Talking Points #5 - In the Service of What? by Kahne and Westheimer

1. "By finding and engaging in community service activities, Mr. Johnson explained, students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using the community as a classroom."

- I really related to Mr. Johnson's class's project, because this is exactly what we (or at least I) am doing when it comes to this class. We learn about how different groups of minorities (those not in SCWAAMP) learn and live and suffer, and then in some cases, we see it right in the classroom. So we are learning in two different classrooms.

2. "There are numerous ways in which a curriculum focused on giving provides opportunities for students to develop caring relationships, especially when compared to a tradition academic curriculum."

- I definitely agree with this point. It is basically saying that one of the benefits of service learning is that you kill two birds with one stone. The older students benefit because they are learning about the group they are helping. And the other students learn from the older kids, and get to develop relationships that may help them even once the service learning is over.

3. "Indeed, there is reason for concern that service experiences frequently fail to achieve either additive or transformative goals."

- This is probably the number one reason that all classes in all schools don't do service learning projects. There is the possbililty that the younger students don't benefit at all from having this extra help, in fact they may even have more trouble if they have many different people try to help in different ways. And there is also the possibility that the older students are learning anything, and just wasting their time trying to help.

I felt like this reading was somewhat repetitive. I don't know what it was about it, but nothing really grabbed me as a reader to pay attention. Normally I'll have some sort of an opinion when I'm done reading, but with this I was just glad I was done. Overall, the article talks about different kinds of service learning and why it is beneficial and why it may not be. I feel that it is a good thing in certain cases. For instance, something like what we are doing is beneficial to all parties involved. We are learning from it, the kids love it, and the teachers get a little break. However, for me when I'm older, as a high school math teacher, service learning probably wouldn't be too beneficial for all of the kids in my classroom. I think you just need to have the right atmosphere an the right ideas for the service learning to be effective.