Out Side the Classroom Learning

Part 1: You will write a 1-2-pages reflection that addresses the following components:

1. Describe something you learned from this experience (100-200 words)
2. Describe how the beyond-the-classroom experience connects to a larger concept, topic, issue, or UNIV 2101 learning outcome and/or specific aspects of an area of study.  Be specific as to how your experience reinforced, contradicted, or provided a concrete example related to the larger concept you identified.  (200 words or more).

Part 2: You will interview someone who works at the organization or site you are volunteering with.  The questions below provide a framework to help guide you through the interview.  Additional questions may be added. Be sure to get the contact information (name, title, email, occupation) of the person you interview.  You will also write this individual a thank you card, and submit a copy of the letter with your assignment:

1. Did your culture or community impact your choice of profession? If so, how?

1. I believe that my community really impacted me to volunteer at this food bank. Seeing all the homeless that are around our city and our schools, breaks my heart. Giving my time to the community helps out, even though it may seem to go unnoticed at times it’s still worth it in the end.

1. How is your occupation making strides/impacting civic responsibility?

1. I believe that we are making strides so that no one in our city goes hungry, through taking boxes of food to shelters, running canned food drives, to going and just doing random acts of kindness.

1. What particular skills or talents are essential to be able to effectively impact civic responsibility in your profession? How did you learn these skills?

1. The only skills that are really needed are being able to talk to these poverty stricken men and women, like there human beings. Not like people who did something wrong.  
2. I went through the difficulty of being homeless myself. So, I know what it’s like for people struggling and the non-sense these people have to put up with. So, I decided to treat them the way I wish I would have been treated back then.

1. What are barriers to furthering impact of civic responsibility?

1. The one barrier that hinders the impact we can make is not enough volunteers to help out with everything. Putting in the extra hours to help out our community forces people to choose between their free time to do anything and filling it with community service, and not enough people think it’s going to make a difference so they choose their free time instead.

1. Do you feel like your current role impacts the community? If so, how?

1. I believe my current role has an impact on my community by, helping out with the people who are in need or are struggling to eat. Some people can’t afford it or are going through tough times in their life, a good meal will defiantly brighten someone’s day.

1. Do you have any advice for someone interested in pursuing this field?

1. The only advice I can give is, to just do what you can to help out.

1. What opportunities would you encourage me to engage in to positively impact the community?

1. I am not saying give up of your free time but, some of it to go out and volunteer anywhere you can.

Part 3: After completing the interview, you will submit a one page reflection using the follow questions to guide your response:

1. What is one key takeaway you learned through this process?

1. Did this change your plan on your career interest/choice?

1. Going forward, how can you impact change in your specific community and/or profession? Did your culture or community impact your choice of profession? If so, how?

Service-learning provides students with the opportunity to link their academic lives with their personal and professional communities, engaging with these communities in meaningful ways that prompt learning through experience.

These learning experiences often end up being the most important experiences students have at college, as prospective employers continually state a desire to recruit college graduates who already have experience doing "real" hands-on work outside of a traditional classroom. A key part of learning, especially service-learning, is reflection, the willingness and ability to meaningfully consider past experience for future progress.

As a Community, we did a canned food drive for the New Braunfels Food Bank in New Braunfels. This was not required, but we do it to help out. We don’t want all the people who live in the town to think that none of us care. We also like to give back to the towns people and help them out. We all live here together so, why not take care of one another.

The canned food drive was to help those living in poverty. Some of these people do not have jobs or aren’t able to provide for themselves. We collected cans from anyone who wanted to donate. All food that was given to us was passed on to The New Braunfels Food Bank. We do this to show them that were not only about ourselves, and that we would like to give back any possible way we can. We did it right before Thanksgiving so that we could at least give them a Thanks giving dinner.

I learned that it is not always okay to care about only yourself, but when you care about others and try to help them you will feel good about yourself. Also, being in a community isn’t just about living your own life, but it is about meeting people and doing things as a group to help other people.

During the canned food drive I also learned that the people of New Braunfels also care about those living in poverty because they donated the cans to us. If they didn’t care they would have just kept walking and not donated. I learned that being polite and helping other people will get you somewhere in life, and it also makes you feel good about yourself. When you help people, and don't just put yourself first people will think of you better; if you are just a self-centered person, people around you will look at you different and think that you are selfish. The fact that we were in a group shows that we all care about everyone together. In the end, after helping people you feel good about yourself.