Critical reflection
You will need to submit an essay of at least 4 pages in length (you may write more if you wish) essay describing your reflections on your community service experience. Your reflection may include your reactions, feelings, observations, and ideas regarding your activity. At a minimum, the critical reflection should include: (1) a brief history/description of the organization that you are working for, its component parts, roles, activities, purposes, goals, the services it provides, etc.; (2) a description of the nature of volunteer experience, the skills you used and/or developed through your activities; and most importantly, (3) what you learned as a result of this process, about yourself, the organization, the political system, the political process, etc. In essence, you are asked to critically reflect on the experience, and your essay will be evaluated on how well you analyze the experience and how well you integrate what you’ve learned in the class with your community service project. This last part is the most important part of the essay and should be at least half of your paper length. We will workshop in class how you can make connections to the course with the work you’re doing.
The program is called “Our City Forest” http://www.ourcityforest.org/plant-trees