Cleaning Drains and Roadsides Together: EFL Teachers and Learners Enacting Service-Learning (Published)
Service-learning tasks practiced by EFL teachers and learners are rare phenomena in Bangladesh. In fact, the lessons of service-learning haven’t been integrated into the EFL classrooms in Bangladesh so far. Consequently, it is obvious that teachers and learners in this field are not seen performing community welfare services anywhere in the country. I have been teaching English at university level for the last 10 years and have had no experience of the incorporation of service-learning and EFL teaching and learning in Bangladeshi context, which made me think and inspired me to begin with the good idea. With only little theoretical knowledge, I started talking on service-learning and motivating my students about it, which many of them responded to from a sense of civic responsibility. Subsequently, I presented the idea of actuating the knowledge of service-learning, and together we chose to clean drains and roadsides in Khulna City in Bangladesh. This article describes how we accomplished the task together and what we felt about it.
Keywords: Cleaning, EFL Learner., EFL Teacher, Service-learning, Together