Each year, at the end of the first semester, students across the high school collaborate to improve impoverished areas across our local community. With ICARE approaching, many students have already begun preparing for how they plan to help the communities at their designated sites.
ICARE is an engaging experience that allows students to develop their collaborative and problem-solving skills, showing empathy to others from underprivileged backgrounds. While some students embrace this opportunity with ambitious aims, others sometimes favor spending time with friends and checking off the ICARE requirement. Recently, cultural competency has been the focus of the ICARE supervisors and council as they aim to raise awareness of the underlying purpose of ICARE. Cultural competency is one’s ability to understand, communicate, and respect people across different cultural backgrounds, requiring the awareness of one’s own cultural biases and empathy. The question is, does ICARE truly instill this in students?
From one perspective, ICARE improves students’ cultural competency by offering opportunities to engage with diverse individuals and conduct meaningful reflection. By immersing students in marginalized communities, they can gain understanding and experiences they wouldn’t easily have otherwise. For instance, students collaborating with Upskills in Caliraya have the opportunity to lead workshops that address specific struggles being faced by individuals in the Tondo community. These experiences not only allow students to deepen their understanding of the challenges faced by individuals from different backgrounds but also develop empathy and a true desire to help.
Compared to many other schools that organize fun trips abroad, ICARE encourages students to engage with others in making a difference in local communities and supporting those in need. This fosters a deeper empathy, awareness, and open-mindedness, all essential in building cultural competency. Ultimately, it’s clear that the intentions and core focus of ICARE aim to cultivate a stronger global awareness in students; however, to what extent are they truly effective?
While ICARE does offer valuable opportunities that aim to develop student’s cultural competency, it also has its challenges and limitations that hinder the effectiveness of achieving these goals. One key issue mentioned by Ines, a senior student on the ICARE council, was that although “it should be a student initiative, this doesn’t always work.” ICARE is designed to be led by the students with the supervision of teachers; however, sometimes this vision doesn’t always come to fruition.
One factor that plays into this is the inconsistency in balancing teacher and student leadership. While some supervisors provide clear structure and goals for students to initiate, others can be too lenient, leaving students without sufficient direction or support and vice-versa. Another factor affecting this is that not all students always have an equal opportunity to lead and engage. Because upperclassmen are primarily prioritized to fulfill their CAS project, underclassmen aren’t always equally encouraged, sometimes showing less initiative. In addition, students often move to sites that allow them to be with friends rather than for the service opportunity itself. In these cases, students are sometimes placed at a site that was not their top choice and thus can no longer focus on their desired community or cause. Tendencies like this also reveal students’ priorities, highlighting the superficiality of wealthy communities, such as ISM, visiting poor areas without the intent or initiative to achieve impactful causes. Several ICARE sites have long been service partners of ISM, however, with students each year doing the same activities it’s clear we aren’t striving for a different result.
Finally, to answer the question of whether or not students truly develop a deeper sense of cultural competency, both sides of the argument must be equally considered to determine so. While ICARE encompasses cultural competency as a key component of the learning experience, it can also lack guided initiative, consistent structure, and specific goals that truly instill this in all students. Implementing equal leadership opportunities, meaningful discussions, and constructive feedback for continuous improvements are just some of the ways this can be improved. However, it is ultimately up to the students to fully embrace ICARE as an opportunity to learn, grow, and gain valuable experiences.
Bibliography:
DeAngelis, Tori. “In Search of Cultural Competence.” Https://Www.apa.org, 2015, http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/03/cultural-competence. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
