown them a little of the enormous and very diverse world of literature.”

WHY COLLEGES?

. A student’s college career is a time of training, not only for a career, but for life. Service learning programs are designed to make social service an integral part of students’ lives during and after college. The training gained through service could provide new career opportunities, or simply an experience to benefit everyone involved.

Research by Arthur Levine of Harvard University shows an estimated 64 percent of college and university students participate in public service activities in addition to their course work. Mark Cooper, a Broward Community College alumnus, heads the student-initiated Volunteer Action Center at Florida International University (FIU). Cooper, who began the FIU program two

years ago while a student, believes that “service learning works because it is based on one simple principle: you don’t learn the basics by memorizing the basics, but by doing projects in which you utilize the basics.” Surely if education is supposed to prepare the next generation, we should be teaching active citizenship rather than rote memorization. The real value, though, lies in enhanced learning. Research by Judith Boss on her University of Rhode Island ethics classes showed that a service learning component improves learning . Solving community problems is a bonus.

The nation is looking toward its colleges to stem the torrent of violence and civic apathy by instilling such core values as honesty and respect for life. The Wingspread Group, a blue ribbon panel on higher education, developed a 42-point college checklist to improve educational offerings. The panel urged administrators to ensure that “next year’s entering students will graduate as individuals of character, more sensitive to the needs of community, more competent to contribute to society, and more civil in habits of thought, speech and action.”Service learning experiences build new relationships between students and instructors, between the community and the college or university, and between the people being served, and the students, benefiting all involved. Properly prepared students augment service delivery for overburdened community agencies, allowing closer contact with clientele, and providing extra staff support. The college gains an improved public relations image.

WHY COMMUNITY COLLEGES?

More than any other educational institution, the community college’s very mission is enmeshed with a commitment to improve the communities that surround its campuses. The existence of both mandatory and voluntary community service programs is nothing new for many private liberal arts institutions and public universities. Even high schools in many states are adding service hours to their graduation requirements. However, while service learning is a nice enhancement to these educational offerings, service is integral to the very essence of the community college mission.

Karen Bojar, an English Professor at the Community College of Philadelphia, includes service learning activities in her literature classes. She states “Community college students have deep roots in the community; thus, community service sets the stage for lifelong commitment.” She views formal volunteering through a structured experience as a career skill and teaches her students how to incorporate their volunteer work into their resumes.

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