Shaakirah Dunn: Social Action Project Reflection

1. Consider the effectiveness of the project, considering each component and reflecting on your learning experience as well as the impact on the school or community.

The project was effective and had an impact on learners academically. As it was exam time, providing learners that were really struggling with all the support and giving different study techniques and how to summarise what is important had an improvement in their marks. When I created awareness of the project many learners were interested in attending, I had guaranteed them it would be beneficial in their learning, and it was. The project took place daily after school for 2 hours, I had objectives of what I wanted to cover each day to prepare them for an upcoming assessment. The project was aimed at helping learners achieve their full academic potential, managing their time and implementing effective strategies when studying. I created study planning worksheets for the learners. There are many learners who stay after school until 5pm so, we made lunch and gave it to all the learners everyday. It has impacted the school because it is still being continued after I left, there are now staff in the school that performing the tasks after school.

2. How has service-learning changed you personally?

Service learning has changed me personally because it increased my passion for teaching even more. The positive feedback and gratification of learners when they saw their improvements made me feel whole. It has increased my patience because I sat one on one helping the learners who need the extra support. It was difficult the first time because all learners learn differently, so helping all of them find tailored ways of studying and learning took a lot of time.

3. How has service-learning developed you professionally? What new knowledge, skills

and/or attitudes have you gained?

Professionally it has positively impacted my teaching development. It improved my communication, leadership and time management skills, these are a few of the skills I believe all teachers' should possess. It has also taught me patience

4. Describe the benefit of this initiative to the school and comment on its sustainability.

The benefit of this initiative was that there were a lot of learners struggling academically, not because they don't have the potential to do well but because they do not know how to study effectively. They do not know how to summarize key points, they do not know how to extract important information and they do not know how to manage their time while writing a test. It was noted that learners lose a mark that would have given them a distinction or a pass because they do not end up completing their tests. Block 2 was the school's exam time, teacher's did not have time to go through everything and this is normally the case. This initiative is sustained because there are teachers that are continuing to help these learners after school because they have seen the improvements in learners marks.