The course SPAN 301S: Service Learning in the Latino/Chicano Community helped me to learn more about the concepts of compassion, social responsibility, justice, and diversity. This course allowed me to learn about compassion and practice it while doing my service learning. Compassion is key element when it comes to service learning, during this experience I was able to learn about compassion and practice it everyday while doing service.
In this course I learned the factors that affect my community negatively and after learning about it it was harder for me to ignore them. Having social responsibility makes people a better citizen, in this course I was able to develop my knowledge about social responsibility and practice social responsibility through service learning. I did my service at Youth Now Center in my community, Watsonville. I was helping kids to do their homework and projects for school. I had an important role, help students succeed in school and encourage them to go to college. I was an example for the future citizens of Watsonville.
The concept of justice was also covered in this course. I learned that According to the U.S. Census, “Native Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and African Americans have significantly higher rates of poverty (24.5%, 22.7%, 21.7%) than non-Hispanic whites and Asian Pacific Islanders (7.8%, 10.2%)”. This course helped me to learn about the justice problems that the latino community faces in the united states. Furthermore I was able to reflect about my own community and the justice issues that it has. Once I learned about these issues I knew that many things need to be fixed. The service learning experience gave my the opportunity to engage with my community and to realize that I can help to bring justice.
Diversity is another concept that is very important to learn when doing service learning. Learning about diversity in service learning connects to the importance of knowledge about diversity for my major. In the service learning experience I was able to learn that people from different backgrounds need support, not only latinos. In this course I was able to learn that there are more minorities than I thought. It is also very important to know who is the people I would be helping and what are their needs. In relation to my major learning about diversity is very important because the Latino culture is more diverse than I thought. In my service learning experience I was able to help kids from different cultural backgrounds, it was difficult to know how to approach them, but I was able to learn during the process.
The service learning experience helped me to develop my language and cultural knowledge. In this service learning experience I was able to help a student to do her Spanish homework. This experience helped me to develop my language skills, I was able to practice the things that I have learned and practice my speaking ability. I had the opportunity to help another student who was learning English as her second language. I was able to identify with her because I went through that experience. Helping this student with her English development helped me to practice my Spanish with her, this allowed me to develop my language knowledge. Also the program did welcome events to parents, some of them only spoke Spanish and I was able to practice my language skills by participating in this events. In addition I did a presentation about my service learning experience to the class, this gave me the opportunity to practice my representational skills in the target language. Moreover I was able to develop my cultural knowledge though my service learning experience. The kids that were part of this after school program where from different cultural backgrounds. I was able to learn from them elements from their own cultures. Sometimes they would tell where their parents where from, they evenly told me what was their favorite foods. In some cases I did not know what they were talking about but from them I learned about new cultures.