Service Learning!

Every Wednesday, students attend an anti-bullying Olweus class. One of the requirements of Olweus is that every class complete a service learning project. I believe Facebook could assist students with completing their service projects. The service project that my class has completed every year is that we sell May Day baskets and with the money we buy food. The food that we purchase is distributed to families in need. We only purchase food that students can make on their own. This way students are hopefully able to make sure they have food that they can cook.

While the May baskets are for sell, we also hold a building wide competition to see which Olweus can bring in the most cans. We have a parent who donates ice cream and each grade level has one Olweus wins. The students could use Facebook to invite parents and other community members to participate in the food drive. I envision that we would have a huge response from people in the community and that would enable us to help so many more families. As a teacher, I believe that we would have to be in control and monitor any interaction on Facebook.

The school district that I work in is changing and the need for assistance is growing. After a meeting a school board member shared on Facebook what our building was doing to assist families during the holidays and how the needs had changed. We had people that had no connection to our building bring in donations to assist these families. It was amazing to see! So I believe that we could use social networking to assist in completing our service learning.