Digital Commons Network^™

Death Of A Dream Service-Learning: 1994-2010: A Historical Analysis By One Of The Dreamers, Don Hill

Service Learning, General

This essay was written in 1994 to stimulate discussion about issues that I felt threatened the efforts of the service-learning community to effectively expand with high-quality programs. It was based on my observations as a person involved in providing professional development support to teachers and education professors. — Don Hill, October 2005

Making The Case For Social And Emotional Learning And Service-Learning, Linda Fredericks

Service Learning, General

This ECS Issue Brief provides an overview and description of both social and emotional learning (SEL) and service-learning (S-L) as tools to improve the lives and academic performance of students. It describes how the two practices arc interrelated and the research evidence that supports the expanded use of both practices in the classroom. Also provided are descriptions of the essential clements required of successful SEL and S-L programs, examples of such successful programs that are in existence today, and a discussion of state activities and experiences. Lastly, the brief discusses a series of likely challenges that education leaders implementing SEL …

Service-Learning Delivers What Americans Want From Schools (New Poll Shows A Way To Improve Public Education), Academy For Educational Development

Service Learning, General

It is not news that: Americans are deeply concerned about the quality of public education,² nor that almost half of them believe that improving schools should be our nation's highest priority.³ What is news is that Americans believe that service-learning can deliver what they expect from schools.

A new poll asked more than 1000 Americans⁴ about their views of K-12 education and service-learning, a way of teaching that integrates service projects into core academic curriculum. The poll was conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Learning In Deed: Service-Learning And Preservice Teacher Education, Jeffrey B. Anderson

Service Learning, General

Progressive teacher education programs face a pair of daunting yet crucial tasks. New teachers must be prepared to function effectively in schools as they exist today. They also must be educated to take a leadership role in the improvement and restructuring of P-12 education to meet students’ and society’s needs more fully. Service-learning appears to have considerable potential as a method to achieve both these goals.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation believes that meaningful service to the community, combined with curriculum-based learning, builds stronger academic skills, encourages lifelong civic commitment, and improves workplace and personal development skills among youth. Educators lead …

Free To Choose Service Learning, Michael P. Garber, Justin A. Heet

Service Learning, General

Only disciples of Ayn Rand could oppose the idea of service-learning. In the best situations, when service is part of a school's program. students are challenged to define themselves through a larger sense of their community and of their responsibility to it. They have the opportunity to apply their skills to problems that require judgment and leadership. Service-learning, if properly understood, can help re-create the functional communities that renowned University of Chicago sociologist James Coleman wrote about as being vital to increasing the amount of "social capital" generated by schools.

School-Based Service: Reconnecting Schools, Communities, And Youth At The Margin, Joan Schine

Service Learning, General

The sound of gunshots was not particularly unusual in Washington Heights, a section of New York City where drug deals were common and children learned early to be vigilant. But on a late summer day in 1992, the fatal shot came from a police revolver, and it was a Dominican, a drug dealer, who was killed. The ensuing turmoil, born of the immediate crisis but a reflection of the longstanding antagonism between the youth of the neighborhood and the police, soon become a riot. Most of the police in the local precinct were White. The overwhelming majority of the young …

History Of The Service-Learning It Requirement In Maryland, Kathy Megyeri

Service Learning, General

Schools in Maryland have long provided some opportunities for students to volunteer. There have been the usual walk-a-thons, canned-food drives, visits to the elderly, and tree-planting projects. Building on this tradition, in 1985 the Maryland State Board of Education enacted a requirement that all school systems offer courses and programs in community service, open to all students, for elective credit, to provide opportunities for students to reach beyond themselves to help others. Two hundred of Maryland teachers were trained by the state, and during the 198889 school year, over 1,000 students were engaged in community service projects for credit (Maryland …

Investigating Urban Community Needs: Service Learning From A Social Justice Perspective, Carol Wiechman Maybach

Service Learning, General

Homelessness, poverty, substance abuse, hunger, teen pregnancy, youth violence, and marginalization of the disabled are but a few of the complex social issues that continue to plague urban America. They are also issues that attract the attention of student service providers involved in service-learning programs across the country (Education Commission of the States, 1994). However, few of the higher education service-learning courses focus on the investigation of the needs of the individuals included in these groups in the urban community, and even fewer build service--learning projects around a model that is accountable for the results of the service experience on …

Creating A School And Community Culture To Sustain Service Leaming, Caroline Allam

Service Learning, General

"You guys have always done this stuff for us. It's our town. We're the ones that are going to have to run the town after you old guys are gone. We ought to get a shot at making some deicisions about the future (Lysen 1992, p. 8).

This strong sentiment came from a Bath Junior High School student who was working with peers, teachers, scientists, and other community members to conduct water quality tests on the Kennebec River in Maine. The statement reflects the desire and willingness of young people to work together, to assume responsibility and stewardship for their …

Service Learning For All Students, Carl I. Fertman

Service Learning, General

We are witnessing a transformation in education. Again and again we hear that we are in times of diversification, collaboration, systemic change, and transition. Although these terms apply to cooperative efforts between groups, they stem from the realization that such efforts can efficiently support and prepare students to face increasingly complex challenges, opportunities, and problems. Service learning is a part of this transformation.

Service learning rightly has been called the education of empowerment. It builds self-esteem, renews curiosity about learning, develops interpersonal skills, stirs leadership development, rekindles work and service ethics, and brings the world of careers closer to home. …

Looking For Young People Listening For Youth Voice, John Beilenson

Service Learning, General

Where are the young people? This is the question I find myself asking as I make my way around the offices of national and community service programs in Washington and across the country. I have worked in and for youth service and youth serving organizations since 1985, so I have few illusions. Offices are for adults. If you want to find the youth in youth service, you generally have to get out to project sites-schools and playgrounds and parks where young people are actually doing service.

Challenges Of Replicating Success, Jay Altman, Tom Malarkey

Service Learning, General

Khrishnamurti used to tell a story about Man walking along the shore of the sea of life looking for the shell of truth. God and the Devil are watching from atop the cliffs rising far above the sand and water. Man finds the shell of truth in the roaring surf and picks it up. God turns to the Devil and says, "I've got you now, for Man has discovered truth."

I'm not worried," replies the Devil. "Just wait until he organizes it."

Although we hope no one would ever presume to have found the truth, most of us in the …

National Youth Service: A Developing Institution, Donald J. Eberly

Service Learning, General

Twenty years ago, it was rare to find students integrating community service with their formal education. The phrase "service learning" had been born only a few years earlier, and was not yet in common usage.

Today, service learning is fairly common in high schools and their surrounding communities. Many high schools and a few school systems have made it a requirement for graduation. And the federal government now supports service learning both with exhortation and with dollars.

Standards Of Quality For School-Based Service Learning, Alliance For Service Learning In Education Reform

Service Learning, General

Service-learning is a method

• by which young people learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet actual community needs and that are coordinated in collaboration with the school and community;

• that is integrated into the young person's academic curriculum or provides structured time for a young person to think, talk, or write about what he/ she did and saw during the actual service activity;

• that provides young people with opportunities to use newly acquired academic skills and knowledge in real-life situations in their own communities; and

• that enhances what is taught …

Community Service Learning And School Improvement In Springfield, Massachusetts, Virginia Anderson, Carol Kinsley, Peter Negroni, Carolyn Price

Service Learning, General

Calls for changes in the education system continually issue forth from various segments of society. Each outpouring of public concern challenges educators to address the needs of young people and to achieve school renewal. The current literature on school reform advocates an agenda of improvement efforts aimed at creating effective, caring schools that will provide active learning opportunities for students. develop learning communities, expand learning into the community. foster collegiality among staff members, and enable teachers to become "orchestra conductors" in the classroom rather than lecturers. But educators ask, "How can all of this be achieved?"

Issues And Action In The Streams Of Service, Frank J. Slobig

Service Learning, General

The landscape across the country is sporadically spotted with an increasing number of locations where young people are engaged in sustained significant service. They are involved in part-time school-based programs in junior and senior high schools, in campus-based collegiate programs and in full-times corps.

Learning In The Community, John Formy-Duval, Ellen Voland

Service Learning, General

Community educators refer fondly to William Carr's words as "the drawbridge analogy." As community involvement specialists, they are committed to keeping the drawbridge down, so that adults from the mainland can both provide and use resources in the school, and so that young people from the school can go regularly to the mainland, learning to apply and understand-what they have read in their books.

National Youth Service, Donald J. Eberly

Service Learning, General

A national youth service program could attack two of the most serious urban problems-the lack of needed services and the excessive levels of unemployment among restless young people.

Patterns Of Volunteer Service By Young People: 1965 & 1974, Donald J. Eberly

Service Learning, General

In November 1965 and again in April 1974 the Census Bureau conducted a nationwide survey of volunteers. The first was funded by the Department of Labor,l and the second by ACTION, a Federal agency established in 1971 to coordinate federally-supported volunteerism, and to operate volunteer programs such as VISTA and the Peace Corps.