Service Learning - Bronze
Individual Service Learning - FIRST LEGO League, Math Coach, Alternative Spring Break
Description
The activities that I completed included spending a semester as a math coach at a local elementary school, volunteering as a judge at several FIRST LEGO League tournaments, and a week long service-learning trip focused on food insecurity referred to as 'alternative spring break'. The math coaching position assisted the primary teacher with providing supplementary math instruction to fourth graders during their enrichment period, the FIRST LEGO League activities were judging the presentations of several different elementary and middle school age teams about their research projects and teamwork skills, and the alternative spring break included various activities with the other volunteers, local nonprofits, and the city government.
Commitment and Connection
My service experience was a collection of independent volunteering opportunities occurring over the course of four semesters. The total number of hours is hard to estimate, but may have exceeded 100 over the course of all four semesters. This collection of experiences included volunteering as a judge for the local FIRST LEGO League tournaments, serving as a Math Coach at a local elementary school for a semester, participating in an alternative spring break service-learning trip in Spring 2018, and more assorted experiences.
While none of my experiences were directly connected to cyberspace, they did have an indirect connection to the goal of making it secure. Any technical system can only be as secure as its users, so by volunteering with youth STEM programs I am playing my part in making sure that future workers have the logical foundations that they need to understand how cyberspace works, and by extension, what role they have in keeping it secure.
Reflection
One of the big things that I took away from my various volunteering activities is just how little of any given task can be broken down into academic questions. Whether the subject be math or robotics, whether the work be in a school or a nonprofit, most of the actual work was extensive amounts of setup, planning, and debating. For every man-hour spent that used technical skills, there were a dozen man-hours of volunteer labor spent monitoring students, directing guests, and other such tasks. I've seen firsthand now that simply having time and a willingness to work goes a lot farther than I thought it would, and conversely, that a lack of working hands can be even worse than a lack of knowledge. It's a major perspective shift from the academic view that enough study will make anything easier, and shows just how far away from theoretical concerns actual service learning can be.
Learning Objectives
Integrity - Across multiple organizations and multiple years, in a wide variety of contexts, I am the one holding myself to this commitment to service without external supervision. It is my own personal value that I know well and am acting to satisfy in a wide range of places and times, regardless of what else may be changing in my life.
Perspectivism - The alternative spring break activity focused in a large part on issues effecting low-income areas in a major city. The activities included demonstrations of some of those living conditions and discussions on the difficulties the residents faced as a result, giving a new perspective on how different populations would define security and what kinds of security measures would be appreciated (including those in cyber space).
Realistic vision - A fundamental component of volunteering activities is getting out into the field and seeing firsthand what is practical to actually do. These experiences, therefore, gave me evidence of what is and is not realistic to accomplish in different settings, and thus a vision of what could be realistic to accomplish in the future.
Teamwork - All of the activities that I volunteered in were large scale events, orchestrated by entire groups of volunteers. Working with the other volunteers to divide tasks and workloads is a textbook example of teamwork.
Persistence - My math coaching activity involved several weeks of working with the same students, often on the same concepts week after week. Continuing to drill the same skills and continuing to encourage them for an entire semester was a demonstration of persistence in trying to help them reach their goals.
Flexibility - Volunteering commitments are dependent upon the times and days that the hosting organization decides to hold the events. Being able to attend the different events without conflicting with classes or work required a large amount of flexibility in my schedule.
Service Learning
Community Engagement
Some of my planned experiences, such as being a math coach in Spring 2017 and alternative spring break in Spring 2018, are by definition being active in and engaged with local communities.
Civic Agency
Most of my planned activities involve local communities, people who are practically next door to me. Through geographic proximity if nothing else they have some connection to my life, and I am trying as I am able to be proactive in serving these local communities for the better.
Capacity for Reflection
Due to the wide spread of activities over the course of four semesters, I have a long time frame with which to consider what I want to participate in and what I am able to take away from the experiences. Additionally, since some of them have longer time frames (full semester for math coach, full week for alternative spring break) I will be able to see firsthand how my work is contributing and incorporate my observations into my own reflections.
Commitment
Regular experiences, such as the weekly math coach activities and the full week for ASB, require a dedicated time commitment to participate in. This kind of commitment, whether it be a recurring weekly event or one that takes up an entire week, is only given to something that it is important to have such large involvement in; consequently in the process of choosing to do these events I am also contemplating the importance of having this level of committed involvement.