In Service of What?

Before reading this article, I never put that much thought on the difference between change and charity. I always assumed that charity and change were part of the same caring morality. It turns out that Charity, a product of change, focuses only on the giving morality as an aspect of Civic Duty. Mr. Johnson's classroom did give their own time to help out those who were less fortunate. However, they only focused on helping to fix the unfortunate events without understanding what caused the unfortunate events in the first place and how they affected those the students served. Unlike Mr. Johnson's classroom, Ms. Adam's classroom came together and focused on one subject which was Homelessness. Coming together as a class on one subject not only provided different beliefs and thoughts from each individual on the same topic, but also different ideas of aid contribution to homelessness. Ms. Adams class not only went out to the field to do charity work for the homeless, but they also systematically analyzed articles about homelessness, invited guest speakers from homeless advocacy groups, and developed action plans to raise funds for homeless advocacy groups. At the end, the students reflected on their experiences through group discussions and reflective writing. Intellectually, as a result of their altruism, they developed transformative experiences. In order to develop such an experience a service learner must not also help those in need but also "apprehend the reality of the other", according to Nel Noddings. In other words we must, begin a deeper relation with your service learning by being in another persons shoes specifically those you are helping.
That's why I believe this class is more change than charity. Not only do we do community service but we also reflect on it through our journals and discuss about the social and political issues in our society let alone in our education. We all go out into the field ourselves and get a taste of the life we once left for college. Not only that, we also know what its like to be a student at a primary or secondary school system because we were once students living in those worlds. My whole life I haven't don't that much volunteer work and I actually thank this class for enlightening me about Service Learning and the intellectual outcome that comes with it. As a matter of fact this actually reminded me that the way I'm helping my students, is based a little more on charity than change. I help students with their reading and reading assignments, but I barely get the time to talk to them one on one to develop a deeper professional relationship with them. This is a negative outcome of service learning for me.  On this NY Times article, Does Service Learning Really Help?, professor Randy Stoecker from University of Wisconsin says, “Academic institutions are focused on making sure their students learn from the service-learning experience, but they aren’t always paying similar attention to the interests of the organizations that provide that experience, much less the clients they serve".http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03service-t.html?_r=0 I for in fact am interested in helping students out, but sometimes I question myself if the relationship between student and tutor is professionally deep enough for me to consider this not just a civic duty, but also a social reconstruction.