Digital Commons Network^™

Learning To Serve, Serving To Learn: Grant Portfolio 2008-2009, Evans School

School K-12

Evans High School Grant Proposal (2008-2009)

Strategies For Becoming A Nation Of Service, Servicenation

School K-12

Strategies for Becoming a Nation of Service represents a vision, endorsed by more than 110 ServiceNation coalition members, to unleash the energy of citizens on our most pressing social challenges by strengthening and increasing community and national service opportunities. This policy agenda proposes meaningful opportunities for service at every key life stage, and for every socioeconomic group, from kindergarten through the post-retirement years. These proposals will help instill a culture of service at an early age and provide opportunities for Americans to continue serving throughout their lifetimes. The policy proposals aim to make service a defining ethic of what it …

Guidance And Learn And Serve Program Partnerships: A View Towards Integration For Classroom Delivery, Bob Bhaerman, Harry Drier

School K-12

The purpose of this monograph is to stimulate a dialogue between counselors, their guidance programs, and classroom teachers about how they might work together to design or continue to and implement community service-learning efforts. We first will raise a series of questions on service-learning and then tum to exploring how and where guidance programs fit into service learning outcomes and activities. As you review the questions on service learning, think of the ways in which you, in your role as counselor and guidance program manager, might become a more meaningful partner with classroom teachers. This monograph helps us to see …

Youth Helping America - Building Active Citizens: The Role Of Social Institutions In Teen Volunteering, Corporation For National And Community Service

School K-12

At a time when many are worried that the United States is experiencing a general decline in civic and political engagement, volunteering appears particularly strong among today’s young people. While volunteering is just one form of community involvement, research has shown that it is often connected to other forms of engagement, and, among youth, volunteering plays a valuable role in shaping how youth learn to interact with their community and develop the skills, values, and sense of empowerment necessary to become active citizens.

The Impact Of Participation In Service-Learning On High School Students' Civic Engagement, Shelley Billig, Susan Root, Dan Jesse

School K-12

Recent evidence suggests that there is a growing problem of civic disengagement among youth in the United States. Young people in high school report having little interest in civic and political affairs and little knowledge of or trust in the political system (Levine & Lopez, 2002; National Commission on Service-Learning, 2001; Rahm & Transue, 1998; Torney-Purta, 2002). Results from a recent poll indicate that many young people do not feel they can make a difference, solve problems in their communities, or have a meaningful impact on politics or government (Lake Snell Perry & Associates and The Tarrance Group, Inc, 2002). …

Developing Civically Rich Culminating Projects, Project Service Leadership

School K-12

The Culminating Project is a new graduation requirement that has been passed by the State Board of Education. The graduating class of 2008 will need to complete these projects in order to receive a regular diploma from Washington state. By adopting a state-wide graduation requirement of a Culminating Project for all high school graduates, the State Board of Education has provided a new and challenging opportunity for students across the state to realize the vision articulated by Washington state’s education reform law.

Next Steps: A School District's Guide To The Essential Elements Of Service-Learning, Maryland Student Service Alliance, Maryland State Department Of Education

School K-12

We are pleased to share a new tool for service-learning. Next Steps: A School District's Guide to the Essential Elements of Service-Learning is an excellent guide for state level or school district administrators as they create or improve their service-learning program, regardless of their previous experience in service-learning. Students make a tremendous difference in their schools and communities when they are given the opportunity to use their enthusiasm, energy and ideas to problem solve and contribute to the common good.

Maryland was the first state to require that all students participate in service-learning to graduate from public high school. Educators …

Service Learning Through The High School Pyramid Model: A Case Study, Fawzia Al-Rashid, Kenyon Walker

School K-12

The intellectual and philosophical roots of service learning have been attributed to the conceptualizations of democratic society put forth by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s and John Dewey in the early twentieth century (Kenny eta!, 2002). Dewey believed that students would learn more effectively and eventually become better citizens if they engaged in activities that linked service to the community and the curriculum. This idea of linking service to curriculum has been further embraced by advocates of service learning today.

Md. Service Learning: Classroom Link Weak?, Michelle Galley

School K-12

Maryland students are mucking out horse stalls, dancing in ballets, answering telephones, and ladling soup for the homeless in order to graduate from high school.

Eleven years after the legislature passed a first-of-its-kind state law requiring all public school students to complete 75 hours of service learning, young people are fulfilling the requirement with varying degrees of success.

The Community Is Their Textbook: Maryland's Experiment With Mandatory Service For Students, Suzanne Goldsmith

School K-12

At its best, service learning enriches both students and their communities. But creating good programs isn't easy.

Taking The Lead: A Preliminary Proposal For A K-12 Service-Learning Leadership Organization, Academy For Educational Development

School K-12

Service-learning's advocates are passionate about its potential as an educational reform strategy benefiting students, schools, communities, and the nation. They know that integrating service into core academic curriculum is a powerful way of engaging students' hearts and minds. By combining highly effective teaching strategies with support for students' acquiring an ethic of caring and community responsibility, service-learning does what few other pedagogies can do: it boosts students' academic achievement while also strengthening their civic-mindedness and career preparation. The American public wants students to have this kind of education. According to a new poll conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide, Americans agree …

Nurturing Future Leaders Via Service-Learning, John T. Boal

School K-12

Coming into the ninth grade, Jon Porges was admittedly "a shy guy" who had a learning disability and who had never volunteered in his life, but when he sat down in freshman English class at Waterford High School in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1996, a slow transformation - life a cocoon becoming a butterfly - took place.

Service Learning: Making The Camp Connection, Joel S. Garavaglia-Maiorano, Joel Pile

School K-12

Service learning, today's buzzword for education through service, is as diverse as are camp programs in our nation. From providing environmental education to tutoring to feeding the homeless, it is both a method and a philosophy. Programming for service opportunities in today's camps offers a variety of options, from short-term experiences to a fully integrated curriculum that links action and reflection. Service learning, therefore, may be best understood as a method to encourage campers to act, reflect, develop, and learn through community-organized service that connects the needs of a community with the knowledge and experience of campers.

Lessons Learned About Service-Learning: Voices Of Experience About Urban Service-Learning In Saint Paul Public Schools, Saint Paul Public Schools

School K-12

Quality service-learning transforms students, schools and communities. Service-learning creates powerful learning experiences for students and strengthens ties between schools and community. While integrating curricular goals with a real community need, service-learning gives students the power and the voice to work for social change in their world. It engages them in their own learning process. Students become active learners and creators of history who have opportunities to realize their collective and personal power to make a difference. In order to engage in this kind of learning, teachers together with students must work to establish quality partnerships and collaboration with community organizations …

Community Service: Mandatory Or Voluntary?, Diane Loup

School K-12

School districts struggle to find the best approach for bringing a real-world aspect to learning.

Research On K-12 School-Based Service-Learning: The Evidence Builds, Shelley Billig

School K-12

Practitioners and policy makers are curious about service-learning and its effects. Ms. Billig details for Kappan readers what research tells us about service-learning today and suggests the kinds of questions that still need to be answered.

Service-Learning: An Administrator's Tool For Improving Schools And Connecting With The Community, Sheldon Berman, Sheila Bailey, Randall Collins, Dale Kinsley, Elizabeth Holman

School K-12

What should students know and be able to do by the time they graduate high school? This basic question is at the heart of most education reforms in recent years. Increasingly, the answer lies not just in strong academic skills but also in a sense of self and the individual’s role in supporting and building a vibrant community.

Learning Our Freedom, Ingrid Flory, Debra Henzey

School K-12

Over the past three years, several events have drawn attention to the startling stare of civic education in North Carolina.

Engaging Students In Community Issues, Kara A. Mccraw, Susan S. Taylor

School K-12

How can you integrate community resources in the classroom in an exciting and dynamic way? We set out to answer this question in the summer of 1999 when we attended a conference sponsored by the North Carolina Institute of Government. Our immediate goal was to help the freshmen students we teach in a course called ELPSA (Economic, Legal and Political Systems in Action) understand the importance of active citizenship and prudent fiscal decision making. What better way to teach this than through real life examples? After our conference and the introduction to a number of valuable resources and contact points …

Workforce 2000: Reshaping For School-Work-Career Transitions, Terry Pickeral, Dawn Wegter, Ellen Winiarczyk, Debbie Driver, Liz Newport, Eve Alitzer, Kellie Bond, Jill Painter-Holmes, Linda Burgess

School K-12

This document discusses: Definitions and Elements; Program Development; Narratives and Articles; Curriculum Resoures; Reflection; and Assessment.

Reading, Writing And Service Learning, National Helpers Network, Inc.

School K-12

Cross-age tutoring programs, like the National Helpers Network's "Helpers Promoting Literacy" model, in which middle and high school students serve as reading tutors to younger children, have been popular fixtures in many school service learning programs in recent years. Described by many as "win-win" programs because both the "tutors" and the "tutees" improve their reading skills as a result of participating, these programs are often integrated into English and language arts curricula and give students the opportunity to learn by teaching. But a look at programs throughout the nation shows that service learning practitioners are expanding on that idea and …

Service Learning Makes The Grade, Rich Cairn, Susan Cairn

School K-12

Connecting service learning to specific standards presents challenges for educators. In Minnesota, teachers and students are pioneering assessments that effectively evaluate performance in light of learning goals.

If All Youth Served: Empowering Youth To Build Community Through Service, Lenore M. Parker

School K-12

This document contains: List of Tables; Acknowledgements; A Vision Statement; Research Findings; Liability Issues and Engaging Young People as Volunteers; Supervising Young People as Volunteers; and Appendix A: Publications About Engaging Young People as Volunteers.

Service Learning In Alternative Education Settings, Susan Meyers

School K-12

When service learning is part of the curriculum, students become involved in something important and learn that they can make a difference in the world. Based on John Dewey’s (1938) theory of experiential learning, service learning takes the student out of the classroom and into the community. In a 1995 public address, Secretary of Education Richard Riley remarked that “by involving students in hands-on learning, problem solving, and applications of academic knowledge in real settings, service learning can increase students’ academic achievement in challenging subjects and creates a sense of engagement that enhances a student’s motivation to complete school.”

Introducing …

The Use Of Service Learning To Promote Understanding Of Gang-Related Issues Faced By Adolescents, Patrice Paul, Kathy Sexton-Radek, Janina Adickas, Bridget Fousek

School K-12

Service learning provides an opportunity for college students to experience classroom curriculum in a real-life setting. In addition, service learning provides the community with services otherwise not available. Such a program has been designed to assist with reduction of violence in the schools while simultaneously allowing college students to experience, hands-on, the people and issues they are studying. In this program, students in an adolescent development course were trained in a six-week group intervention aimed at building skills for positive communication, resolving differences, and preventing violence. A specific protocol involving skill-building exercises, role-plays, discussion. and at-home assignments was followed. Specific …

National Evaluation Of Learn And Serve America School And Community-Based Programs: Final Report, Alan Melchior

School K-12

In 1993, the National and Community Service Trust Act established the Learn and Serve America School and Community-Based Programs to support school and community-based efforts to involve school-aged youth in community service. The program is administered by the Corporation for National Service and funded through grants to states and national organizations, and through them to individual school districts, schools, and community organizations. In 1994-95, the first year of the program, the Corporation awarded approximately $30 million in grants supporting over 2,000 local efforts involving over 750,000 school-aged youth.

Why Are We Here? What Are We Doing? Interdisciplinary Social Studies For The 21st Century, Ann L. Rappaport

School K-12

It's the interdisciplinary potential that drew many of us into social studies from the start, isn't it? Because the human condition is, in fact, interdisciplinary. We're attracted by the study of real people and their challenges. We're magnetized by the processes people use to find solutions to a variety of societal problems. It's appealing to learn how people organize to accomplish certain goals. We thrive on diversity, on relationships, on cultural artifacts, on connections. We love the drama of discovery.

Central Park East Secondary School (Cpess) At A Glance, David Smith

School K-12

Ramon, a senior at Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), pushes his way through the doors of the school into the crisp December morning. Covering the three blocks to Mr. Sinai Hospital in minutes, Ramon greets the hospital security guard, heads through the doors marked "employees only," and makes his way to a small auditorium where the weekly CPESS/Mt. Sinai Health Careers Internship Seminar takes place.

Connecting School To Work & Service Learning: Building A Competent, Caring Workforce For The 21st Century, Quest International

School K-12

With the year 2000 virtually upon us, the clarion call from both America's businesses and educational institutions is for education reform initiatives to implement creative ways to equip our young people with the skills, attitudes, and behaviors needed to be successful in the world of work and as contributing members of a democracy. What responsibility do we as educators have to provide young people with opportunities to discover and apply their special talents and fulfill their personal commitments within the crucible of real work and service experiences? How can our schools help young people develop the skills and attitudes required …

Transforming Service Learning: An Argument For The Radical Inclusion Of Young People, Dana R. Fusco

School K-12

While much has been written delineating the reasons for supporting service learning, rarely have students' views been included. As a result of creating collective dialogues with young people, this article presents service learning from their perspective. Further, the methodology by which young people could be heard is put forth as a tool for bringing service learning to a new level.