Students in Action


Oſten the term “community service” brings to mind canned food drives and visits to the local senior citizens’ centre. While these efforts are valuable, current thinking about student outreach is best described as “service learning”. Service learning catalyses student initiative, involves student research, relies on student-led decision-making, and coordinates student action around a meaningful opportunity to help others, whether locally, regionally, or internationally.


Importantly, a main goal of service learning is to foster students’ critical thinking and help them develop hands-on leadership skills. Hong Kong Academy takes seriously the idea that education is as much about skills and dispositions, or habits of mind, as it is about gaining knowledge as more traditionally defined. In a rapidly changing world, students need to know how to learn about and analyse the issues impacting their lives and then also be able to take meaningful action to advocate for change, both for themselves and for others.


This year HKA has created the role of Student Action Coordinator to support student initiatives and action through service learning in the Primary School and the Secondary School. In this role I am tasked with the responsibility of providing opportunities, structure and support to enable our students to engage with their world and work to solve global problems, whether or locally or abroad. When students are provided with the skills and opportunities to take action, they will inevitably make a positive contribution to their community.


This year my main goal as Student Action Coordinator is to empower students to take action for the betterment of our community, starting in Sai Kung and reaching beyond. In more traditional models of community service, teachers and other adults oſten make decisions unilaterally about how students will reach out to their communities. Sometimes this approach works well, but more oſten, students become disaffected when they are leſt out of the decision-making process. They participate because they have to, but they “phone it in”, as the saying goes.


The service learning model, in contrast, begins with the students’ voices and values students as key stakeholders in decisions about community service. Service learning also looks to develop service and leadership opportunities to which students are uniquely suited; in a service learning project, students don’t just “show up” to an event, they drive the service project in a way that is developmentally appropriate. Relatedly, the service learning model assumes that students benefit most from community service when they actively study and discuss issues with teachers and mentors and then translate their learnings into strategic responses to the issues that they have themselves identified.


Helping secondary students move into that sort of “big picture” thinking is an exciting task for a teacher! As the Student Action Coordinator, I’m looking forward to developing HKA’s Service Learning and working with our students as they make a difference in their world.


2


HKA


BY RICHARD REILLY, STUDENT ACTION COORDINATOR


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12