Over the course of this semester I was required to participate in 3 hours of service learning outside the class. Before this class I had participated in some community service but mostly dealing with people my age. Doing local community service helped me interact with a new age group.
My first service learning opportunity was in the atrium center helping out with the 6th graders. I was assigned to teach the students about a few different fossils. When the kids entered in I was a little unsure of how it was going to go, because I had never participated in community service with children this young. But after a few mins passed it proved to be easier then expected. The kids were fascinated with all the different rocks, and fossils they could observe. One kid even asked me if he could buy them.
Besides the fossils there was two rocks showing the difference in weight of each substances. One object was very light that I cant recall the name of and the other was 170 pound piece of granite. My Professor Marta Torran told me to have them try and lift each object to see the difference in there weight. I did not realize how strong six graders are until 17 students out of 4 groups picked up the giant piece of granite. After the first class I decided to make it into a little competition which the kids seemed to enjoy. The champions of this competition were the girls. Between all four classes 9 girls lifted the rock and only 8 boys could lift the rock.
Over Thanksgiving break I participated at Organ Lutheran Church at a Thanksgiving breakfast for the youth. This event occurred on the 25th and my day began at 7am. We made breakfast with frozen gravy, this task consisted of thawing out the biscuits and warming them in the oven as well as putting the gravy in the crock pot to thaw. Following the breakfast I helped pass out plates to kids and concluded my day with helping clean the dishes.
Overall both of these experiences were enjoyable and I had a lot of fun helping out two different communities. I also enjoyed the experience of working with different age groups. In the future I think I would like to possibly experience some service learning with the elderly to further expand my experience with different age groups.
Scientist can further help there community understand the nature of science by generically relating it to mass populations of people. By using a pathological approach scientist could explore the different elements that appeal to different groups of people. By exploiting each individuals emotions you can have a more efficient chance at promoting your view.
