Part A | Service-Learning
Most people learn by doing, rather than merely hearing or reading. That’s where service-learning adds value. Service-learning is a teaching method which supplements classroom studies with hands-on projects that address pressing community issues and problems. When students have the opportunity to apply what they are learning to authentic problem solving, the result is too powerful to contain in a textbook. Service-learning:
- Enhances academic curriculum experience,
- Cultivates civic responsibility & civic engagement,
- Empowers youth,
- Advances work performance & management skills,
- Constructs opportunities for student reflection, and
- Offers students an interactive, high-quality, educational learning experience.
Service-learning insures that a project not only benefits the “target audience,” but also the young people who are active participants in designing and executing the work.
Grant applicants will be required to specify how service-learning is imbedded within their project.
Elements of Service-Learning
- Preparation
Youth and adults together:
- Identify a need, issue or problem
- Research the underlying cause and potential solutions of the identified need, issue or problem
- Develop a plan of action
- Join forces with expert community partners
- Imbed curricular objectives in project learning and service
- Apply knowledge to the planning process
- Action
With guidance and formation from adults, youth:
- Incorporate various learning styles
- Employ attained academic skills and knowledge
- Discover new information
- Learn from mistakes
- Follow through with a service, public information, or organizing/advocacy/policy change plan
- Reflection
With guidance and formation, youth reflect by role play, journals, drawing, group discussion, and learning logs to:
- Record thoughts
- Ask questions and reply to classmates
- Summarize events of the service-learning project
- Deliberate differing points of view from community partners
- Express new insight and influence of the project
- Deepen understanding and analysis of the larger civic and social dimensions of the issue or problem being addressed
- Demonstration/Celebration
Youth demonstrate and celebrate their new understanding, new perspectives, and newly-obtained skills with peers, teachers, and community members by:
- Educating others about issues
- Involving active participation
- Planning a concluding celebration to honor the benefits to community
- Developing future project ideas
Types of Service-Learning
- Direct Service-Learning- Positions youth in direct contact with people that results in working with a diverse population.
- Ex. Tutoring younger students on the importance of seatbelt safety, peer counseling on aggressive driving, and a performance on mock accidents
- Indirect Service-Learning- Engages youth in performing service by activities that occur at school and channels resources to area of need.
- Ex. Writing books about defensive driving, developing safety kits for various safety lessons for children, or collecting new and used child booster seats for parents who are unable to afford them.
- Advocacy Service-Learning- Provides the opportunity to participate in policy change by youth contributing voices and talents to help eliminate the causes of a specific problem.
- Ex. Making a railroad crossing safety presentation to the city council in support of a specific policy, launching a campaign about senior citizen driver preparation and retesting, and rallying to gain community support for public policy on drunk, drugged, drowsy, and distracted driving
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