Why You Should Try Service Learning

Why You Should Try Service Learning

By Mae Sakharov June 26, 2014 Blog of Shanti Generation

A group of Haitian students enjoy a daytime yoga class led by our team of Urban Zen Integrative Therapists.

Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection. Adding service learning to mindfulness curriculum can be a key towards opening the heart of youth participants to the world. To serve others is an act of love when it is based on reciprocity.

My most recent journey with service learning began in 2008 when I discovered Urban Zen. Founded by Donna Karan, Urban Zen’s Integrative Therapist program trains practitioners to transform patient care in hospitals, healthcare education in nursing schools, self-care in the home, and emergency relief in disasters. 

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, I traveled with Urban Zen’s integrative therapists to the country to provide respite for workers, administration and volunteers at St. Damien’s Hospital–the largest and free pediatric hospital in the country. In preparation for the trip, we received support from the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in working with trauma relief.

Haiti is home to courageous people who, along with the devastating earthquake, have lived with poverty, high crime rates and despotic politics for many generations. It cannot be denied that Post Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) abounds. Despite catastrophic misfortunes and natural disasters, many Haitians remain resilient and work toward a brighter future.

On the second floor of St. Damien’s hospital in a beautiful light-filled facility overlooking the mountains of Haiti, our first class included a group of women whose job was washing diapers, some for over 25 years. Leaning over a bucket, hour after hour they labored with seemingly beatific continence. These women quietly took their seats for a chair yoga session. Behind the chairs, fellow therapists applied Reiki and the lavender oils. Later we were told that these sessions were the first time our participants had ever been given a break during what was a very long and labor intensive workday.

Session after session filled with people of all ages and a variety of backgrounds. Men who were responsible for maintenance sat next to pediatricians and oncologists. Simple yoga moves relaxed and focused the body, the healing touch of Reiki, along with awareness of the gift of breath provided a universe of healing. The simplicity was transcendent. Toward the end of the each session, time was given for integration and meditation. Each participant left revived, relaxed and ready to go back to the ever-present bustle and atmosphere filled with the unexpected that exists in hospitals.

Since that first trip, six additional Urban Zen teams have continued to win the confidence of staff at St. Damien’s. The patient interaction has increased, as has our permission to work in expanded sites including the adult hospital St. Luc’s, the school for children, another day school for severely special needs children, many pediatric rooms for HIV positive children, those with cancer, and abandoned babies. Although there are an overwhelming number of disparate needs, the hospital has created a community feeling, and the atmosphere draws one in immediately.

Small efforts make a difference. Standing with the Haitian people in whatever way is requested to look toward a better tomorrow is an honor that I cannot overestimate. I encourage you to find a service learning project in your community that allows you and your students to give back with compassionate mindfulness.

Clarence written for Talk Story at Bucks County Playhouse--Father of the Heart

Clarence was the handyman at Sunny Oaks a hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York where my father sent me every summer after my mother died. He knew the owner from volunteering at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Brooklyn.

 I loved going to the mountains, where I had little supervision and could spend my days swimming and rock climbing and nights talking to Clarence. He was from the south and came up north to Philadelphia with his wife Theola and their son Willy.

Clarence was a very religious Southern Baptist and I considered him to be my second father. Every night we would sit out near the shed on a bench near where the garbage was kept and he would tell me stories that began with “Praise the Lord”; I loved to hear him share Bible stories and about his life down South. 

Once, Clarence asked Theola to comb my hair; which was unruly and unkempt. “Every little girl has to have someone come their hair real nice and you have such pretty curls” Theola took me up to the attic room where I stayed and spent what must have spent hours,combing out the knots. When she was satisfied we came back to where Clarence was sitting, “ Praise the Lord, you sure are pretty.”

During the winter, I missed Clarence so much and when feeling poorly, I would cry for his comforting presence. I looked foreword to seeing him every summer, and our talks on the bench near the shed where the garbage cans were kept. 

When I was thirteen, Clarence told me that we could not sit together anymore because people would talk.  “One day all this will change” That summer Sunny Oaks lost its luster, and I never returned or saw Clarence again.

Dr. Mae Sakharov and Associates: Kirby Fredendall Art Portfolio Development and Review

Art Portfolio Prepartion

•  KIRBY FREDENALL helps students to develop a strong, coherent art portfolio. She will assess the work that the student has already and discuss work that needs to be done. Meetings are structured to completely cater to the individual needs of the student, whether they need critique on continuing work or simply help organizing. She can help students photograph their work for digital submission or organize their physical work for an interview. 

If you are applying to a liberal arts program and you are a strong art student, including an art portfolio with your application is a great idea.

If you are planning to attend National Portfolio Day you will need a strong portfolio to take with you.

Kirby Fredenall, has lived in the local Bucks County area for 44 years. She was raised in Carversville, left the area to receive her BA in Art History from Duke University and returned to earn her MEd in Art Education from Arcadia Universtiy and is certified in K-12 Art. She has taught at Solebury School in New Hope for 21 years. 

Students have taken classes ranging from begining to advanced painting & drawing, design, collage, life drawing, ap art, and portfolio presentation. Her students have gone on to attend Moore College of Art & Design, FIT, MICA, Chicago Institute of Art, & Tyler to name a few. 

Please visit the Glendale Art Studio

http://www.glendaleartstudio.com

No Dream Schools-Please

This season is my thirty-first year as a college advisor and career counselor. Prior, I spent a time working at Admissions at Columbia University and volunteered as a tutor and dissertation advisor. I find myself, as excited as ever and eager to lend support this year’s group of students on an adventure whose results are months away.

Things have certainly changed over the decades, in terms of rabid competition, outlandish costs, and uncertain prospects for employment. I have been mulling over the concept of a dream school, based on a student’s imagination, glossy photographs, and choreographed tours.

Prospective students, oftentimes get fixated forgetting that dreams are best when grounded in reciprocity. The best college for most aspirants is the one that wants them and is going to be affordable.

Sharing from my mind’s legacies:

1)   A talented student was accepted to an Ivy League college and another fine school with a full scholarship and living expenses. After some lamentation, he went for the one that funded his education, and later came back to grad school at that same Ivy.

2)   Barely distinguished students, from a local high school with most abysmal grades-found themselves with rejections. Each was accepted to the same more liberal minded, more opened enrollment school in Washington State. Once at college, they became star students on their way to become physicians

3)   One student hated city schools and was fearful of leaving the suburbs. She was accepted into a wonderful urban school with a guaranteed admission to graduate school in Occupational Therapy. After a short period of adjustment, she is thriving.

4)   His so-called safety schools rejected him, a student with less then average grades and a wonderful heart.  added another college, more competitive, and dedicated to seeing individual potential. This same student was accepted to the more competitive school and awarded a Merit scholarship. His mother received an email from admissions saying how wonderful a person her son was.

5)   A student was unhappy about her college choices, decided on a gap year was set on a small liberal arts school. After the year, this girl had many acceptances and chose an urban university where she thrived.

6)   A boy had his heart set on playing soccer and realized that the school he pontificated about attending was totally wrong. After one semester, he changed course and found himself exactly in the right environment.

   

I have so many more stories to share—but will close with the warning—no fixations—leave the door open-for opportunity to knock.