Service Learning Week #5 Peter Fairbrother

Peter Fairbrother
11/6/11
Service Learning Week #5
This past week I planned the lesson for service learning. I did a lesson on responsibility and autonomy. I wanted to go over what responsibility was and see how the students prioritize their responsibilities. First, we went over what responsibility is. The students seemed to already understand the concept which was good and then we discussed certain responsibilities that the students have and one student explained how he has to cook dinner for his family. This shows yet again how much more responsibility these students have over suburban children. It was still shocking to me to hear that a freshman in high school is in charge of the kitchen even though we read about these challenges that urban school children have.
Next we compared different responsibilities and prioritized them. Family was a very big priority for these students but they still said school was their number one priority. I am not saying that this is not true I am however curious if that is truly the case or if they were just saying it because they thought that it would be the answer we wanted to hear. Personally I put family as my number one responsibility so I am just curious if the students really think that school is that important or if it was merely a biased response.
Next we worked on the subject of autonomy which was not as well known by the students. They needed extra instruction on this topic but once we worked on it they all realized that without knowing it they were in fact autonomous but they did not realize it yet. So I felt good showing them how they are in fact taking responsibility for their lives. It is nice to see those sort of light bulb switching on moments.