Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Service Learning: What's A Political Scientist Doing In Yonkers?, Glenn Beamer

Service Learning, General

As an urban politics teacher, I discerned a disconnect between what I said about urban politics and what my students understood. Although I offered a variety of perspectives, I nonetheless felt that students were coming to class, and leaving class, with their opinions -- liberal, conservative, and in-between -- formed. Because of the constraints on dialogue about urban politics, I decided to develop a service learning project focusing on urban homelessness and housing. The project would combine elements of a typical undergraduate course and a participant observation project. I wanted a setting in which the students and I would learn …