Service-Learning: Once You See, You Can No Longer Ignore
Service-Learning provides students with the opportunity to apply core concepts learned within the classroom to the interactions and relationships they have with the greater community. It exposes students to view and sometimes live the systematic issues that exist within the community. Service-Learning creates a reciprocal experience where students learn from the community, and the community learns from the students. It allows students to analyze, reflect, and apply the concepts learned in class through consistent interactions, observations, and events that occur while the student serves the community. Overall, Service-Learning revolves around a continuous process of understanding critical social justice, practicing critical thinking, and applying critical theory.
As a student-learner, our role is to be open to being uncomfortable as serving the community will expose students to see and live the unjust reality of many community members. However, once a student-learner see they can no longer ignore. Once the student starts seeing, than the magic happens as they as it becomes easier to understand critical social justice, practice critical thinking, and apply critical theory. As the word itself describes it, a student-learner is continuously learning through its service in the community.
This semester, I will work with Dominican University’s Service-Learning Program along with Canal Alliance to empower the community through participation in the 2020 Census. Participating in the census is everyone’s constitutional right. The census count serves as a metric to distribute federal funding and create political representation. Overall census data helps create a portrait of the country.
Although I have been serving the Canal community for over two years, I did not capture the concept of critically Service-Learning until I got involved with the 2020 census efforts. In the book, “Is Everyone Really Equal?” the authors Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo explains how critical social justice “recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society and actively seek to change this” (xx). Although academic research helped me gain more knowledge about the census and its hard-to-count demographics, Service-Learning challenged me to question the reasons behind the census undercount. With my Service-Learning skills, I concluded that the undercount was not because people did not care to participate, but rather a result of systemic issues that makes hard-to-count communities invisible.
Marin County is considered one of the wealthiest counties in California, yet it is also one of the countries with the highest income disparity rooted in structural racism. When I think back to the first time I visited the Canal, I realize that I would have automatically assumed that the census undercount occurred because participation in the census was not valued in the Latino community. Fortunately, a key component of Service-Learning is critically thinking, which challenged me to “think with complexity [and] go below the surface when considering an issue…” (23). Practicing critical thinking allowed me to understand the root causes and systemic issues on the historical undercount in Marin County. The undercount does not occur because community members do not wish to participate, but because there are structures in place that prevent and challenge community members from executing their constitutional right.
Last semester, I took a course called “Community Engaged Research and Theory,” which encouraged me to start analyzing critical approaches and theories from scholarly readings and applying them to the systemic issues suffered in the community. This course helped me to better understand my community and systemic issues surrounding it. However, one semester was not enough time to create a bigger picture of the impact that our efforts (a reciprocal relationship between the community and I) could have in humanizing our community through participation in the 2020 Census. In other words, using critical theory by guiding our service towards “the ideals of equality and social betterment. (25)” This course, along with my community engagement and census knowledge, have played a crucial role in engaging others in a collective effort to empower our community through their participation in the 2020 Census.
Looking back at my past three years in college, I can undoubtedly say that declaring a Service-Learning minor was one of the best decisions of my life. I feel fortunate to be able to speak to other scholars about how we are learning both through literature and community engagement. The best part of this program is that every semester I get to experience how someone starts “seeing” or becomes critically conscious, and then join our collective efforts to humanize, empower and raises the voices of those we have been silenced.
Karla Hernandez Navarro
