Thoughts on Service Learning Courses

                  I went to Sunflower Kids to volunteer again on Wednesday, October 11. I only have one more visit, and then I am finished with my service hours. It has been a great experience to volunteer at Sunflower Kids. During my visit, I cleaned the visitations rooms.

Visitation room that I cleaned while at Sunflower Kids

Since I have already discussed cleaning in my other blog posts, I thought I would share my thoughts about service learning courses in this blog post.

            

           I really like the idea of service learning courses. I was very involved with community service in high school, and I wanted to continue this in college but knew that it would be harder. Before this course, I wasn’t familiar with the organizations around Lexington that would be great places to volunteer. However, this course has introduced me to several amazing organizations. Not only Sunflower Kids, but I have learned about other organizations from reading other blog posts. All of these organizations are great, and this course has opened the door for me to stay involved in the community even after the course ends. I feel like many students are like me and want to be involved but weren’t sure how because they weren’t familiar with Lexington; I think service learning courses are a great way to get students on the right path for volunteering.

            

           Having a service learning organization also makes the course work more meaningful. A lot of the assignments in this course deal with our service learning organizations. For example, instead of just writing an argument essay about domestic violence, I was able to first-hand learn about domestic violence victims from Sunflower Kids. This made the essay a lot more interesting, and I was able to see how the societal issue directly affects me and what I can do to help fix the issue. What we learn in this class will extend far beyond when the class ends. Working with a service learning organization helps shape us as people and hopefully inspires us to continue to lend a helping hand.

Service learning courses open the door for continued community service.

 

           

           As you can see, my service learning experience with Sunflower Kids has been positive and has given me a positive outlook on service learning courses as a whole. I am very grateful for the values and work ethic that volunteering at Sunflower Kids has instilled in me and not having class on most Fridays hasn’t been too bad either!