Servant Leader Leadership role in Environmental Service Learning

Published: March 2, 2022
Ashutosh Mishra

4 min read


Leaders can support and cooperate with youths willing to do something for our environment. One of the reasons for becoming a leader is to contribute to own community in a meaningful way. The student council members would join the sustainability project, creating the objective of achieving SDGs by 2030. The concept of teaching Sustainability from the grassroots level, such as for first-year university students, the subject of teaching lab is vital in the general education course in many Thai universities. Service-learning in education provides a method of teaching through which people learn and develop through which people learn and grow through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences. When combined with existing studies or additional curricula, these provide teachers, youth leaders, and the community with an effective means of cultivating environmental service. Youth leaders engage in activities that need to have social activities for the community area nearby and experience of service, which can be used for self-reflection and lifelong learning.

Education should not be a primary job responsibility for only schools and universities. They should also be busy fulfilling duties such as service learning. Therefore, service projects that complete a part of their regular work duties will be more attractive than those requiring additional effort.

In the 21st century, all countries have their own unique set of concerns, alongside global issues, for which there is a growing pressure to find fair and sustainable solutions. Leadership must be adaptable and constantly evolve to ensure always more equity.

It is essential that higher education institutions fully contribute to sustainable and democratic societies. Route of learning designed to nurture essential skills such as creative mind, thinking, and gross rote level learning, required by the next generation of leaders.

Education institutes no longer tell students what to think; instead, they teach them how to think. Education for Sustainable Development Initiative presented a conceptual framework for lifelong learning and added the fifth pillar – Learning to TRANSFORM ONESELF and SOCIETY – it is the learning through which individuals and groups gain knowledge, develop skills, and acquire new values as a result of education, they are equipped with tools and mindsets for creating lasting change in organizations, communities, and societies. (AIU HESD 2021).

Education institutions help student leaders gain expertise in their field but foster reflective and critical habits of mind, empathy, skills of collaboration, listening, and taking action for environmental projects. New generation leaders are learning these powerful institutions of knowledge to expand traditional measures of quality with a greater focus on creating a better world on an equitable and ethical basis.


Approach

Several universities offer servant leadership educational programs, including community visits, leadership camps, booths, and some degree programs.

Additionally, servant leadership practices are used beyond the classroom in the form of servant teaching student leadership can be a philosophy, a set of servant leadership skills. Servant leaders concentrate on performance planning, day-to-day coaching, and helping people achieve

Sustainable learning lab: Universities need to become role models for environmental learning. Education institutions need to provide research platforms and take action to leverage the campus as a test-bed for innovation and the co-production of sustainability leadership knowledge and practices.

Reforming academic courses: Aims to address the well-being and happiness of students with a strong emphasis on mindfulness, self-awareness, critical thinking, reflection& other social-emotional skills. Academic need to design a syllabus for upcoming demanding skills. Student knowledge and practice in skills mean he also serves talent to others.

Training and Development: Universities must be more flexible and adaptable. In the new Era, universities work on achieving 17 SDG, such as climate change, sustainable cities and communities, quality of education, life on land, etc. Lifelong learning is also required where student alumni leaders and senior people would want to come and upskill themselves with short development courses.

Volunteer Workshop: Building the distinctive capabilities that will allow working on a grassroots level. Students need to actively participate in selfless acts or activities that benefit others. It has a significant impact on the community as a whole. Student leaders develop life skills and become well-rounded individuals. Students learn how to do organic farming, recycle waste stuff, water purifiers, and also health-related issues, etc. Environment workshops help students to visit a nearby community area and learn how to do it in a sustainable way to solve a problem of a sustainable future.

Conclusions

A helpful way to make a servant leader, who know the gross-rote level of environments. Education institutions need to develop structures like learning to understand, learning to do, learning to live, and learning to be this can build leadership power in students.

This is where students should share and be exposed to a new perspective, pushing them out of their comfort zones, forming new friendships, and leading by a servant leader. Develop a student in environmental service learning beyond a classroom.

A servant leader may have as a student take the lead on an ecological community project. They can learn how to control or assign someone below them a leading role in a project.

Students’ primary motive for going to college is not to buy many books, have their papers and exams graded by professors, or even have the classroom and all-around college experience; it is to gain skill or expertise and pursue a career as a servant leader. In my concept, students need to follow four words Learn, Think, Do, and Share.


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