The Perks of Serving

Service learning can be done anywhere, at anytime, at anyplace. The whole wide world is yours to serve upon, all you will need is a willingness to incorporate serving into a classroom setting. Teaching a subject in a classroom may produce the despairing result of that particular subject remaining stagnant in the confines of the four walls it was taught. The community at large, existing outside those walls, could be one of the best places to impact, using your students who have learned the subject well. 

My experiences at Ivey Lane were illuminating! In terms of progress and the impact it was having on the kids, service learning proved to me that it is a valuable tool in reaching out to the community. 

As each week went by, and my time at Ivey Lane Elementary became easier, I started to notice a quality the students began to possess: pride. Pride for their creations, for their writing pieces, for their characters. As their writing strengthened, their inhibitions decreased and I had more students wanting to read aloud their work each week. A simple line of encouragement, a few markers and crayons, and one can almost see the wheels in their head turning as they eagerly scribbled down onto paper their ideas.