Service Learning Projects Contributed by Teaching Credential Candidates
| High Schools | Middle Schools | Elementary Schools |
|
Welcome to the wonderful world of Service
Learning. In this project you will experience first-hand,
the implementation of a Service Learning project from its
inception to its completion. ~ Beatriz C. Olazaba |
| In the design of an integrated
learning unit for my students to participate in the high service
and high learning project, I did experience some growth as a
teacher. Initially, I felt the pressure of combing the math I
know with community service. Building on my prior
knowledge (baseball), beautifying our school's baseball field
was the perfect thing we could do. Once I got into the mix of
things, ideas started to come to me as well as the help from
other colleagues. When I first found out that I would have to
put together and organize activity centers with task cards, I
was not looking forward to it. After completing the project, I
understood that group activity could work with most of my
students. One of the key things I learned from the activity
centers was how students could be working on different parts of
a unit at the same time. The use of task cards promoted
teachers' ability to do that. Task card is like the lesson plan
in itself for the students or instructional associate to follow.
In the process of integrating other content areas came rather natural. The class obviously was math but arts were integrated quite easily, and the content area of English was implemented through students' reflection on what they were responsible in this service learning project. Students had to collect data and do a lot of trial and error in their attempt to make the first base coaching boxes. I learned that students' learning could be developed at a more rapid rate when students worked together for a common goal through a hands-on project. It is such experiences that impressed them how math can be applied in a real life situation. ~ Stuart Piraro |
| When I designed my service learning project, my
first goal was for students to be active members of the school
community. My second goal was for students to learn how to use
social skills in a vocational setting. My third goal was to
integrate three different content areas including US history,
vocational skills, and social skills, and the fourth goal was for
my students to foster meaningful relationships with their general
education peers through hands-on job training activities. All of
them would be readily applicable in the real world upon leaving
high school. My goals for myself were to grow as an advocate to
promote the theory of multiple intelligences and effective
pedagogies proposed by the Center for Research on Education,
Diversity, and Excellence. Here were some of the questions guided
my project: What benefits will be gained by students in the
endeavor of running a coffee shop on campus? What service does the
Cougar Cafe provide to our high school? What learning outcomes
students will achieve? How will content standards and integrated
instruction be delivered?
~ Brain Elliott |
"Reflection" is a key component of Service Leaning in addition to the other two components: Academic Learning and Service to a Community or group. Here are exemplary reflections shared by two education specialists enrolled in our Level II MM programs.
Last year, I taught in a middle school Community Based Instruction (CBI) SDC classroom. A majority of my students had been labeled with mental retardation, autism, and severe learning disabilities. Many had 1:1 aides and had been with these sides since preschool. Very few had ever been expected to exhibit any amount of independence or to be contributors of society.
The SL project revolutionized the way that I approach teaching. The “essential question” tied all subject matter together in a very meaningful way. I know longer felt like my students’ learning had to be fragmented by the bell schedule and constrained by the confines of textbook curriculum. Students were learning to generalize newly acquired skills across contexts, which is generally a difficult task for special education. students. Task cards and checklists (though they were a lot of work for me to prepare) allowed my students to work independently with out the help of an aide. However, the best part of the SL projects was that my students were suddenly seen in a new light by their peers and parents. The projects had morphed them into contributors of society. They genuinely relished their newfound ability to be independent and to contribute.
In the end my students raised $3,000 for the Red Cross Measles Initiative, were honored by the school board, and were interviewed for the local newspaper. The project put the kids on the map, raised awareness that individuals with disabilities can be valuable citizens, helped a great cause, and taught the students some very useful life-long skills.
Suggestions for the
new group of teachers to get ready for their SL project:
I think that it is imperative to begin the backwards design process very early in the semester—as soon as you have your essential question established. The “Eight Steps for Doing Projects” worksheet is very helpful. Organizing your project into a timeline will keep you on track as the semester progresses.
Also, be sure to take pictures and keep work samples throughout the project in a file folder. This will make the end of the semester presentation much easier. This project also makes great material for your Level II portfolio.
Lastly, this should be a “student-led” project. Allow students in on the decision making process. It is essential that they “buy-in” to this procedure. Use checklists and task cards whenever possible. They allow students the ability to work very independently.
~ Cindy Bird McCullough (September, 2006)
Learning about and actually doing a service learning project has completely changed the way I think about my teaching practice. I have been trying to find a way to expose my students to skills that would help them succeed in their future occupations. Service Learning allows me to do this while also connecting their knowledge with real world issues that surround them.
As I thought about a cause to serve, I knew that I wanted to keep the recipients of our project local because I wanted to build in some life skills training with a field trip on public transportation, and I wanted my students to know about community programs that were within range of their own neighborhood. Family Supportive Housing, Inc. on Las Plumas Blvd. accommodated this purpose. It was also fortunate that this family homeless shelter had a website that my students could navigate through before visiting the actual site. Because of this, I could integrate the use of technology into my overall learning plan. Creating the task cards to teach my students how to find information on a specific website using the print screen method proved to be beneficial for many instructional technology lessons to come.
Service learning supports student engagement and aids in their self-awareness. As my students worked on writing their reflections about their experience of seeing the shelter, I noticed that each student seemed particularly more involved in their writing. I noticed them editing their work, and I noticed that they wrote more than usual. Because the project was so "real" to them, every student wanted to participate in the project in some way and extended themselves beyond what they normally expected of themselves.
As a result, I concluded that content standards are made meaningful through service learning. Additionally, I believe that Service Learning got my students to think about their place in this world and that their existence can serve a purpose. After I remarked to my math class that we were a family helping each other learn, one student responded "Hey, we're a family helping families!" This showed me that one of my expected learning outcomes of having a can-do attitude was realized by this student and because he expressed his thought aloud, others too might have digested this feeling of accomplishment. These students can now take their knowledge beyond the classroom and continue to answer the essential question of “What can middle school students do to help families facing homelessness or any others in need?”
Along with
learning life skills, work place competencies, and becoming
self-aware, service learning also supports inclusion.
This had been the first opportunity that my students were
involved in any leadership activity. They wrote speeches
and delivered them over the PA system alongside the more
experienced leadership students of the school, an extremely
frightening challenge for many of them, frightening but in the
end doable. Now that I have the experience in
managing a service learning project, I find that it too is
doable.
What would I do differently?
I would start earlier in thinking about service learning activities. We obviously didn’t have the option to think about this with the constraints of spring semester. Now that I know how much work goes into initiating a project, I know I have to plan accordingly. Furthermore, I will start thinking about doing smaller projects with individual classes, which might make managing each task more controllable, at least until I become more accustomed to planning and implementing service learning projects. Then, I will move toward projects on a larger scale.
What I observed as my students worked on tasks such as typing a business letter, doing website navigation, and creating posters was that many of them were lacking on some necessary basic skills such as keyboarding, typing in a URL in the appropriate place, doing a web search, and building the right composition for an advertisement. What I need to do for next year is build these needed skills in order for students to expedite tasks with ease early on in the year using task cards.
Because I was under the pressure of time constraints and stress, I did not use the project planning guides for students and teachers provided by the Buck Institute, which might have made the students a bit more independent of me and aided them in becoming more goal setting oriented. I think I was afraid of learning one more new thing and being unsuccessful with it. I plan to study these forms before the new academic year and field test their usefulness with my students in September.
During the project, I also learned that checklist were much more convenient in students self-monitoring themselves. It was less wordy than a rubric and automatically chunked the tasks into smaller steps making each task more manageable. Checklists also make assessing student’s work easy. It made the task of grading less subjective and I could deliver a hard, concrete critique rather than saying something like, “You did a nice job,” which would be meaningless for the student in the long-run.
Lastly at this point in my experience with service learning, I would like to create more partnership opportunities with the leadership class or other general education classes, to support inclusion practices while all the students learn from each other.
~ Michele M. Hatfield (May, 2006)
My Service Learning project involves working in a Literacy Academy classroom and after school tutoring activities for English language learners (ELL) at Bertha Taylor Elementary in Fall, 2004. The academy is an hour long before the school begins from 7:25 am to 8:25 am. The ELL tutoring is after school program from 2:50 pm – 3:50 pm. ELL needs instruction to reach sufficient proficiency at speaking, reading & writing English. So the goal is to frame instruction in English strategies in order to reach standards. The goal is to help students make progress towards meeting standards/closing achievement gap by helping them understand the basic features of reading, writing, and comprehension.
I
collaborated with Ms. Virginia Hosford and came up with
strategies to improve the students’ performance while
maintaining fun atmosphere. The aim was to improve the reading level, their written
expression, and teach comprehension skills. Since the teacher
student ratio was as low as 5:1, the students got more
individual attention to bring up their reading level. I also
benefited from working with Ms. Hosford; she had some great
ideas that were accumulated through twenty years in service. I
was thankful to the school for letting me help in the classrooms
as a part of my SL project. But what surprised me was that they were more thankful to
me for coming and helping them. The staff appreciates the more volunteers in a classroom
and it also benefits the students as they get more individual
help.
~Namarta Jindal
Books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not
only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have
possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched.
But when you pass it on, you are enriched threefold.
-Henry Miller
The Books-On-Tape, For Kids, By Kids was inspired
by this quote by Henry Miller and raised the essential question,
“Why is sharing a book with others important?’
Books-On-Tape, For Kids, By Kids was a Service Learning Project that offered a high service and high learning opportunity for students with mild/moderate learning disabilities. This project was conducted in spring, 2005 as a part of course assignments for EDSE 230. Students offered a service and contributed to the elementary school library. There was a need for Books-On-Tape to support and assist the struggling reader in the school library. Students had to go to the public library to check out Books-On-Tape and this seemed to be a challenge for many families. The Books-On-Tape project also afforded the students in the resource program a high learning experience that covered four different content areas: language arts (reading fluency and comprehension), mathematics (measurement and two-step addition/subtraction), theater arts and visual arts (creative expression). Task cards were designed by identifying the desired results and were centered on California State Standards in Reading, Mathematics, Theater and Visual Arts.
Students were expected to read
and record a book of their choice. They wrote and created
a teacher brochure, which included a story summary,
comprehension questions, and phonemic awareness drills.
Students also needed to coordinate the size, quantity and cost
of packaging. Finally, students took part in a joint
productive activity which included recording a theatrical, audio
production and creating a persuasive print advertisement to
distribute around the school. After
completing Books-On-Tape, students answered the essential
question that it was important to share books with others
because it contributed to the school, helped younger students
read and created lasting friendships.
~Katherine Sund
We incorporated various activities into our Family Night in order to give parents an understanding of the Eight Multiple Intelligences (MI) and how they can use them to enhance their child’s learning at home. We began by introducing the 8 MI and their role in learning to them using a pictograph and examples of each intelligence. Through discussions and questions initiated by parents, we were able to meet this goal. Next we had the parents participate in Task Card Activities that allowed them to explore the 8 MI and practice identifying with each one. Parents worked on puzzles, songs, drawing activities during this time. It was also a time for the students to present their self- created project to the parents. We concluded our Family Night by offering parents suggested activities for each MI that they could use at home to enhance their child’s learning. We provided examples and modeled for them, as well as a list of suggestions for them to take home.
~ Araceli Rodriguez & Florence Sul
My service learning project involved the creation and implementation of Homework Nights. Many of my students’ parents were unsure of how best to assist their child with homework completion. Family Nights addressed this need and transferred knowledge and strategies learned in the classroom to home. The Homework Nights taught parents strategies from the classroom that could be used when helping their child with homework. The first Homework Night the parents were able to learn and practice many of the strategies. The second Homework Night the parents were able to practice the strategies with their child. Strategies addressed in the presentations were practiced through task cards. This allowed them to try the strategies out, ask questions and give feedback about their effectiveness.
~ Melissa Malewitz
I worked with young children at
Friends of Children with Special Needs in Fall, 2004. The
first thing that came into my mind was empathy.
Surrounded by children with special needs and their parents was
a valuable and challenging experience to her. By having a sense
of empathy enabled me to learn how to teach those children and
alter her teaching styles to fulfill their needs. Motivation was another key to success. I was
motivated by seeing so many passionate volunteers and parents
working hard to help their children with special needs the first
time she stepped into the group. I valued their effort and
learned that together we could work and make those children's
life different.
I
would
advice other volunteers to join the service group at the first
day of classes, so they would be better informed on how the
classes work, what kind of students they would have, and what
might work best for them before serving these children. It is
also important to anticipate working with multi-age groups of
children.
~Ching-Yi Chung