Digital Commons Network^™

Alternative Education Programs: Program And Student Characteristics, Regina M. Foley, Lang-Sze Pang

Special Topics, General

Alternative education programs are often viewed as individualized opportunities designed to meet the educational needs for youth identified as at-risk for school failure. Increasingly, these programs have been identified as programs for disruptive youth who have been referred from traditional schools. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the administrative structures and physical facilities of alternative education programs and to describe the student population and educational services being offered to youth attending such programs. The findings suggest programs appear to be largely site-based programs, often operating in physical facilities with limited access to academic suppm1s. The …

Make The School Board Your Ally, Sheldon H. Berman

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To survive and grow in a school district, service-learning must be supported by the district's school board and embedded in district policy. Because today's school boards are focused on standards, testing, and accountability, advocates have to convince them that service-learning is an important vehicle for achieving both district and wider social goals. In preparing this article, I asked Hudson school committee members (in Massachusetts, a school board is called a school committee) to share their views about how advocates can gain support from their boards to promote service-learning at the district level.

The Value Of Work: A Case For Promoting Christian Service Opportunities To College Students, Glenn Bryan

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the historical evolution of attitudes toward work, the Protestant work ethic, a Biblical perspective on work, and to provide a rational for why Christian colleges should offer multiple service opportunities for students to help them integrate faith into their everyday lives.

Doing Theology In The City, Paul Fitzgerald

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The task of theology is often a lonely endeavor. The hush of the library or the archives, the still of the chapel, and the quiet discipline of one's desk are places where theological research and writing unfold, most often in solitary concentration. The classroom on the protected college campus or seminary, the academic conference in large hotels, and even the cherished conversation in the homes of colleagues do open the theologian to other minds and hearts so that theories and insights may be tested in dialogue. However, these exchanges are often located in affluent social contexts which cannot reveal the …

School-Community Partnerships In Rural Schools: Leadership, Renewal, And A Sense Of Place, Patricia A. Bauch

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Rural schools are vulnerable to imitating the reform standards of national and urban school. Urban schools, to which much of the research on current reform efforts has been directed, are not rural schools writ large. Neither are rural communities like urban neighborhood communities. Hodgkinson and Obarakpor (1994) declared "rural poverty is not the same as urban poverty in a different setting" (p. 2). Rather, the context of rural has its own set of community identifiers that make rural schools dramatically different from their metropolitan counterparts. The goals and purposes of schooling and educational renewal processes appropriate for urban and suburban …

Using Hypermedia And Multimedia To Promote Project-Based Learning Of At-Risk High School Students, Tracy Carr, Asha K. Jitendra

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The term at-risk in this article refers to those students who are in danger of dropping out of school (Rodriguez, 199i). Often, these students have low self-esteem resulting from persistently low academic achievement. One possible reason for academic failure is a mismatch between the student's needs and the curricular expectations. Consequently, it is important to plan to meet individual student needs appropriately and minimize the rate of dropouts. Planning more appropriately requires individualization of goals and curricula.

After The Summit: Building Community Networks For America’S Youth, Sabrina Burke

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The purpose of this research project is to provide a guide for local coordinators and organizers of America’s Promise and other national initiatives. It looks at the new paradigm of community youth development how it is changing the ways that social organizations are conducting business. It explores how to create community networks as a way for communities to better serve their young people. In this project, a community network is defined as an association of individuals representing different organizations and associations working together (collaborating) to achieve a common long term vision or goal. Although there is a rich diversity among …

Youth Service-Learning And Community Service Among 6th- Through 12th-Grade Students In The United States: 1996 And 1999, Brian Kleiner, Chris Chapman

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Involving America's students in community service activities is one of the objectives established under the third National Education Goal for the year 2000, which seeks to prepare students for responsible citizenship. Over the past 10 years, legislative initiatives have responded to and galvanized a growing national emphasis on increasing students' involvement with their local communities and linking this service to academic study through service-learning. Examples of initiatives that have mandated support for service-learning activities in elementary and secondary schools include the National and Community Service Act of 1990, the Serve America program and the National and Community Service Trust Act …

Service Strategies And Programs To Help Incarcerated Youth: A Training Program For Volunteers, Teresita Bolivar

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For more than thirty years, AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) members have been serving disadvantaged communities. The program is dedicated to increasing the capability of people to improve the conditions of their lives.

Foster Grandparents are part of the National Senior Service Corps, a network of more than a half-million seniors who are making a difference as volunteers. Since 1965 the Foster Grandparents Program has tapped the experience, skills, talents, interests and creativity of seniors age 55 and older. They serve 20 hours a week in: schools, hospitals, day care centers, homes for abused and abandoned children, Head Start, …

A Kinder, Gentler Student Body, Linda Jacobson

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Monica Viega describes what went on in her classroom earlier in the school year as "Jerry Springer fights." Displays of anger and incivility among the 5th graders sometimes grew so intense that furniture would get tossed across the room. But the scene in Ms. Viega's classroom no longer resembles a raucous daytime talk show. Every morning, her Blalock Elementary School students sit in a circle and discuss how they treat one another. They talk about what they see on the television news and about keeping drugs and violence out of their neighborhoods. "This amazes me," Ms. Viega, a first-year teacher, …

A Study Of The Effects Of Participation In The Helper Model Of Service Learning In Early Adolescence, Center For Advanced Study In Education (Case)

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The Service Learning Impact Study is a multifaceted multi-year study funded by the William T. Grant Foundation to examine the impact of the Helper Model of service learning. This research is exploring whether and how participation by middle school students contributes to the development of academic or school-related skills, enhances psychosocial abilities, and leads to the acquisition of skills for the school to work transition.

The goals of this project are to:
• examine the impact of participating during early adolescence in service learning (Helper Program)
• identify how impact is related to program characteristics and the types of service …

Service-Learning And School Curriculum, Amy Yip Ah-May

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Service-Learning extends the learning process from the classroom to the community, which becomes a supplementary resource to facilitate teaching and learning. This paper uses fragments of reflections to illustrate how Service-Learning course participants learn through the community-service projects and how they feel about their experiences as project leaders. The literature used provides a rich source of data about the meaning of Service-Learning and empirical evidences of the educational effects of learning through serving others. This paper argues that the Hong Kong school curriculum is examination driven and focused on the academic. There is a neglect in the social, moral and …

Make Sure It's Service Learning, Not Just Community Service, Leonard T. Burns

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Service learning may be made more beneficial to communities by allowing students to participate aggressively in various learning activities, while keeping them abreast with their own social responsibilities. Students must also be given adequate opportunity to reflect on their service experiences.

The Evolution Of Character Education: From Hellfire And Brimstone To Constructivism, Arati Singh

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Since colonial times, character education has played a kaleidoscopic role in American schools. Seventeenth and eighteenth century Puritan curriculum was synonymous with an exceedingly rigid and religious moral code. Nineteenth century policy makers adopted a Pan-Protestant, and then a generalized Christian philosophy of character education, as they pursued a common school system. As twentieth century American society grew increasingly pluralistic, the religious basis of character education succumbed to a more secular framework. Predictably, this century has seen character education be demoted to just one of many competing items on the national education agenda. Paradoxically, today's violence-filled headlines evince a more …

Designing Meaningful Projects That Meet Community Needs, Johnny Irizarry

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Taller Puertorriquefio is a community-based cultural center, located in a North Philadelphia neighborhood rich in history. Poverty has taken hold of the area as the collapse and flight of industry and work opportunities has occurred. With so many needs in our area. Taller has to make careful program choices. This is not easy when the needs are so great. In our 22-year history, our mission has been for the arts and culture to be at the core of what we do. Our guiding question in assessing community needs is "How can Taller best influence the overall well-being of the community …

Community-Based Learning Projects For The "Real World", Chris Davis

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As we walked down the street to the next-door elementary school, the I 5 high school juniors with me began reflecting on their elementary school experiences. They remembered the Dr. Seuss stories their teachers had read to them, the art projects, the time to play, the time to just be kids. Life was simpler and more fun then, they all agreed.

Now school mostly means sitting at desks and listening to teachers talk for a large portion of the day. And when teachers aren't talking to them, they take tests, read a textbook chapter, write on a ditto, watch a …

The Contribution Of Religion To Volunteer Work, John Wilson, Thomas Janoski

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The connection between church membership, church activism, and volunteering is explored using a three-wave panel study of young adults. Volunteering to help others solve community problems is more likely among members of churches that emphasize this-worldly social concerns, especially among those socially involved in these churches. Among Catholics, the connection between church involvement and volunteering is formed early and remains strong. Among liberal Protestants, the connection is made only in middle age. Among moderate and conservative Protestants there is little connection at all. Conservative Protestants who attend church regularly are less likely to be involved in secular volunteering and more …

Action Research In The Service Of Learning, Warren Everett

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Alma High School has a 9th-12th grade student population of about 720 in a primarily rural setting in Michigan's middle-of-the-mitten. We are considered a low-economic area with more than 40% of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunches. Some light industry remains, but what was the national center of mobile home production is completely gone as well as the linking industries. Student enrollment has dropped by nearly half over the last 20 years. In 1990, 9% of the 0-17 year-olds were Latino, most of whom were poor academic achievers. While our community has a prominent small college and a …

Addressing School Board And Administrative Concerns About Service-Learning, Carolyn S. Anderson, Judith T. Witmer

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Community service learning as a philosophy and a program has been driven at the school level largely by the knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment of individual teachers. Recently community agencies, politicians and government agencies, professional organizations, and various resource centers around the country have joined in promoting these programs, which help students use service opportunities as a source of significant learning.

Tackling Society's Problems In English Class, Jim Burke

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A high school teacher's impromptu unit on "Social Problems" gave his students an opportunity to develop their writing skills while expanding their concept of community.

Service-Learning Advances School Improvement: A Position Paper From The International Service Learning Initiative, Barbara Gomez

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The base on which the United States is built is participatory democracy -achieved only when all citizens are included in choice and decision-making. Nothing could be worse for our nation than to have our children feel alienated from the communities in which they attend school. For more than 200 years the rest of the world has been watching our progress, and as we have succeeded they have made efforts to emulate our sense of individual freedom and collective responsibility for governance.

Reciprocity: A Major Paradigm Shift, John A. Calhoun

Special Topics, General

It is not news to the youth-serving community that something new is afoot regarding how we think about and work with youth.

Well known is the stir on the national level: President Bush's YES initiative; numerous pieces of congressional legislation whose proposals range from school-based programs through conservation and urban corps to mandated national service. Locally, projects of various sorts are springing up in schools, youth-serving agencies and in other organizations whose functions impinge on youth.

Not so well known-or fully understood-is a key notion that could well be lost amid the legitimate clamor and enthusiasm for the concept, namely, …