Service Learning Commons^™

Sparking A Renewed Jewish Commitment To Service, Sara Paasche-Orlow, Maggi G. Gaines

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Where do Jews stand in relation to service and what might a Jewish commitment to service look like? By reflecting on historical Jewish understandings of service, we hope to gain perspective on the present and the need to rejoin our concepts of God, service, and worship. Such explorations can spark a radical transformation of our social and communal norms.

Service-Learning For Multicultural Teaching Competency: Insights From The Literature For Teacher Educators, Rahima C. Wade

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The growing disparity between the largely White teacher population and the increasingly diverse student body in the United States (Hodgkinson, 1991;Jordan, 1995) has led to greater interest in how to en­hance pre-service teachers' multicultural competencies (e.g., knowledge of diverse cultures, ability to teach children of color successfully, positive attitudes toward chil­dren and families of color). Given the low expectations for achievement held by White teachers for children of color and White teachers' lack of interest in working with stu­dents (from cultures other than their own (Zeichner, 1993; Zeichner & Melnick, 1996a), it is imperative that teacher educators seek out successful …

What Do Students Learn From Service-Learning And How Do We Know It?, Scott A. Chadwick

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Service-learning presents a unique opportunity for those interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This opportunity exists because relatively little empirical research has been conducted on the efficacy of service-learning with respect to the intended learning outcomes designed into the course by the teacher.

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 …

Service-Learning Leadership Development For Youths, Joy Des Marais, Farid Farzanehkia

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Service-learning without intentional leadership development is trivial and shallow, these youthful authors point out. And such leadership development requires adults and young people to work collaboratively in the design of service-learning. When that happens, the outcome will be both profound learning and successful projects.

Day One ... In The Life Of A Program Coordinator, Unknown

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As a tutoring program coordinator, you must juggle many tasks and responsibilities: forming partnerships with schools and community members, finding and training volunteers, and helping assess students' progress. The "to do" list can seem overwhelming. Day One breaks down typical beginning tasks into six steps: Assess What You Know and What You Have; Define the Program; Set Program Goals and Objectives; Meet with Stakeholders; Write a Memorandum of Understanding; and First Steps Toward Recruiting Volunteers. The information you find here will help you develop a course of action and build a successful program!

Statistics Related To Youth Service, Points Of Light Foundation

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Compiled into this resource packet you will find information to guide the reader towards statistical and narrative research published about young people and volunteer service. Some examples of each report's information are listed, along with a description, when possible, of the methodology involved and contact information for the publisher or research group. Studies are listed in chronological order, with the most recent first, and are not grouped by topic since many studies look at multiple issues related to young people.

The Impacts Of Service Learning On Youth, Schools And Communities: Research On K-12 School-Based Service Learning, 1990 To 1999, Shelley H. Billig

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This is an excellent review of literature on the outcomes of service-learning for all involved by a respected author. Contents: Prevalence of Service Learning I Rationale for Use in K-12 Public Schools I Evidence of Impact /Impact on Personal and Social Development /Impact on Civic Responsibility /Impact on Student Academic Learning /Impact on Career Exploration and Aspirations /Impact on Schools /Impact on Communities. Includes five-page bibliography of all sources cited.

Community Service Learning: Pursuing Jewish Ideals Of Compassion And Justice, Joel Westheimer

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Service learning involves community service activities tied to the academic curriculum. It has strong roots in the progressive philosophy of turn-of-the-century educators like John Dewey, Harold Rugg, and William Kilpatrick, but its Widespread popularity is a contemporary phenomenon. A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals that 83 percent of high schools currently offer community service opportunities (compared with 27 percent in 1984). School-based service learning is among the fastest growing and popular education reforms of the past three decades. Jewish educators have seen similar

Grappling, Theodore R. Sizer, Nancy Faust Sizer

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"Moral" or "character" education is neither a discrete curriculum added as an afterthought nor an unreflective activity, such as "community service, " that has never been probed for its meaning. Truly moral education, the authors maintain, is an intellectual undertaking that must infuse the entire school.

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, …

Service-Learning And Community Service In K-12 Public Schools, Bernie Green, Rebecca Skinner, Chris Chapman

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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education used the Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) to conduct the National Student Service-Learning and Community Service Survey in spring 1999. This is the first survey to provide reliable national estimates of the percentage of public elementary, middle, and high1 schools incorporating service-learning into their course curriculum, as well as providing the most recent data on school engagement in community service.

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, …

Service As Learning: One School's Story, Deborah L. Bright

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Cole Porter first alerted us in 1934, and three decades later, Bob Dylan reminded us: times are definitely changing. Too true. A5 we stand with one foot balanced precariously on the ledge of a new millennium, the world around us seems different almost from day to day, from moment to fleeting moment. The pace of this change quickens not arithmetically, but exponentially, and the students we see before us in our classrooms are preparing themselves to inherit from us a world we may not even recognize.

Service Learning: The Right Thing For The Wrong Reasons?, Gary K. Clabaugh

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It is a deep and abiding truth that in helping others we help ourselves. Among the many benefits is knowledge. We learn things about others, life, and ourselves that are enriching, even ennobling.

Recruiting Male Volunteers: A Guide Based On Exploratory Research, Stephanie T. Blackman

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The decision to recruit male volunteers is not one that you should make lightly. Adding men to your pool of volunteers could have a variety of implications for your program, not all of which are positive. Understanding the potential impacts of a greater number of male volunteers may add to your excitement about this cause. The same understanding, however, should also call attention to the possibility that recruitment of male volunteers may not suit your program, may generate additional work for you or your co-workers, or may harbor unforeseen consequences. Legal discrimination or organizational policy issues must also be taken …

Missing Pieces In The Service Learning Puzzle, June R. Chapin

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The increasing popularity in the schools for sponsoring service learning or community service reflects the grave concern that more has to be done to teach youth to participate in a democratic society. The declining voting turnout and the reported low involvement of adults in community groups are often cited as a need for the schools to counter the current apathy and cynicism about government and political leaders. Whether there really is a decline in civic involvement is open to question but the national debate on promoting civic education and social responsibility is reflected in state and local communities requiring students' …

The Progress Of Education Reform 1999-2001: Youth Violence, Suzanne Weiss

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Three strategies to stem the tide of youth violence: Prenatal and infant care; small schools; and service-learning.

Service Learning As Democratic Action, Joel Westheimer, Joseph Kahne

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It is often said that today's youth will be called on to solve tomorrow's problems. Schools provide essential preparation for this task. Despite the rhetoric, curriculum that considers the nature of social problems and ways youth might respond as citizens rarely gets center stage. Rather than focusing on ways youth might participate through democratic institutions to foster a better society, curricular discussions focus on the acquisition of academic and vocational skills. To the extent that the democratic purposes of education are raised, educators emphasize conveying knowledge regarding U.S. history and government structures and exercises in which students simulate the operations …

The Effects Of "Mandatory Volunteerism" On Intentions To Volunteer, Arthur A. Stukas, Mark Snyder, E. Gil Clary

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With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions. To investigate the consequences of such “mandatory volunteerism” programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college. Results demonstrated that stronger perceptions of external control eliminated an otherwise positive relation between prior volunteer experience and future intentions to volunteer. A second study experimentally compared mandates and choices to serve and included a premeasured assessment of whether students felt external control was necessary to get them to volunteer. After being required or choosing …

Service-Learning: An Education Strategy For Preventing School Violence, Carol Kinsley

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Recent headlines provide ample testimony of dramatic, heart-stopping incidents of youth violence - at every socioeconomic level, in every age group, and across rural, suburban and urban areas. What were once seen as isolated outbursts have multiplied in such a way that they no longer can be thought of as random incidents.

Many factors underlie violent behavior in schools. Easy access to guns, violent movies and video games, poor and even destructive parenting, social upheaval in schools, minority status and, not least, violence in the home arc all potential "enablers" of violent behavior on the part of students. But these …

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 …

Increasing Service-Learning's Impact On Middle School Students, Peter C. Scales

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The use of service-learning in middle and high schools has expanded in the 1990s (Scales & Koppelman 1997), but the gap between what is being done in schools and what research tells us about the impact of service-learning is uncomfortably large. Service-learning advocates are convinced of its profound impact on young people, both personally and socially. The quantitative research consistently shows positive effects, but the quality of the research has not been consistently high, the effects observed vary from study to study, and positive academic effects are the least commonly documented. The scarcity of data on academic impact may be …

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 …

Religion, Community Service, And Identity In American Youth, James Youniss, Jefrey A. Mclellan, Miranda Yates

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The role of religion in identity development has, for many years, been a relatively neglected topic In psychology. To demonstrate the importance of religion to the formation of identity, this paper presents evidence connecting community service and religiousness in American youth. Data are reviewed that show youth are heavily involved in volunteer service; many youth view religion as important and those who do so are more likely to do service than youth who do not believe that religion Is important in their lives; involvement in church-sponsored service makes it more likely that youth will adopt the religious rationale in which …

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.

Integration Of Service, Education, And Research In Local Official Public Health Agencies, Larry W. Chambers, John Hoey, Jane Underwood, Namrata Bains

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Chambers et al discuss improved education for future public health practitioners. continuing education of existing staff, and research and evaluations activities in local official public health agencies in Ontario Canada.

Service Learning: A National Strategy, Susan M. Andersen

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This position paper discusses Policy Recommendations (National, State, and Local Levels; and School Level) and Rationale (What is the Need and Why Service Learning?; What is Service Learning?; Examples of Service Learning; What Does Service Learning Accomplish?; Voluntary or Required?; National Campaign to Promote Service Learning; and Conclusion).