For this service-learning project, we created a curriculum to educate students and bring awareness to the 5 Human Relations ISMS. Our lesson focused on diversity for middle school students and how they can learn how to be more inclusive. The students participated in an ISM essay contest to apply these ISMS to their personal experiences. Our group brainstormed our lesson plan and got in touch with a few potential teachers to work with at different middle schools in Norman. Each member of the group focused on a specific ISM to research and teach about. The group put together a PowerPoint presentation, that included video examples and definitions, to help complete the lesson. Once our lesson was complete, we worked with Abby at Longfellow Middle School and agreed on a date for us to come in and teach our lesson and introduce the essay contest. The students had a week to write their essays. Once we got the essays back, we created a grading system to narrow down the winners. The winners were chosen, and we made videos to announce the winners, and sent them certificates and candy as a prize. Students understood the lesson and successfully displayed their knowledge and experiences through their essays they wrote. We were able to teach about the values of Human Relations, while also learning ourselves through the middle schooler’s perspectives. After reading and grading, 3 winners were chosen for each ISM. We journaled our experiences with this project throughout the semester to reflect on what we were learning. We used feedback to implement revisions and next steps for the project. The next steps with this service-learning project would be to present and haves lessons that will be saved to give to future groups who want to continue this project, work with more schools in the future to teach this lesson to and possibly modify presentation to fit different ages/grades.
I think that this project went really well and would be easy to go and do in more school across the OKC area and the surrounding neighborhoods. I think there is a lot to learn with this presentation about the 5 HR ISM’s. I think that in the future the groups can make handouts and maybe teach more in depth about the ISM’s rather than a just quick 30-minute lesson. I feel like there can also be a way to teach this to children in elementary school too. I think that it would be a great idea to have smaller children learn ISM”s so they can have at least somewhat of an awareness of themselves and others. I think it would be important to do so because when we are young, we are learning our environment, about ourselves and about others. If we can stress why people are different than ourselves and that is okay, then maybe it would reduce the amount of bullying. For the activity, the children could write a paragraph on what they learned. As a mentioned above, I think it would be great for older students to do this too, maybe in a more detailed matter…more like a lesson…maybe a lesson on each ISM and then a student could write an essay on which ISM. I think this would be a good idea because many students go onto college and are surrounded with people and ideas that are so very different than theirs. I think young people have a lot of ignorance and could use these ISMS as a way to think back to and be accepting of different people that they meet.
I think our project was pretty flawless. I think that everything went right except that some of the pairs that went to students didn’t have enough time to play the trash can game with the students. I think our presentation and the outline of the essays for the students worked really well, since we got amazing stories from the 7th graders. I think that if we choose to make lessons for high schoolers or maybe even 8th graders, I think the future groups need to have great time management, confidence in teaching a lesson and have time to do so in their day.
I feel like an undertone of our 5 ISM’S presentation is bullying and inclusion. I think learning about ISM’s with the examples we gave were reasons why people would be bullied….their skin color, the way the dress or whether they have a disability or not. Bullying can be very debilitating for young children and can causes trauma for them later on in life.
A theory that I have chosen that represents the 5 ISM Essay contest is the Melting Pot Theory. This theory is that there are many people of different cultures, ethnicities, background experiences… they all come together, “mix” in this big “melting pot” (Maddern, 2013) . I think that this can be related to the ISM project because we talk about Racism, Ableism, Ageism, Sexism… all these ISMS have different life experiences, races, different backgrounds that support this theory. I hope that these 7th grades can grasp the concept that people are different and that is okay through this ISM Essay contest. I choose this one because I know in 7th grade, the students are figuring out who they are, and who their friends are. No one is going to be the same. My second theory I have chosen is Intersectionality. Intersectionality is an idea made by a woman named Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality help describes race, class, gender, and other characteristics of a person and how they intersect with one another in that person’s life (Coaston, 2019). Some of the 7th graders might have an awareness of what kind of effect their gender, class, race will have on them now and later in their life. I think it is important to start self-exploring and see how intersectionality plays into their life. Intersectionality is important to understand as it has an effect on everyone’s life like how much you get paid, what socioeconomic class you fall into, or even your physical and mental health.
Our Service-learning project encompassed all ISMS. We really wanted these kids to have a chance to learn and choose which ISM is right for them and are confident enough for them to write their paper about.
