Service Learning Commons^™

Senior Center In Seattle Applauds Service-Learning, Nola L. Freeman

Intergenerational

In the fall of 1992, the Pike Market Senior Center, an urban gathering place for a widely diverse community of low income elders, joined 30 other sites in the Seattle area in accepting an invitation from the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Office at the University of Washington. In accepting this invitation, these sites agreed to help the office accomplish the following mission: "To promote, support, and organize opportunities for undergraduates to become involved in effective public service, helping them to mature in their understanding of complex social, philosophical, economic, and political issues, and instilling in them a life-long commitment …

Social Studies Moves Into The Community, Sally Fellows

School K-12

Active Citizenship Today, a program of service-learning pilot projects in the Omaha Public Schools, demonstrates service learning with a corollary, the examination of public policy. Five projects, involving students in geography, history, and government classes, illustrate what students have lead through community service.

A Concern About... Connecting School-To-Work And Service Learning, Council Of Chief State School Officers

School K-12

As interest has grown in school-to-work transition programs and service learning, the commonalities between the two have become increasingly clear. Service learning and school-to-work are forms of experiential education that extend student learning into the community and the worksite. Both provide students with contextualized learning opportunities. Through service learning and school-to-work programs, students engage in learning experiences that help develop organizational, team, and problem-solving skills as well as the competencies and foundation skills identified as important for employability and responsible citizenship (SCANS, 1992; W.T. Grant Commission, 1988).

Service,Learning As An Integrated Experience In Middle School Education: An Introduction To Resources And Information, Dawn Wegter

School K-12

This resource guide outlines 18 service-learning projects throughout the United States focused on middle schools. Listed, in each case, are the project's description, sponsoring organization, the objectives, the project's framework, training information, materials, and ordering information.

Service Learning Projects 1995-1997, Learn And Serve America

Project Summaries

Service Learning Projects 1995-1997 from Glendale Community College.

Random Acts Of Kindness, Martin Kimeldorf

Curriculum

Introducing the concept of random acts of kindness and compassion I recommend that you get a copy of the book " Random Acts Of Kindness.'' (Editors of Conari Press. 1993. Emeryville, CA). Set the stage by reading examples of the random acts of kindness illustrated in the book. This can be followed by a discussion of the following question and the background material related to volunteerism in America. Some background material follows, after this you'll find 4 exercises.

A Policy Study Of Youth Service: Synthesizing Analysis Of Policy Content And Policy Process Over Time, Jean Shumway Warner

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

This dissertation uses a case study of youth service proposals to examine how policy is formulated. For this study, youth service refers to federal programs that provide America's youth with opportunities to participate in domestic, non-military, full- or part-time community service activities. A theory is proposed that synthesizes two complementary approaches to the study of policy - process analysis (Kingdon 1984, 1994) and the analysis of policy content (Schneider and Ingram 1990, 1993) --and advocates analyzing policy over time. Four theoretical categories of data -- actors, ideas, opportunities, and strategies -- guide the study.

Students' Reflection On Community Service Learning, Jay D. Anderson

Evaluation/Reflection

Internships are a rapidly expanding educational technique to enhance students' ability to learn. Internships permit and encourage students to experience the real world while receiving academic credit. Seekonk High School in Seekonk, Massachusetts, has an internship program for high school seniors called Independent Study. It allows students to leave school one day a week for the school year and volunteer within the community. Students receive academic credit for their participation in community service learning.

Preflection: A Strategy For Enhancing Reflection, Diana Falk

Evaluation/Reflection

"Preflection" is a strategy designed as a tool to enhance and enrich the reflection process. It is actually a reflective session that is held prior to the service experience. Students are encouraged to imagine what the experience will be like and to express any feelings they might have as they anticipate their involvement. Comments are recorded and are reviewed with the students after the service has been completed. Being able to look back on their pre-service thoughts and feelings and compare and contrast them to the reality of the actual experience has the effect of promoting and focusing discussion, and …

Evaluation System For Experiential Education Programs: Evaluation Guide, Andrew Furco

Evaluation/Reflection

This guide contains: ESEE Description;Timeline; Program Goal & Objectives Forms; Student Pre-Test (designed for each institution); Journal Questions: Faculty Guide & Student Handouts; Student Field Placement Form; Student Focus Group Interview Protocol; Faculty Focus Group Interview Protocol; Community Agency Focus Group Interview Protocol; Community Agency Survey (designed for each institution); Student Post-Test (designed for each institution); and ESEE Checklist.

Reflection As A Tool For Turning Service Experiences Into Learning Experiences, James Toole, Pamela Toole

Evaluation/Reflection

No abstract provided.

Schools And Business Benefit Mutually Through Service Learning, Mike Bookey

Partnerships/Community

Schools are modeled after the industrial factories of yesterday. The goal of the education process is to mass produce standardized, educated citizens and workers. In this factory model, we teach students the hierarchy of decision making, to follow orders, and to work individually. Businesses, however, need graduates who are self-directed, responsible employees, who can solve problems, who can handle computers and the latest technology, and who can work in teams. In this the information age, business can no longer continue to sidestep the need to reformulate the processes and goals of public education.

Education: How Can Schools And Communities Work Together To Meet The Challenge? A Guide For Involving Community Members In Public Dialogue And Problem-Solving, Matthew Leighninger, Mark Niedergang

Partnerships/Community

This guide is designed as a tool to help members of the education sector involve community members in discussions about their local schools and learn how to become involved in the process of improving education in their community. The first half of the guide presents basic material for conducting a four- to seven-session discussion program based on the study circle model. Materials dealing with the following discussion topics are included: how schools affect communities and community members' lives; what community members want graduates to know and be able to do; how schools can meet every students' needs, make schools safer, …

Service Learning And Curriculum Transfusion, Irving H. Budchen

Service Learning, General

Newcomers to service learning, caught up by its initial successes, are frequently not aware that service learning is capable, with appropriate long-term structuring, of exhibiting developmental stages that feed into patterns of academic growth.

Inclusion And Community Service Learning: A Partnership, Mary Chamberlain

Service Learning, General

Teachers and students, already burdened by seemingly overwhelming curriculum demands, are seeing more areas of study moved into the schools as a result of today's societal needs. Community service learning must not be perceived as yet another burden, but as an integrated part of the curriculum, an enhancement to teaching and learning.

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, Diversity, And The Liberal Arts Curriculum, Richard Battistoni

Service Learning, General

In the many years I have been teaching, I have attempted to engage students in issues surrounding their place as citizens in a multicultural democracy. In my second year of involvement in AAC&U's American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning project, I have become acquainted with the perspectives of faculty from different disciplines and institutions and with a wide array of excellent multicultural materials and curricula; but even the best of curricula tend to be somewhat abstract.

Community Service Learning Is A Foregone Conclusion At The Lincoln Elementary School, Michelle Boorstein

Service Learning, General

For the staff at Lincoln Elementary School in Springfield, Massachusetts, articulating the many ways in which community service learning affects their school is nearly impossible. The principal says he doesn't require people to do community service. Yet, on any given day, students all over the school are learning through service projects.

Inside Ncr: Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida's Proposal For Mandatory Social Service Duty For Students In Catholic Colleges, Tom Fox

Special Topics, General

Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida last week unveiled a creative and intriguing proposal. He suggested forming a kind of urban Peace Corps that would put college students to work in the city's soup kitchens and other social agencies.

The new cardinal, speaking at an interfaith breakfast in his honor, said he and Catholic college officials want to incorporate social service into the curriculum.

College Credit For Community Service: A "Win-Win" Situation, Janet Patterson Fleischauer, John F. Fleischauer

Higher Education

We need only look at the newspapers today to know that insufficient numbers of college and high school graduates are seriously considering social service careers to meet community needs. Job applications are down at human service agencies. Twenty-first century slogans have not helped charitable fund drives meet goals of past years. Education is being challenged to respond to a social deficit in preparing citizens for community service.

School-To-Work: A Larger Vision, Samuel Halperin

Project Summaries

Thank you for your invitation to help develop Rhode Island's plans for implementation of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (hereafter STWOA). I have no doubt that you will soon win one of the federal implementation grants, grants already awarded to eight other states.

The Constitutionality Of Public School Community Service Programs, Marie Bittner

Special Topics, General

The Third Circuit has affirmed the constitutionality of mandatory community service programs for students in public schools. The ruling came in the Steirer case where two students in Bethlehem, P A, challenged the right of their school to require them to perform community service work.

Linking Traditional And Service-Learning Courses: Outcome Evaluations Utilizing Two Pedagogically Distinct Models, Jerry Miller

Higher Education

University students in two advanced introductory classroom-based courses in psychology were offered the opportunity for simultaneous enrollment in a content-related section of a large community service learning course. Students selecting the option did not substantially differ from students who did not select it. Participating students rated the experience as being significantly more valuable than did non-participating students. Students did not differ either in their reports concerning gains in personal development or general mastery of course concepts, or in final course grades received, but participants did report an enhanced ability to apply concepts outside of the classroom. Differences in reports between …

Promoting Family Literacy: An Opportunity For Suburban University-Inner City Agency Resource Exchange, Judith Primavera, June Gellis Malone, Anne K. O'Donnell, Kathleen R. Mcguigan

Higher Education

The Family Literacy Project is a preventive program designed to increase lower income children's language readiness for school. The project's approach to literacy enhancement involves both tutoring the children and training the parents to be more effective "first teachers" of the types of emergent reading skills that are prerequisites to formal elementary school reading instruction. Forty-five undergraduates were trained as literacy facilitators and met on a weekly basis with ninety preschoolers enrolled in Head start or with participating parents (N=20) . The specific tutoring of the children varied according to the child's specific areas of language strengths and weaknesses. The …

Teaching Empowerment, Helen Fox

Higher Education

The contradiction inherent in "teaching empowerment" is that students need to learn specific, empowering ways to understand and interact with community people while at the same time feeling empowered, themselves, by the way the service-learning course is designed and taught. This requires a delicate balance between "starting with students where they are" and insisting they confront issues that make them uncomfortable. The author describes her attempt to do this in a new community service learning seminar for freshmen focusing on empowerment education.

Service Learning: A New Approach In Higher Education, Barbara W. Carpenter, Jacqulin S. Jacobs

Higher Education

Southern University is rare, if not unique, among public institutions in requiring undergraduates to complete sixty-clock hours of community service before graduation. The purpose of this initiative was to heighten the sensitivity of graduates to the indispensable role that volunteerism must play in our society. We also envisioned collectively addressing some of the ills of the State of Louisiana by having a pool of 16,000 students in the Southern University System contributing to the alleviation of human suffering and social decay. In this paper, we describe some of the noteworthy accomplishments that the program has made over the past three …

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

Special Topics, General

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.

National Service Getting Grants Done, Joshua Shenk

Service Learning, General

Early on the morning of September 12, 800 new national service corps participants strode onto the White House grounds, anticipating a noon ceremony in which they'd be sworn in by President Clinton, as thousands of others joined in via satellite. One catch, though. Earlier that morning, Frank Eugene Corder had also entered the grounds-over the gates, not through them-in his Cessna 150 aircraft, which crashed just short of his apparent target, the president's bedroom.

In addition ro guaranteeing himself a distinguished spot on history's roster of would-be assassins, Corder - who perished on impact-had also made himself one giant pain …

The Theoretical Roots Of Service-Learning In John Dewey: Toward A Theory Of Service-Learning, Dwight E. Giles Jr., Janet Eyler

Service Learning, General

As interest in service-learning research multiplies. there is a concomitant need fora theoretical base for service-learning. In this article the authors review aspects of John De1wy 's educational and social philosophy that they identify as relevant to the development of a theory of service-learning, including learning from experience, reflective activity, citizenship, community, and democracy. The article concludes with a set of key questions for research and theory development.

Critical Reflection, Richard Battistoni, Beverly Roberts

Evaluation/Reflection

In this workshop, we wanted to convey the importance of tying critical reflection activities to the learning objectives of the service experience and/or course. We started by asking participants to define critical reflection and then to list some common learning objectives associated with service-learning courses and co-curricular service. Finally, participants described many of the activities they use with their participants and students. The result is a thorough list of activities that service-learning practitioners find effective in achieving their course objectives.