My own personal experience of civic engagement was volunteering and helping to start an afterschool ecology program at PS 126’s urban farm in Manhattan on the Lower East Side.
Q- why would someone decide to do something like this without knowing the possible outcome.
Understanding from across communities and participation by residents across different communities, encourages more participation, raising levels of equity and inclusion.
L- love the involvement of the community.
Communities are made up of individuals and each individual comes from a unique background, maybe a different country, perhaps speaks and feels comfortable in different languages, has their own level of education, family status, and more.
L- I love how this shows us how different but alike we all are.
Active participation can be measured with the help of a survey or questionnaires given to students. These tools can determine how often they get involved within their community and provide a sample of what types of activities they involve themselves in that meet the requirement of civic engagement. Multiple choice questions can be used to gauge a student’s level of active participation and there’s the option of adding open ended questions which will provide more information since a student would have to think back to any prior experience they may have had. Providing open ended questions allows a student to open up and get a closer look and understanding if they know what active participation means. Another option could be to study a focus group of students as this can show if there are any similarities between them about how they view active participation. This could be used to get a sense of how students are thinking about active participation.
I- found it interesting how they take note of participation
It was a lot of physical labor but it was a collaborative day which saw everyone work together to achieve success.
S- I found this surprising because when most people encounter difficulty they tend to give up