Writing Partners
As a part of an introduction to service-learning, which is an educational approach where a student applies and volunteers their knowledge from the classroom to an agency, in my Honors First-Year Seminar course, I was assigned a sixth-grader with whom I was supposed to exchange letters with. Through this program, I was provided the opportunity to teach and learn through a letter exchange with children from elementary school. I was able to converse with the sixth-grader through letters that we wrote to each other every couple of weeks. While it was a short time, I was able to provide advice for achieving his goals, how to balance his academic and social life, and what to look forward to in his academic career. At the same time, I was able to think critically about my own beliefs about education because I wanted to provide my partner with my best advice. I was forced to really think and analyze my own beliefs about education in order to not send my partner on his academic journey with the wrong mindset. Through this program, I was able to realize the importance of education and our future generations. In order for our society to continuously prosper, we need to provide our future generations with good mentorship and education. By reading the first letter that was given to me by my partner, I realized just how impressionable children were and made sure to provide the best advice I could in order to set him on a successful path. The most rewarding part of this program was being able to finally meet my partner over zoom after a whole semester of only communicating through letters. Before the program started, we only knew the first names of each other and did not know what each other looked like. Over the zoom call, I was actually able to talk with him and really find out about his personality and aspirations. By the end of the program, I was able to reanalyze my beliefs on education, provide advice for a part of our future generation, and develop a feeling of responsibility of setting up a path for future generations.