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21st CCLC November 16, 2004 Conference Call – Service-Learning

Below are notes taken from past conference calls. These are not the most comprehensive, but give a general idea as to what was discussed.

Participants:
Allentown
Bedford
Farrell Area S.D.
Lancaster Family Center
Reading
RSVP
Tuscarora IU 11
York

PSLA (as moderator)

Generating Ideas for Service-Learning

This conference call was broken up into 4 sections. The first covered elements of Service learning and gave ideas for each. The second looked at one In-depth project example. The third gave web resources and the last section opened the call up for discussion and generated the following ideas:

Farrell:
The focus on some of their projects is nutrition. They already partner with the School Health Council and have ideas about starting a garden and holding a food drive for specific nutritional needs.

Lancaster:
The 7th and 8th grade students work with elementary school students, introducing them to the experience of an after-school program and providing them with homework help. The middle school students also do various programs with senior citizens at senior centers. Lancaster is also preparing for a Peer review in the upcoming weeks.

Allentown:
One idea is to have middle school students help do community asset mapping with a community organization.

Tuscarora IU 11:
For some service projects, they approached schools and asked what needs to be done. That did not go over well with the students, since they were just told to clean desks, paint, etc. It wasn’t too exciting and students didn’t feel ownership in the project.
One suggestion was to approach a project from the basis of a community need as well as a learning goal. To approach the school and ask “With your help, can we decide on a project together?” So the site and students decide on a project together, addressing both a need of the site as well as a learning goal for the students.

Other comments:

Addressing an authentic community need is the most important aspect of a service-learning project. Almost as important is having a youth voice in the project. As facilitators, you can suggest an idea for a project and guide students, but let them ‘own’ the project. Even if it’s going in a different direction than you’d want, it’s a learning experience for the student.

Next steps

Bring back information and ideas from conference call to your staff and program!

An Idea for reflection was brought up: Exchange addresses to create a pen pal project. Students work on writing skills and learn what others are doing with service-learning.

People were interested in observing other sites and programs.

****PSLA asked for anyone who is not a member of the Yahoo group to let them know so an invitation can be sent.

**** If you are interested in having the topic of this call done as a workshop at your site, just get a group of 10 or more teachers or staff together and PSLA can come to you.

Ideas for Future Calls
Building Resiliency in Students
Current Research

????Questions????

Contact PSLA staff:

Sarah John
412-201-7425
sarahj2@sas.upenn.edu

or

Margit Myers
215-573-6535
margitamyers@yahoo.com