Civic Learning and Community Engagement
Working with Mason alum for the Alumni Leadership Speaker Series.
As W.E.B Dubois once said, “To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.” I have played with fire throughout my time here at Mason. To me, community engagement is a learning experience to those involved. Stimulating each other’s minds on what it means to engage within the community, whether it be one you directly identify with, or one a community that you are an ally of.
Working with different on campus groups and communities quickly taught me that the best way to create a positive impact on a community is to directly engage with them. I saw this at work during my time working with the Godwin Middle School. On the day of the Godwin Leadership Conference, we handed out pre-assessments to the students that asked questions like, “Do you feel like you’re a strong leader?” or “Do you feel like you have the resources to make a change within your community?” Before the conference, most of the students rated themselves with low scores, after spending a day with them and teaching them how to properly engage with their community, their scores were higher and they felt more confident within themselves.
Of course you can learn many things in the classroom, but civic learning extends beyond the classroom and is heightened with application. When you can go out and apply the things you learn in a classroom to a real world situation, that shows that you are truly understanding and applying what you’ve learned. This also shows that you are dedicated to the work you are doing. After taking Active Leaders last semester, I felt like I had the resources and knowledge to impact my community in a major way. I implemented things learned in the classroom to the community partnership with Godwin.
Further, I was able to make a positive change within the community after the racial tensions at the University of Missouri. The LEAD Office decided to create a space where everyone affected could come and feel the after effects of the devastating events. That is what community engagement means to me. Having a community come together to engage with the current events in the world and acknowledge that certain things exist, and create an initiative to help combat these issues.