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Six Steps for Successful Service Learning By Kim Cheek
Integrating service into the curriculum is an opportunity for students to learn about environmental and social issues in a real-life context. A successful GreenWorks! service-learning project is more than just volunteering—it involves students applying knowledge and skills to make a difference in their communities. While your project may have many goals, and lots of steps in between, in my experience there are six key considerations that contribute to successful service learning: meaningful service; curriculum connections; student leadership; reflection; community involvement; and a way to demonstrate and celebrate.
1. Meaningful Service Meaningful service addresses a community need. Our community has experienced a steady stream of growth over the past ten years. To accommodate the growth in student enrollment, our Texas school district decided to make some major physical additions to our elementary and middle school campuses. As a result of the construction, much of the natural habitat surrounding our school was destroyed, and soil erosion (compounded by our naturally windy West Texas climate) was a big concern. With encouragement from our school administration, my gifted and talented fourth and fifth graders surveyed their peers, parents, faculty, and community members to find a solution. They came up with a plan to beautify the campus by planting trees and other native vegetation, including a butterfly garden. Xeriscaping techniques would combat soil erosion and create wind breaks, as well as provide habitat for wildlife and shade for citizens. 2. Curriculum Connections As Edutopia blogger Maurice Elias says, “For educators, a plain distinction needs to be made between community service and service learning. When youth engage in service learning, it involves more than arriving at a soup kitchen or a park and serving food or cleaning up. It begins with preparation and learning about the particular problem area or context the service experience will address and, ideally, is linked to academic subject matter being studied.” Combining service and academic learning was a new concept for my students--and some faculty--and differentiating between “community service” and “service learning” took some effort. Students were given the opportunity to be responsible for their own learning based on their unique learning styles and interests.
In the first year of our project, changing the students’ perception of being responsible for their own learning was challenging, but seeing my students learn to apply science, math, language arts and creative problem solving skills to real-life situations was very rewarding for them, and me! They were able to apply academic content in practical situations. Their hands-on experiences reinforced their learning with greater impact than if they had simply completed a worksheet after reading a chapter in a textbook. The Project Learning Tree workshop for teachers helped enhance the environmental education efforts of our project. The training is teacher-friendly, reality-based instruction. The materials are useable, practical, and educational for both faculty and students. The training and PLT curriculum materials provide teachers with a solid knowledge base to begin many study units. They give teachers encouragement and ideas to try something new, different, and engaging to make a difference in our students and in our world. I highly recommend PLT and suggest faculty and staff receive the PLT professional development training before beginning a project. A measurable success for our service-learning teaching approach can be seen in the Texas Education Agency test scores for Wylie Intermediate School. In the 2008-2009 school year, the fourth and fifth graders earned an exemplary rating! 3. Student Leadership Students were given leadership opportunities from the beginning, participating in almost all aspects of the project, from searching for funds, to planting seeds, to making presentations. They learned to work together, along with school leaders and community partners, to make a difference in their community. They learned communication skills, work ethics, and how to use their resources wisely.
Throughout the project, students acquired, evaluated, organized, interpreted, and communicated information in different formats. They used active problem-solving, reasoning, and decision making to explore and communicate knowledge. They also learned how to use reflection as an organizational tool. 4. Reflection Students used reflection techniques to gain insight on their thinking, their goals, and where they were in meeting project objectives. In his blog, Maurice Elias states that it is widely agreed reflection is the hallmark of high-quality service learning. “At a minimum,” he says, “reflection is guided, can occur in a range of modalities, typically is shared, and involves recalling elements of the service experience. It should also relate those experiences to prior situations, beliefs, and learning, asking questions, and coming up with solutions to problems, as well as considering the meaning of involvement. The reflection process also provides an opportunity for feedback and skill building, and development necessary to be more effective at the tasks the service activities encompass.” 5. Community Involvement Involving your local community and collaborating with them directly not only engages community members to help with the project, but ensures the end result responds to actual community needs and achieves specific benefits for the setting.
Our community partners and volunteers played the role of advisors, facilitators, and educators. Some facilitated workshops with our student leadership teams. Some mentored student groups doing the planning, planting, caretaking, and projects for the zoo. No matter their role, all partners worked side by side with our faculty and students throughout the project. We partnered with a local recycling plant that donated mulch and taught students how to properly sort and dispose of typical household waste. Community partners from the Texas A & M Extension Office and Master Gardeners taught faculty and students about xeriscaping, and helped students identify and select appropriate trees and plants based on pros and cons for each type. Greenbelt Nursery showed students what to look for when choosing a healthy plant, donated plants, and discounted trees. The zoo was also a great partner, from helping us organize the Earth Day activities, to answering students’ emails. These partnerships were so successful that we are continuing to collaborate on new projects to “green” the school’s campus. Our students have already signed up to present at the zoo for Earth Day 2010! 6. Demonstrate and Celebrate To celebrate and commemorate Earth Day 2008 and 2009, students created learning centers at the nearby zoo to present what they learned to the community. They became “experts” on different environmental issues. They taught visitors how to make a compost pile; how to plant a butterfly garden; xeriscaping in drought conditions; choosing proper plants; how to become a Master Gardener; wildlife and bird watching in your backyard; and more. I believe service learning should always include demonstration and celebration to enable those engaged in service learning to share their experience with others. “When students prepare for sharing with others, their learning is also deepened,” says Maurice Elias. Our students worked with over 2,000 visitors in a four-hour time period. They learned to talk to learners of all ages and become the content expert. In this way, students not only learned how to share their knowledge but also communicate it in different ways based on their audience. A New Beginning Service-learning projects “live-on” even after the initial work is complete. My students see the results of their work every day. They have pride and ownership in their garden and trees, and are protective of them, too. Although the project is complete, the product is prominent in the school community and will continue to be an integral part of curriculum programs. Students “named” their trees. They developed relationships with their plants and continue to care for them. The drought in our area did present a challenge as students’ plants struggled to survive. As such, students took the death of some of their plants and trees hard. We did not foresee these “mini life-lessons” taking place.
On a more positive note, we did not consider how wildlife would immediately see and respond to the new school habitat. Within one hour of planting the butterfly garden, we had butterflies! Excitement filled the air. We also had a white wing dove make a nest in one of our oak trees. She laid three eggs and students took great care in observing them. Participating in our GreenWorks! service-learning project has brought about noticeable positive change and growth in my students. Before our project, my students did not have strong observation skills. After getting their hands dirty planting seeds in our garden, my students’ eyes have been trained to see small changes. They now notice bird species, insects, and other wildlife and natural wonders that previously didn’t exist at our school site. These strengthened observation skills will surely help my students succeed in the classroom and beyond. Kim Cheek is 4-5th grade teacher at Wylie Intermediate School in Abilene, TX |
