service learning
Service Learning in the Chicano/Latino Community
This course is part of your Spanish language learning experience, and offers you the opportunity to interact in a personal way with members of the local Latino community, thereby enriching your understanding of Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language. As a community-based learning experience, the course provides students with career-related experience working collaboratively with community agencies to address community concerns / issues. Obtained from CSUMB Course Catalog
Course Narrative
Service Learning in the Chicano/Latino Community was more than just a class to me. This course taught me the real meaning of life. I learned a lot about social injustices and how it is important that we as students are involved and well-informed about what is going on in our country. The videos, readings, and class presentations that we had were all very interesting and informative. We learned about how the government in some places wants to completely remove Chicano classes. This class really opened up my eyes in regards to many of the social injustices that I was not aware of. For this course we were asked to complete a total of thirty community service hours minimum. We had to pick a non-profit organization that has an existing partnership with CSUMB. The one that caught my attention was The Central Coast Citizenship Project located in Salinas, California. I wanted to work with this organization because I had never worked with adults/elderly people and I wanted to give it a try. I ended up loving this place. The people at the site were extremely nice and talkative to me. In this site we had to help the elderly practice for their citizenship exam and their interview. The people that were applying for their citizenship were mostly elderly because they had to have a minimum of twenty five years or more living as a permanent residence in this country. This site helped me expand on my Spanish speaking skills and tutoring english, and history. The people at the site were also very involved in the community. I was amazed at how much more involved they were rather than myself. I learned a lot about the Salinas community and that it is never too late to get involved. The people here taught me the importance of team building and that if we all come together we can make big changes not only in our communities, but also in the states we live in, or our country even. I fell in love with this place and I recommend it to any one that is in search of a service learning site. This is one of the places that I would go back and volunteer when I had the opportunity to do so.
span301finalthoughts.pdf
span301finalthoughts.pdf