Starting a high school service-learning program

Abstract

Developing and implementing a service-learning program at the high school level can be achieved in several ways. This effective practice outlines some techniques for planning and implementing service-learning. Ideas were collected by Dennis Lawrence of Washington High School in Kansas City, Kansas, from input received on the Service-Learning Discussion Group in June 2002.

Issue

Developing and implementing a service-learning program at the high school level.

Action

Several suggestions and ideas from the Service-Learning Discussion Group were collected by Dennis Lawrence of Washington High School in Kansas City, Kansas in the areas of planning, training, and reflection:

Planning

"Sell" service-learning to the appropriate administrators by creating a resource guide for faculty with information about service-learning, brochures, and conference dates that teachers could attend.
Create a survey to ascertain what faculty already know about service-learning.

Shared by Angela Campise, VISTA Service Leader, Ohio Northern University, a-campise@onu.edu

Some questions to ask in the survey might be:
- Who is already involved in sponsoring student leadership organizations that contain elements of service?
- Who has already included service in curriculum areas?
- Who is involved in community service?
When teachers respond that they are already practicing community service, this allows them to bring an element of their lives into the classroom that they might not otherwise have included. Consequently, teachers acknowledge that service-learning meets their own personal needs and values.
Designate someone to support teachers throughout the year.

Shared by Andrea England, Advisor, Southwest Exchange for Service Learning Training and Technical Assistance, ande@mail.utexas.edu

Have faculty focus on their objectives for a course or one unit within a course.
Acknowledge that faculty need guidance regarding what service-learning is and how it could work for them.
Find potential associates/collaborators (partners?) and/or community agencies, willing to work with high school students.
Provide examples of what others have done in the area of high school service-learning. (Contact a local college to find the person who is directing the service-learning component of that institution.)
Talk to other high school faculty who are engaged in service-learning.

Shared by Sharyn Lowenstein, slowenstein@Lasell.edu

Connect service-learning projects to the students' interests in improving their communities.

Shared by Novella Keith, Urban Education Program, Temple University, keithnov@astro.ocis.temple.edu

Conduct a community needs assessment that consists of community mapping and market research.
Determine which project(s) get priority.
Hold a retreat and invite community and corporate partners, and other adults that might be interested in a partnership.
Devise a project template as a group. Then have smaller groups work on the various components which could include: identifying vision, goals, objectives, resumes, obstacles, timeline, plan of action, and 5 critical factors for success.

Shared by Amy Carpenter, amybcarpenter@hotmail.com

Identify departments that resonate with service-learning.
Include a discussion of what service-learning is not.
Talk about how to incorporate service-learning into existing courses.
Seek like-minded faculty.
Solicit support from students.

Shared by Marshall Welch, Ph.D., Lowell Bennion Community Service Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, mwelch@saff.utah.edu

Training

Conduct training in segments that are separated by practice.
Train teachers in cooperative and project-based learning.
Build reflection into the training process.

Shared by Andrea England, Advisor, Southwest Exchange for Service Learning Training and Technical Assistance, ande@mail.utexas.edu

Involve some potential partners (agency volunteer coordinators) in the training of teachers so they can share their needs and teachers can plan curriculum appropriately.

Shared by Betsy Warrine, bwarrine@mail.pcc.edu

Consult texts on service-learning. Some good resources include:
- Claus, Jeff, and Curtis Ogden, Service Learning for Youth Empowerment and Social Change, Peter Lang Publishers, New York, 1999.
- Loeb, Paul Rogat, Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, St. Martin's Press, 1999.
- Waterman, Alan (ed.), Service Learning: Applications from the Research,Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., New Jersey, 1997. (See especially the chapter entitled, "Doing Service Projects in Urban Settings" by Novella Keith).
- Wade, Rahima C., (ed.), Community Service Learning: A Guide to Including Service in the Public School Curriculum,SUNY Press, Albany, New York, 1997.
Other readings on related issues can be found in magazines and works of fiction.
Training should include having teachers both do a service-learning project and apply service-learning to their own curriculum. At Temple University, teachers use sections that employ different approaches to teaching through service-learning. Examples of sections or units include themes such as "Need in Deed," Kids Around Town," Project-based," "Agency/Community-based," and "School-based."

Shared by Novella Keith, Urban Education Program, Temple University, keithnov@astro.ocis.temple.edu

Consider other programs that utilize service-learning. For instance, the Prudential Youth Leadership Institute (Train the Trainer) Program, could be a helpful framework for starting students on a community service program.

Shared by Darlene Nadeau, Coordinator, Service Learning, River College, New Hampshire, dnadeau@rivier.edu

Reflection

For those teachers who have not been involved in community service, it is crucial that they experience this element of service for themselves in reflective training sessions which gives them a chance to see and think about how a service project might work in their curriculum areas.
Have teachers re-examine what they know about student developmental levels and student readiness to learn at various stages.

Shared by Andrea England, Advisor, Southwest Exchange for Service Learning Training and Technical Assistance, ande@mail.utexas.edu

Context

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates that in the 2000-2001 academic year, more than 13 million school students were involved in service and service-learning. NCES also found that the proportion of high school students participating in service-learning grew from 2 percent to 25 percent between 1984 and 1987.Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity changes both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.

Outcome

In the process of service-learning, students link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development.

Service-learning experiences:

Promote skills associated with teamwork and community involvement and citizenship.
Address complex problems in complex settings.
Offer opportunities to engage in problem solving by requiring participants to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service-learning activity and community challenges.
Offer a means to acquire the habits of critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most important questions or issues within a real-world situation.
Promote deeper learning because the results are immediate and uncontrived.

As a consequence of the immediacy of experience, service-learning is more likely to be personally meaningful to participants and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development. (Eyler and Giles, 1999)The community receives highly valuable services. For example, one service-learning project involved students collecting trash from an urban streambed, analyzing the problem, and sharing results with neighborhood residents, along with suggestions for reducing pollution.