Assignment: A Story of Service, A Story of Us
This story of service assignment is a kind of ethnographic, narrative field report on the service-learning experience you had and the lessons you learned in the process. If you engaged fully in the experiences made available to you, you should have plenty to write about. Feel free to make use of the power of narrative in your piece here, meaning you can offer your personal story/journey through service learning-Self Us Now
By attending to the stories of others, and those we share with them, I can communicate values we share-a story of us.
- Marshall Ganzwhere you started and where find yourself now. There are two stories you will be telling here, in fact (as it takes at least two to form an us.) You will be attempting to tell the story of the insider's point of view on the issue/place/people you are writing about, as well as your own story as researcher. For more on this, review the bit about balancing the twin tales. This is an act of critical reflection enhanced with some research.
Your Essential Task
Write a compelling and critically reflective narrative of your service-learning experience. Help your reader bear witness to the experience. This is the power of storytelling. Recreate the experience for the readers so they can feel like they were there with you-taking this journey alongside you and seeing, experiencing, and gaining the insights you gained.
While narrative or storytelling is the organizing strategy in this piece, be sure to include critical information along the way, such as the expectations you had going in for what you might learn and what you might contribute. What kinds of questions were in your mind as you entered your service-learning site? While there, what did you observe and what were your reactions to these observations? Think and write more deeply too as you scrutinize your own thinking. Consider very honestly why you had the reactions you did. Or, perhaps, why you had little reaction. What intrigued you, surprised you, or disturbed you? The point here is to write deeply about how this experience affected you.
Also, of course, you are writing to represent the perspectives of those directly affected by the social issue you've been studying, and of the people/organization you partnered with who are immersed in working on this issue. You need to balance these twin tales (yours and the insiders' you studied)-interweave them.
As a part of this writing, raise the level of intellectual rigor by incorporating meaningful and adequately developed connections to at least two outside sources; be sure that they are credible sources and relevant to the issues at hand. It's expected, too, that you make use of an interview you conducted with an "informant" (i.e. an insider), whether this was a formal interview or informal conversation.Try to make connections to the larger theme of our course: diversity and social justice in America. Be sure to document these sources properly using MLA.
How will this piece be assessed?
First of all remember that this assignment will not be fully assessed until you include it as a part of your final portfolio project; however, as an initial draft that will be reviewed by members of the class, completing it on time is essential to stay on track toward at least a B in this course. Refer to the grading contract on the syllabus for more information about the importance of meeting all deadlines, and for general information on what makes for exemplary writing in this course.
The basic expectations that I have for average and acceptable work for this assignment are as follows. The work should:
• be a well developed narrative/essay with a strong controlling idea and thoughtful support throughout
• adequately deal with all the questions of the prompt above in a logical, cohesive, and unified manner
• make at least two well developed references to relevant and credible outside sources which shed additional light on the issues connected to your service-learning work
• make use of a formal or informal interview you conducted in the field during your service-learning work
• properly cite and document all sources using MLA
• have an effective title-one that is interesting, representative of the work is about, and creative;
• have an interesting opener and a resonating close
• be no less than 1250 - 1500 words (but it can be more)
• be proofread to ensure it is free from careless mechanical errors
My experience
I went to Cherry Hill woodson 25th of February. Fortunately, I and my friend were only people who came to volunteer at that time, so we could learn more individually. We cut down foreign trees that were harmful to other native trees and then walked with an ecologist. He was a good guy and talked about trees and told us about types of trees like red oak and white oak. I still can tell the difference between red oak and white oak. He told me how much effort a lot of people put for ecology
On the next week, I went to Swallow Cliff woods south on 5th of March. Compared to Cap Sauers Holding, there were more than at least 15 people who came to volunteer. Basically, I and my friend did the same thing that we did last time; we cut down trees that were harmful to native trees. After cutting down trees, we walked with other people and heard a lot about how much effort ecologists put for environment.
Attachment:- Annotated_Bibliography.rar