Service Learning: Ethics

I will first talk about experiences and thoughts that are on my mind before discussing the topic of ethics...
A major issue me and my groupmates have struggled with is what we are going to leave behind for the children at Xa Mẹ. Trying to think of creative ways to help the children learn English, on Monday of the week before last we brought in an outline of a human body drawn out on a large piece of paper along with markers. Our plan was to ask the children which body parts went where, and then to let them draw the body parts and the English and Vietnamese words on the poster. However, while the children started out drawing body parts on the figure, they soon began drawing all over the poster more freely, in a way that didn't follow our plan. Also, it was difficult to implement our more structured plan of having asking the children what went where, since they just started drawing on the poster immediately. From this experience, we learned that: the children love drawing, and it is difficult to implement structured lessons/activities with the children (ie we need to think really creatively about how and to what extent we can and should structure learning and teaching). After filling the poster, the kids ended up drawing freely with the markers on paper that I had. Later that night, Kristine, John, and I talked about how we felt that the children being able to express themselves (ie through drawing) is important and can help improve their self-confidence. We also decided that it would be a good idea to have time and materials for the children to draw with every time we come. The next day, we brought the markers again, let the children draw, and helped some children with their homework. Some children expressed interest in having us teach them English, which we decided to start doing in a more planned way when we came back.
We are still struggling with trying to figure out the ideal amount of structure that should go into our time with the children. While we want to help the children learn as much useful information and skills during our time here, we also recognize that it is difficult set up a relatively controlled learning environment. Because several children did express interest in learning English, we decided that we will try to teach English basics in the most effective and useful way possible. This will require a certain amount of structure, but we think that it will also require a lot of creativity to think about how we can make the activities and lessons as interactive and fun as possible. This way, we hope that the children will actually enjoy learning and remember what we teach them. We also want to think about focusing on information and skills that will actually be useful for the children to know. We are trying to be as flexible and creative as possible, in order to have the biggest positive impact on the kids that we can.
Today, we plan to start out our "real" English lessons with the alphabet and letter sounds. We are bringing in a big poster with the letters of the alphabet, as well as small pieces of paper with English words and pictures, which the children have to match with the letters. We are going to have to see how today goes before really knowing what to plan next, since every service learning day is pretty unpredictable...We may decided to focus more on letter sounds tomorrow, or may move on to basic phrases.

In terms of ethics, I feel that our responsibilities are to:
1. Have a net positive impact on the kids
Our main concern regarding having a negative impact is that the children will get really attached to us, and then we will in a sense traumatize them by leaving in December. Every time we come, I think that we all feel that the attachment between the children and us grows. It's really important to all of us that we are not only leaving the children behind with memories of just hanging out and having fun with us. We ideally want to leave the children with greater self-confidence, and knowledge and skills that will stay with them and help them after we leave. Hopefully we can integrate teaching English with helping the children express themselves and feel capable and proud of who they are.
We also decided that it would be really nice to leave the children with a kind of yearbook that would include pages on what we learned and did, along with pictures and personal letters from me, Kristine, and John. We also intend to start talking about the fact that when we are leaving about three weeks before our last day (they already know that we are leaving, but we want to remind them). We hope that these efforts will make our departure less abrupt and will remind the children of how much we care about them.
2. Following through and being dependable
I think that a major way that we can make sure that we leave the children with a net positive impact is by really being dependable and following through. While we can't control the fact that we have to leave, we can control what we do while we are here. I'm sure that a lot of the children have experience a good deal of insecurity in their lives, and may have problems trusting people. We should be positive role models to the children who provide them with a sense of security and consistency in their lives, rather than taking away from this.

Ultimately, a lot of ethical issues go into working with children in an orphanage. Given that these children don't have the strong adult presence in their lives that most children have, I think that they are more effected by our presence than the average child would be. It's a big responsibility and challenge to maximize the children's benefit from our presence, especially since we are going to be working with them for a very limited time. I really hope that we live up to this challenge, and plan to do everything I can to make it happen.