The positive impact of community hours in college

Community hours in college are an effective means of education, socialization, and self-realization of personality, which is critical for the formation of professional and personal qualities of future specialists. Especially professional activity which is by definition socially significant and socially important, such as social teachers.

Participation of students in public hours leads to the emergence of various psychological effects: a positive change in the communicative consciousness and communicative skills, the development of empathy, the creativity of personality, and the formation of social activity aimed at changing and transforming the surrounding reality.

How volunteering affects students

To learn the reason for the existence of community service hours and to enjoy the process, you should learn more about what it is.  Thanks to community service essay examples, you will quickly understand how community hours and volunteering affects people. Why it's worth doing and exactly what students get out of it.

During college, students are introduced to the form and content of volunteer activities, learning to work in a team of volunteers while using pedagogical technologies in the social sphere. In the educational environment, they master the methods of the effective group and individual communication, and practical skills of using various pedagogical technologies in student volunteering.

Volunteering activity solves two problems at the same time. Firstly, it promotes the successful socialization of pupils in the social institutions where volunteers work. Secondly, the volunteers themselves gain invaluable experience in the activity, helping others.

Volunteer hours for college

Students' participation in the volunteer group work creates the preconditions for their professional self-determination and provides their self-realization in extracurricular activities. And also promotes the expansion of borders of professional creativity and the formation of professional competencies.

The experience gained in volunteer activities creates the basis of the position that the person will occupy throughout his/her life. The student who realized himself in socially significant activity, and in adult life will be a participative person, taking a direct part in the life of society, will not be afraid of responsibility, will be a creator, can work in a team, to lead and be led, that is a person who has a leadership position.

Society needs an educational system that is:

• Can realize its functions in an open society, not limited to the confines of an educational institution;
• Recognizes the need to influence the development of the social activity of young people to eradicate infantilism, dependency in all forms of its manifestations, and consumer psychology;
• Is functionally prepared for socio-pedagogical work with all categories of people: children, adults;
• To the implementation of partnerships with specialists of social services, and employers.

Benefits of volunteer activities

These conditions are provided by the volunteer activities of students in various volunteer associations. Leading modern teachers, psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists believe that voluntary public activities of future teachers today can not only help to solve many social problems of society.

Why public hours are so important

Social activity – a stable property of the person and a set of socially significant actions aimed at intensive, conscious interaction with the social environment.  It is carried out in the process of activity to transform themselves and society by the objectives of social development.

Based on the study of theoretical approaches to the concept of “public hours”, social and age characteristics of students of secondary vocational education, developments of academic teachers on the criteria of social activity, and stages of assimilation of social experience, its components were identified:

• A set of structural attributes of social activity (cognitive, behavioral, emotional),
• Qualities of a personality (humanistic, civic, business),
• The social experience of a person (experience of interaction, mastery of social roles, social position).

Types of social activity

It should be noted that social activity during public hours can only be considered in conjunction with a particular type of activity. Traditionally, the following types of social activity are distinguished:

• Labor.
• Social and political.
• Cognitive.

Labor activity can be aimed at gaining a certain experience in the professional sphere, skills, and abilities, aimed at the prospect of further career development, and only to earn money regardless of the type of activity and further goals.

What is the positive effect of public hours on students

Public hours or volunteer hours for college develops students' leadership skills that are necessary for life and professional work:

• The ability to engage a cause,
• Get people interested,
• Organize people,
• Organize yourself,
• Obtain support from state and commercial structures, etc.

In the process of public hours, students replenish professional experience, expand their horizons, increase their cultural level, develop social intelligence, creative abilities, etc.

Conclusion

As a whole, public hours in college and volunteering activity allows the student not only to become a professional in this or that activity, providing a ground for self-realization and self-organization, being a source of interesting leisure time and social connections, but also promoting the realization of one of the main tasks of innovative education – actualization of moral qualities based on value and semantic self-determination of students in college.