My Role and Responsibility

What? My identity is interdependent with others because I identify as a human being, just as many people in this world do. As human beings, our sense of meanings may be similar, but the way we bring out our sense of meanings may be different. For example, I know that my biggest goal is to try to bring justice to the world and right the wrongs in our society. I am doing that by helping others who need my help, and my work is interdependent with others because I can’t help others if people don’t give me guidance and an opportunity to do so. In my service learning experience, the job of the school, teachers, and principal is to help the children do well in school and go to high school and college. All the principals and teachers have a different role they play in carrying out that goal because the teacher has to teach, while the principal has to help regulate the school. Their sense of meaning depend on each other’s because the teachers can’t reach their goal without the principal, while the principal can’t reach her goal without the teachers. My job is to help the students with their homework, and my ability to do so depends on the teachers and the principal, which explains how our sense of meanings are all interdependent. My well-being (state of being comfortable and happy) is dependent on others because I know that I will have a good well-being only if the children have a good well-being. If the children are not feeling comfortable, I know that it will affect my well being as well. Therefore, the state of how comfortable the children and the teachers are has a significant effect on well-being.

After working with my community partner, I came to realize that there are so many people that need my help, and I have a duty to do something about the issues that many people who are not as fortunate as me face. On my first day, I remember being stunned when I was able to help a child who needed help with math, and I never thought I would be playing the role my mother played for me when I was a kid. After learning that the kid did not have access to the resources that I had as a child, I understood that I need to lend a helping hand to those who need my help rather than wasting my free time. Because of the experiences I come across in Service Learning, I decided to dedicate my summer volunteering at a Hospice Center to comfort terminally ill patients before their death. Even though this isn’t similar to what I have been doing in Service Learning, I know my role is to help not just kids who are in need of my help, but also all people who need my assistance. As Freire mentions in Pedagogy of Freedom “In other words, though I know that things can get worse, I also know that I am able to intervene to improve them” (53). To me, this quote means that even though the children I am helping may not be doing as well in school or the hospice patients I plan to help in the summer may be dying a painful death, at least I can do something to help the children get better and help make the last moments of the hospice patients’ life on earth enjoyable before they pass away.

So What? Based on what we have learned in class, the people who do not fit in the status quo are the most impacted and marginalized by systemic issues in our society. Some examples I people of color such as black people or hispanic people, and women. For this prompt I would like to focus on black people. One of the biggest issues that black people faced was slavery, which started somewhere in the 1600s(“Slavery in America”). These people were looked down upon because of the color of their skin, and they were treated as animals. However, after black people were liberated from slavery (though modern day slavery still goes on), segregation then came. Again, people were looked down upon because of their skin color, and they would have poorer schools, bathrooms, and facilities that white people. These biggest moments in history have shaped the structures that still exist in our society today, and they explain why black people are some people who are the most impacted and marginalized in our society. I believe we do have a collective responsibility to challenge and correct the structures that perpetuate inequity. We are all human beings, and we must stand up to fight for one another when other people oppress us. As Paulo Freire mentions in Pedagogy of Freedom, “It was becoming simultaneously clear that human existence is, in fact, a radical and profound tension between good and evil, between dignity and indignity, between decency and indecency, between the beauty and the ugliness of the world” (53). Freire mentions this quote as a way to state that humans are all capable doing the right thing in the world, and it is our responsibility to choose what is right. In addition, working at the Service Learning site helped me to realize why I must stand up for structural issues because there are many children who are struggling in subjects such as math and english, and they really need my help. Rather than being indifferent and turning a blind eye to those in need, I know it is my responsibility to help the children who are struggling with school so they can have an opportunity to do well in life and support themselves. Therefore, as human beings it is important to do what is right by challenging and correcting the structures that perpetuate our inequity.

Now What?With this knowledge, I see my role in helping others not just as an action that will benefit one individual person, but also as a role that can have an effect on a bigger structural issue. I know that my role will never be complete, and I will always have an “unfinishedness” as Paulo Freire mention. He states, “Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished. Education does not make us educable. It is our awareness of being unfinished that makes us educable” (58). When Freire states this, I know that the “unfinishedness” I am faced with is the achievement gap, which is one of the biggest problems that lies beneath my work. Every time I go to Davidson Middle School, I always think of the achievement gap that exists, and I remember the reasons why it exists. I know that my work at Davidson alone can’t make a big change that will close up the achievement gap. However, I know that my role at Davidson does help each child there who needs my help. Therefore, my role in helping children at Davidson is to not only help children individually, but also remember that my end goal is to try to address the bigger issue behind why the children at Davidson need my help. Although I am not one hundred percent sure how I can fix the achievement gap, nor am I sure if it will ever be fixed in my lifetime, I know that I can start finding a way to fix the gap by doing more research into why the achievement gap exists, and finding possible ways to fix this gap by talking to others that are passionate about this issue.

Some ways people can think and act to create a more equitable and just world is by thinking about the pain and injustices that people in the minority are suffering from, and possibly volunteering or doing something to help the oppressed people in need of our help. In my experience at Service Learning, I always try to empathize and sympathize with the children by putting myself into their position. Although this sounds cliche, it is a technique that helps me a lot in reminding me of my goal to help the children who are in need of my help. Because I understand their pain, that allows me to help them with their math homework without feeling burned out and exhausted. I remember learning in one of my psychology classes that learning to empathize with others can lead to altruistic acts, or acts that benefit other people. Therefore, volunteering to help those in need and empathizing with others is a way that people can think and act to create a more equitable and just world.

Editors, History.com. “Slavery in America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 12 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery.