Community service is defined as voluntary acts and services that improve and enhance the local community. In this sense, Dominican International School formed the Community Service Learning Program (CSP) to give G12 students opportunities to help people in and out of school. Throughout the course, the students not only serve DIS through various activities but also the Dazhi community. In CSP, the students are divided into groups so that they could separate the duties and help different organizations simultaneously. Some help the school, others go to other schools nearby to teach English lessons, and the rest remain in DIS, teaching English classes that are open to the general public interested in learning English. By providing these services, the students actually learned many valuable lessons and gained lots of experiences. The G12 seniors now know what our community needs and how they could improve the community.
The seniors are divided into three groups: two groups that teach English (inside and outside of DIS) and a group that provides assistance to DIS staff and faculty. One group teaches English to adults. Each week, they will teach people of different ages outside the school. Every week, they prepare different kinds of topics and ways to teach English lessons. For example, practicing conversation in different situations: ordering food, reading books, and understanding song lyrics. The group tries their best to avoid repeating the same topic each week so their students would always be interested when they attend the English class. The group also learned lessons when they are teaching the students; they learned how to confidently communicate with people of different ages. They also learned how to share with people what they know, which is one of the main important purposes of CSP.
Another group of students go to Yong Ann School to teach elementary school students. This group teaches Grade 3 and 4 students. Given the different age group, this group of seniors teach English by playing games that entertain the younger students while allowing them to learn English at the same time. These grade 3 and 4 students have learned a lot from the classes by being engaged in the course and being able to understand the English words they were learning. The seniors also treated them with gifts and are planning to do more fun and educational activities with them so that they can learn English in various ways.
In addition to helping and engaging with community members outside of DIS, the seniors also help with numerous kinds of work at our school. During CSP, two groups from Grade 12 help the hardworking aunties and uncles with wiping windows and cleaning the hallways. They spend their time cleaning areas around school to ensure a clean and tidy learning environment for all DIS students.
Another group helps the MIT office, where they assist Mr. Ian and Mr. Ed with computer documents and other files. With the constant renewal of technology, it is important that all files are updated, organized, and saved properly so that the history of DIS can be well treasured.
In the guidance office, a group of students work alongside Ms. Anne. Every time when there is college seminars or college fairs, this group of students help Ms. Anne to set up the booths and take care of the representatives from the universities that visit DIS. Other times, these students would stay inside the guidance office and help Ms. Anne to arrange and archive files, such as the IOWA tests and school reports. This group of students showed great responsibility and they would always finish their tasks on time. In fact, they put their passion into services and have reduced Ms. Anne’s workload. With their help, our guidance office has become more organized.
With all these various activities distributed to the seniors during CSP, they experienced different hardships and encountered many challenges. As DIS seniors, they developed a lot of passion and problem-solving skills each time they endure these difficulties. They not only learned the skills of helping people in need and acquired novel knowledge after each lesson, but also obtained a sense of accomplishment and warmth through the process of searching the meaning and purpose of helping each other. They have learned that cooperation is the key to success and being observant to one’s surroundings is extremely important in discovering people’s needs. As a result, CSP is not just a class for senior students to help people in need but also a lesson for them to acquire both cognitive and non-cognitive skills that they will surely integrate into their lives in the future.
