Personal Reflection On Community Service Learning

In the beginning of my service learning I did not think too much about it. Mostly I thought about going through the motions and hoping to understand the purpose of making students go out of their way to perform community service. But once I went to Faith Wesleyan church for the first time of doing community service I felt outraged and surprised at the same time. I did not understand that children could be so disrespectful towards adults volunteering their own time. Some of the children would get up in the middle of talking, and when asked where they were going they would ignore the question. Some of the other children would interrupt the talking and ask for more food. But although the first experience opened my eyes it was not until I went …show more content…
Obligation related to my experience because my obligation was to do my service learning, and also as citizen of Fayetteville make it is my civic responsibility to ensure that there is help where help is needed. Although at first the children lacked respect it was not my job to judge them, and I was able to separate my emotions from obligations to get the job done. Another civic responsibility is altering my moral ideas to fit my society. My moral ideas of compassion, and fairness was used in my service learning because although the children had negative attitudes I had to be compassionate with how I dealt with their emotions, and be fair to them even if I may have been upset at them earlier. Lastly consequences. The second day of my service learning I put a lot of theories to the test such as respect for persons, moral ideas, avoiding mine is better thinking (Pg., 91, Ruggiero). When I was able to adjust by thinking the consequences were positive. The children became more respectful, they listened and wanted to get to know me more. I became more open and less anxious. All of these things helped my service learning go from a negative to a