Service-Learning

This morning I participated in my first off-site program. There is an elementary school here in Honolulu that has a partnership with the U of H Ag department. Some students here work with about 90 first-graders to educate them about plants and gardening. Last week these college students went to the elementary school and taught the first-graders about different plants, soil, why gardening is important, etc. Today the first-graders walked to a nearby nursery and planted seeds into flowerbeds. It was actually really fun! After working with elementary students this summer, it brought me back to how I interacted with "my" kids, and made me miss them a whole lot! These kids retained a lot of information from last week and were educating Gary and I on what type of roots the weeds they were pulling had. It was, needless to say, adorable.

While Gary and I were collecting participation forms we had a conversation about how what these U of H students are doing qualifies as service-learning, but how the University doesn't categorize it like that. That conversation led to a more in depth one on the way back to campus (Gary and I previously worked together at an organization for Service-Learning in Higher Education back in Nebraska) about the lack of support and knowledge of service-learning curriculum here and how it's sad because they already have so many service-learning type courses in place. Of course this got my gears turning and now I'm starting to wonder if there is anyway I can use part of my time/practicum here helping Gary advocate for Service-Learning. I think it would be an amazing addition here and I don't think it would take a whole lot to make it happen. Hmmm... I'll have to keep thinking about this. :)