ces ssp’s “service learning” inquiry group

November 9, 2008 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Service Learning

I hope that this blog post can be a place where we can continue to work on and offer feedback to each other regarding the Essential Questions in regard to Service Learning dilemmas we are working on that we developed on Sunday, November 9, 2008 while at the Coalition of Essential School Small School Project meeting in Charlotte, NC.  It would be great to write the latest version of your Essential Question along with the problem which informed that question under the comment section.  Additionally we will use this blog to check in about how we’re progressing on the tool that we will use as we move forward in addressing our Essential Questions.

Click on this link to use the Action Plan Template!

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4 Comments »

  Dan Condon wrote @ November 9, 2008 at 8:29 pm

First some context about Service Learning at Eagle Rock School. Service-learning is recognized by Eagle Rock as an effective, experiential means of preparing young people to make a difference in the world. From the school’s inception, service has figured strongly in its values, expectations and commitments. “Service to others,” “Environmental stewardship,” and “Participating as an engaged global citizen,” are expressed in 8 + 5 = 10 and highly valued at Eagle Rock. Students are expected to “Serve Eagle Rock and other communities” as an ongoing part of their learning experience and knowledge
acquisition at the school. The service-learning instructor and fellow coordinate service-learning experiences and partnerships, providing many direct and indirect community service opportunities for students through a variety of short and long-term activities.

These include the following:
Service Specials, a hands on service-learning course that meets four times a week each trimester and engages students in on- and off-campus community service as well as regular opportunities to think, discuss and write reflectively about their service experiences and viewpoints; Chores, a community-wide work program whereby students and staff participate in campus maintenance including recycling, landscaping, forestry, resupply and general housekeeping; EagleServe, which consists of two to three days of community service each trimester provided at Eagle Rock and to the wider community; Service-Learning Advisory Council, where students have a voice in planning, action and decision-making around service-learning at ERS; Independent Service Projects, whereby students develop a proposal to integrate a service-learning opportunity into their coursework or personal time; Classroom Service-Learning Projects, which are coordinated through different instructors and courses. Service-learning appears in courses like Soccer and Service; For the Birds; Service, Spanish and Culture in Guatemala; Four-Corners of Service and Culture; Wilderness; Math and Cooking; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; Sacred Benches; and Sustainable Resources. These courses are found across the curriculum in art, math, world languages, science, societies and cultures, music and human performance. Service partnerships are maintained in collaboration with local organizations and agencies. These include Rocky Mountain National Park, MacGregor Ranch, the Prospect Park Living Center, Park School District, the Town of Estes Park, the University of Colorado, Rocky Ridge Music Camp, Sunrise Rotary and many more. Travel and off-campus experience in the wilderness program and in various courses provide service-learning opportunities in both local and distant communities. Students may experience anything from trail work to cross-cultural dialogue, from tutoring at an elementary school to renovating a home on the Navajo Reservation, from picking up trash to organizing a PeaceJam project on global peacemaking, from working with Latino children in Estes Park’s Roundhouse program to teaching English classes in a rural Guatemalan community school.

I believe a “problem” I ask myself that informs my problem statement specific to service learning and equity is as follows: Does the looseness of our Service Learning definition and program lead to lost opportunities for learning and do those lost opportunities disproportionately affect one demographic over another.

My “essential questions” that I’m working on is: How can Eagle Rock clarify what Service Learning is as a community and move toward a more effective learner centered, asset based service learning philosophy.

  Dan Condon wrote @ November 9, 2008 at 8:59 pm

I’d also like to offer an article our Service Learning Instructional Specialist wrote for CES’ Horace: http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/479

  Honor Moorman wrote @ December 4, 2008 at 4:06 am

Here’s a recent New York Times article about cutting back the number of service hours required in favor of quality over quantity: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/fashion/27service.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

  Honor Moorman wrote @ December 4, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Engaging students in community service has been an integral part of the International School of the Americas’ vision and purpose since its inception in 1994. As reflected in our school’s mission statement, one of our primary goals is for students and teachers to “use their education to improve themselves, their school, and the local and global communities.”
Students are required to complete “120 hours of documented service to the community” in order to graduate. Many opportunities for community service are offered through our school’s organizations and special programs such as NHS, Spanish Honor Society, Interact Club, Environmental Club, Peace Jam, PALs (Peer Assistance Leadership), and MUN (Model United Nations). Grade level teams and advisory groups sometimes participate in service projects together as well.
In addition to the intrinsic value of the service itself, we also recognize that service projects support students’ development in the other areas represented in our graduate profile: problem solving, communication, personal wellness, collaboration, leadership, and global awareness. But with the exception of the Make a Difference Project, which students complete Freshmen year, the service component is not really integrated into the rest of our school’s curriculum.
All ISA Freshmen take a “Multimedia” class which addresses speech and technology skills while introducing students to the collaborative learning and global perspectives that are the basis of the ISA school culture. The spring semester of Multimedia is devoted to the “Make a Difference” project in which students identify a local/global issue of concern, engage in service with a local organization, research the problem at the global level, design a project to address some aspect of the problem that is not already being met, and present their findings/project to a panel of school and community members.
Students are asked to reflect on their community service experiences and learning at the end of each year in their portfolios, but there is currently a dearth of structured, integrated service projects in the other three grade level’s curricula. On the other hand, given the interdisciplinary project-based learning, educational travel experiences, and international studies curriculum we already have in place, the integration of service learning seems like a natural fit.
This leads me to the following series of thoughts and questions:
How can we move from a community service model to a service learning model?
Assuming we want to do so, how can we proceed without undermining the value of “plain old” community service?
Service learning projects require significant ongoing support, guidance, and modeling from teachers, which translates into time and space in the curriculum.
How would the goals of service learning support or enhance our current curricular objectives in a cohesive and meaningful way?
How can we integrate service learning projects at each grade level so that they will complement rather than compete with the goals of our content-area and international curricula?
Service learning projects will be explicitly tied to academic learning, so all students will be participating in them regardless of participation in extracurricular clubs, etc.
Should we move away from the hourly requirement in favor of this integrated and scaffolded approach so that service is something we systematically do with kids, rather than an add-on requirement we expect them to do on their own?
Would this satisfy and even enrich the original intent of the community service requirement?

I look forward to inviting colleagues, students, parents, and community members into this conversation as we seek to answer these questions and implement a plan for moving forward.


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