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Service-learning. Carey Galliher . Who am I as a teacher of service-learning? .
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Service-learning Carey Galliher
Who am I as a teacher of service-learning? • Teaching service-learning helps me be a more effective teacher. As a teacher, I feel that service-learning helps students connect real world experiences to their learning and their community. Teaching service-learning allowed me to make a deeper connection to my students. Having students explain their rational for their project exposed what they are passionate about, like showing appreciation for the janitors, and it helped me see how service-learning can help students express themselves. As a teacher of service-learning, I can help these students combine their passions with their learning and in doing so, I learn more about them and where they are, and what they need. • Being a teacher of service-learning helps me empower students to answer questions like, “When will I ever use this in the real world?” by helping students connect the content they are learning to the services they are working on. For example, many of the students I worked with transformed from disinterested in class, to fully invested and motivated to apply what they knew about letter writing mechanics to their projects. I am invested in seeing these students stay engaged and teaching service-learning helps me do so. I am teaching students to see how they can use their knowledge to make a difference, and that a goal that I think all teachers should have.
How can I become a reflective teacher of service-learning? • Executing a service-learning project has helped me learn how to adjust myself, and my instruction, based off of what my students need. I saw that these students excelled with some aspects of our project, such as deciding who they would need help from to complete their goals. However, some students really struggled with deciding on a project. I know now that I need to help students voicing their concerns and thinking about what they can do to help their community.
Who are my service-learning students? • My service-learning students are diverse in their backgrounds and needs. Our service-learning project took place in a 7th grade Pre-AP English classroom at NEISD’s Eisenhower Middle. These students are a diverse group, some come from privilege and some do not, however, all of these students are being tracked for AP classes in high school. Many of these students are Hispanic, 57% of the student body is Hispanic, and rest of the students are Caucasian, Asian, and African American. The students that I worked with are motivated and engaged in school because they are typically in classes with smaller class sizes, 20 or fewer students, and they get more one on one interaction with the teacher and each other.
How does service-learning address the developmental needs of young adolescents? • Service-learning helps meet many of the developmental needs of young adolescents. At this age, 12-14, many students are more invested in their social relationship, rather than their academic responsibilities. Service-learning allows for students to work collaboratively and uses their social skills to incorporate learning and meeting a service goal. • This project required students to work together to establish a need they saw in their school and then develop a plan of action, using their written and oral communication skills, to address this need. Students at this age also need to see the connection between what they are learning in school and their lives outside of the classroom. Service-learning helps bridge the connection between school and “real life,” because students see a direct correlation between the skills they learn in class and the projects they are implementing. They get to see how what they have learned can be used to achieve a goal outside of the classroom.
What experience have my students had with service-learning? • These students have had some experience through volunteer projects, but I do not think that they have had experience with an actual service-learning project. This project allowed for the students to choose their own goals and connect language arts knowledge to a project that benefited their school. These students noticed the different between this project and a typical volunteer project. The students noticed that this was different from a typical project, some struggled with having more control and settling on one thing and some ran with the independence. All of the students though were engaged and present in what they were doing, and I believe it is because this was the first time they had done service-learning.
How do I set up a classroom for service-learning inquiry? • In order to have a classroom be a successful environment for service-learning, the classroom culture has to be healthy, respectful, and collaborative. Students need to be comfortable enough to voice their opinions and take risks. Having a classroom where everyone’s voice is respected allows for students to think out their options and develop a clearly articulated goal for their service-learning project.
What is the difference between democratic service-learning and teacher-directed service-learning? • Teacher-directed service-learning and democratic service-learning are two different ends of the service-learning spectrum. Teacher-directed has students work to accomplish a goal that the teacher has outlined. Just as the name suggests, teacher-directed service-learning has the teacher directing the actions and outcomes that the students will perform during a service project. The teacher plays a more involved role in planning and executing the goals of the service-learning project. • Democratic service-learning is more focused on the role that student choice plays in a service project. A democratic service-learning project typically has students identify the need, plan the steps they will need to take, and think of how they will execute their plans and project. The role of the teacher in a democratic service-learning project is focused more on helping students clearly define their goals and ideas, and helping students execute their plans.
What are the differences between volunteerism, community service, and service-learning? • Volunteerism, community service, and service-learning are very different things. Volunteerism is the act of volunteering your time to some kind of service, like volunteering your time at a suicide hotline. Volunteerism tends to be something that you are passionate about that may, or may not, connect back to your community and can be partisan, like a political campaign. • Community service tends to be connected to and helps the community at large. Community service typically goes past partisan volunteer efforts, like political campaigns, to benefit and enrich the lives of everyone that is connected to the community. For example, a litter clean up project may be volunteerism, but because it is something that everyone in that community benefits from, it is a community service. • Service-learning is an expansion on both community service and volunteerism because while it connects back to a community and may require students to volunteer their time; ultimately, service-learning helps students accomplish these goal by using skills they learn in a classroom and learning new content skills via their service.
What is a community? • To me, a community is the area that you call home. It is more than just your neighborhood or the school you go to. The community is where you live your life, where you express yourself, and where you interact with the people around you. Community changes depending on the context. For example, for some people a group or club may be more of a community than where they physically live. • For this project, the community was the school itself and the businesses that surround the school. The students looked for needs they could address within their school, and asked for assistance both within this community and outside it in the larger area.
What are the needs in the community? • This project was a democratic service-learning project. The students listed a number of needs that, they felt, they could address during the time left in the school year. The students noted needs that include, decorating the dreary 8th grade hallway, making staff/student/teacher appreciation boards for recognizing hard work, purchasing updated steel ramps for students that could not easily access areas with stairs, creating a “5 Star Generals” club to celebrate students that have brought up their grades, creating a school dance club to support sports teams, beautifying outdoor spaces with new paint and gardens, and working with local businesses to get supplies to update the track and field area.
Who are community collaborators and what are their roles in service-learning? • Community collaborators, and the roles they play, change depending on the community context and the service-learning project’s goals. They may be community leaders or city council members that help build support, or they may be local businesses that donate their time and supplies to a project. • For this project, the community collaborators where school administrators and teachers. Many of the groups wanted to start clubs and organizations within the school to help honor staff and students or help drive school spirit. In order to have a club, they needed permission from the principal and a teacher to sponsor them. These teachers would help the student reach out further into the community to ask for donations from families and businesses around the school. In some cases they needed supplies, like poster boards, and others they needed funds or equipment, like new ramps for students that have physical disabilities.
Content and standards How are TEKS used in service-learning? • The TEKS and other standards are an integral part of service-learning. The TEKS act as a tool to frame the learning I hope that the students will achieve from service-learning around. The TEKS are a flexible guide to build around the activities and lessons the students will do.
TEKS our service-learning project addressed §110.19. English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 7, Beginning with School Year 2009-2010. • (14) Writing/Writing Process. Students use elements of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) to compose text. Students are expected to • (B) develop drafts by choosing an appropriate organizational strategy (e.g., sequence of events, cause-effect, compare-contrast) and building on ideas to create a focused, organized, and coherent piece of writing; • (C) revise drafts to ensure precise word choice and vivid images; consistent point of view; use of simple, compound, and complex sentences; internal and external coherence; and the use of effective transitions after rethinking how well questions of purpose, audience, and genre have been addressed; • (D) edit drafts for grammar, mechanics, and spelling • (18) Writing/Persuasive Texts. Students write persuasive texts to influence the attitudes or actions of a specific audience on specific issues. Students are expected to write a persuasive essay to the appropriate audience that • (A) establishes a clear thesis or position; • (C) includes evidence that is logically organized to support the author's viewpoint and that differentiates between fact and opinion.
How does service-learning offer opportunities to address the TEKS? • The TEKS are stated in such a way, that many opportunities in this service-learning project address them. For example, students writing to ask local businesses for donations meet TEKS for the writing process and persuasive text writing. With service-learning, the TEKS are met in a way that is richer and more meaningful to the students; as opposed to traditional classroom instructions. The TEKS are met with purpose during a service-learning project, and the students are more motivated to accomplish the goals laid out in the standards during these authentic activities.
What is service-learning? • Service-learning brings together authentic learning and meaningful engagement in the community in the context of meeting a community need or goal. • Service-learning is more than just volunteering or community service because it provides a meaningful context for students to learn, and practice, content skills while they are providing a service. • Service-learning gives students the opportunity to put the skills they learn in a typical classroom into you in a way that not only illustrates why the skill is useful, but makes that experience meaningful to the student. • Service-learning opportunities help students foster a desire to give back and be active members of their community while transferring the skills learned in a classroom into life long skills they can easily apply to different contexts throughout their lives.
What is the history of service-learning • Service-learning is based around the ideas of some of the most prominent names in childhood psychology and education. Service-learning lends itself to being easy to scaffold and helps teachers work in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. Students can get support from their teachers, all while learning content in the context of something they are motivated and interested in work on. • Modern service-learning was first described in the 1993 National and Community Service Trust Act. • In 2001, the Compact for Learning and Citizenship added to the Trust Act definition by “discriminating it from community service” because service-learning “combines service to the community with in-depth student learning in a way that can benefit students, schools, and community members.” • The 2002 document Learning in Deed published by the National Commission on Service-Learning further sought to encourage more schools to utilize service-learning by showing the ample benefits for both students and the community. • According to the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Learn and Serve America Fact Sheet “1 in 4 elementary and secondary schools participate in service-learning” and 35 states now have a service-learning policy in place.
What is the research on service-learning • Research from the Learn and Serve Fact Sheet shows that students active in service learning are at a lower likelihood of teenage pregnancy and criminal activity. • The National Research Council suggests that service-learning is “one of the most effective approaches for engaging students and boosting learning.” • The Learn and Serve Fact Sheet also has shown that service-learning can have a positive correlation with student score on standardized writing and social studies exams. • Lastly, the Learn and Serve Fact Sheet has also shown that students engaged in service-learning are more likely to attend school and less likely to drop out.
Why is service learning interdisciplinary • Service-learning lends itself to interdisciplinary learning opportunities because it provides a more seamless way for students to blend the information and skills learned in the classroom in with their real life experiences they engage in during their service-learning project. Students may use their skills from math or science to explain and support their findings in a persuasive essay to ask for donations from community businesses. They may use their art skills to illustrate examples of samples they took during a field experiment. • Service-learning allows for students to draw from all content areas in a way that feels natural and purposeful; it allows for students to easily make the interdisciplinary connections themselves.
How do I plan a service-learning project? • In order to plan a service-learning project, you must establish the goals and learning outcomes that you want your students to achieve, determine if democratic or teacher-directed service-learning works best for your students, and clearly organize how you are going to help your students determine a need, organize a plan, and execute it. • For this project, we decided that democratic service-learning would be the best way to keep our students invested and interested in this project. Initially, we had them write a warm-up about a need they saw in their community. Next, we had the students reflect about the things they wrote and narrow their scope to needs they saw within the school and work in groups to articulate a need and a goal. After they identified a need and a goal, they used a graphic organizer to sequence out the steps they needed to take to accomplish their goals, identify the materials they would need, and determine who they would need as a community collaborator.
What are the components of an effective service-learning project? • In order for a service-learning project to be effective, it needs to include the following components, collaborative learning, student choice, clear connections to standards and learning outcomes, and clearly identified needs and goals.
What strategies should I use? • For this project, we used a number of strategies that ranged from collaborative learning to teambuilding talks. We worked together in both planning how we would present this project to the students and we expected the students to work collaboratively to identify a need and plan a solution. Some students needed additional support through teambuilding talks about how to accept that not every idea will be chosen and how to work together so that everyone’s voice is heard. In addition to collaborative learning, we also used strategies to differentiate instruction and provide scaffolding. These included using graphic organizers, assigned different roles within the groups, using example letters and templates, using group editing, and having each student contribute to the final written proposal. These strategies ensured that every student played a part and that every student was able to absorb the content.
What is the difference between service-learning imbedded within a course and service-learning as a stand-alone project? • The main difference between a service-learning project that is imbedded within a course and a stand-alone service-learning project is the depth of the content taught during the project. An imbedded project is likely to focus on fewer learning outcomes because it does not typically span the entire school year. While a stand-alone service-learning project is likely to encompass an entire course of material that students will learn during their time working during the project. • Our project is an example of a imbedded service-learning project because the learning outcome was for students to improve their professional and persuasive writing skills. This project took place during a content unit and did not span the entire course.
What is reflection? • Reflection is the process of evaluating yourself and the process that you took to achieve a goal. Within this service-learning project, students are encouraged to reflect back on their decision making process and consider things like, will a hand written letter be more effective than a typed letter?, and if they felt they achieved the goals they set out to accomplish. We also encouraged them to reflect on if they would change anything, or what things they did change, and see if they can apply those changes to future projects and classes. For example, I talked with some of the students about my rational for this project and we agreed that this project has helped them see what steps they can take to make a change in their community. • Reflection is an integral part of the self evaluation process and it allows both student and teacher to look back the steps they took during this project and determine what they learned and what they contributed.
What traditional assessments should I use in the project? • For this project, the students will be assessed via a written letter and their graphic organizers. Since one of the goals of this project was for students to improve their professional and persuasive writing skills, having them write a proposal letter is a great way of traditionally assessing their writing skills while because they are motivated to put their best effort into their work since other teachers will see it. The graphic organizer is also a grade because we wanted to ensure that students fully thought out their planning steps and that all students participated.
What alternative assessments do I use in the service-learning? • For this project, the final written proposal counted as an alternative assessment because it was compromised of a cover letter, their written letter, and other components they felt were important to persuade the community collaborators to assist them. This final proposal incorporated both content skills and creative skills and showed the depth of their understanding of the project goals. Some students included pictures of the materials they would need and the costs of those materials, some chose to keep their letters hand written to make them more personal, and some students chose to just fallow the graphic organizer as a guide for their letter. All of these proposals are a good representations of what the students put into this project and what they gained.
How do I use formative assessments in service-learning? • During a service-learning project formative assessments play a key role in checking student understanding. In order to make sure that students are understanding the goals and outcome of the service-learning project, the teacher should utilize formative assessments and redirect or reteach as needed. • For this project, we used simple and brief discussions to “check-in” with our students and have them tell us what their goals and plans were. By having the students verbally the steps they had taken and what steps they had left, we were able to see that they understood what they were doing. For the students that got stuck, we sat down with them and brainstormed possible solutions and ideas that would help them get back on track.
How do I use summative assessment in service-learning? • Summative assessment is important within a service-learning project because using a summative assessment ensures that students are still learning the content that they are using during the project. By having a summative assessment, a teacher also helps ensure the legitimacy of their service-learning project because it shows how the project is directly connected to the state standards and learning outcomes. • In this project, the quality of the students writing mechanics was assessed via their final draft of their persuasive letter. This piece of the assignment directly connected back to the TEKS for persuasive writing and helped to showcase the students professional writing skills.
How do I provide assessment feedback in Service-learning? • Providing assessment feedback is important in with any assessment. With a service-learning project feedback helps student understand how well they met the learning outcomes and standards. It also allows them to see how they can change and grow in future projects. Feedback can come from the teacher, the classmates, or the surrounding community. Ideally, feedback should be continuous through the project so that students can adjust as needed. • For this project, we provided assessment feedback through discussions and through commentary and suggestions during the revising and editing phase of their letter writing. The students knew when they turned in the final draft that they were likely to receive good grades, because they had received continuous feedback about previous drafts. This strategy also helps students reflect and evaluate themselves because they will see the direct impact their finished product will have on their school.
Bibliography • Learn and Serve America Fact Sheet. (n.d.). Corporation for National and Community Service. Retrieved February 9, 2014, from http://www.nationalservice.gov/newsroom/marketing/fact-sheets/learn-and-serve-america • Pritchard, F. F., & Whitehead, G. I. (2004). Serve and learn implementing and evaluating service-learning in middle and high schools. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. • Fiske, E. B. (2001). Learning in deed: the power of service-learning for American schools : a report from the National Commission on Service-Learning.. Battle Creek, MI: W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
