POLITICS 303 TOPICS IN POLITICAL THEORY DEATH IN AMERICA

Reflective Essay on SL experience

When evaluating service-learning for academic purposes, it is not the ‘service’ per se that counts but rather the reflection and ‘learning’ that occurs as a result of the service experience. Accordingly, it is essential that your reflective paper connect your personal experience at the SL site with some larger national mortality-related controversy or issue involving the sort of work done at the site

Preliminary Instructions:

Consult course materials and your recollections, notes, or journal regarding your SL experience, in order to identify one potentially controversial social issue or dimension pertaining to mortality that the SL site is organized to address.

Obtain instructor’s permission to proceed with the topic.

Locate three recent (within the last 5 years) scholarly journal articles that address the issue identified from distinct perspectives.

In your essay, please include the following:

• Specify the mortality-related social issue at stake.

• Briefly describe the SL site or agency, its size, purpose, and client populations served.

• Briefly describe your role at the site.

• Discuss how your service at this site has ‘brought to life’ or ‘illuminated’ your understanding of the social issue in question. Relate your findings to the controversy or debate as represented by the secondary readings you have selected. In what ways does your experience confirm or disconfirm these other studies and arguments?

• Discuss how the site, local community, or national society might go forward towards a solution or resolution of the issue in question?

Format:

Your 8-10 pp. (or approximately 2400 word) reflective essay should include a title-page, introduction, body, conclusion, and list of references, all of which must comply with one of the standard methods of presenting text and citations.