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Appreciating Difference through Service-Learning

Emphasizing Student Insights About Diversity and Understanding

Service-learning has the power to reduce stereotypes, uncover unfair assumptions and increase understanding among diverse groups of students and community members. Even in homogenous areas, carefully structured reflection activities and pre-service preparation can help students examine unfounded biases.

The first and most tangible way service-learning reduces stereotyping is by bringing diverse groups together in pursuit of common goals. Students and seniors, for example, regularly report an enhanced appreciation of one another’s generation after students interview seniors as part of a history project.

In service-learning efforts that involve urban and suburban or rural schools, the students involved gain an improved understanding of each other’s point of view. Often, this occurs naturally, as students and community members have genuine opportunities to interact for the first time. Still, careful planning can maximize the insight that stems from serving alongside or interacting with people from another background.

Teachers should ensure that students are prepared to interact with a population with which they may be unfamiliar. A visit from an agency or community representative is often a good way to familiarize students with what to expect. A group of students planning an event for seniors, for example, learned from an agency representative that seniors have lived long and productive lives and, therefore, should not be reduced to being ‘cute’. The senior center representative also mentioned that some, but not all, of the seniors were hard of hearing but otherwise mentally astute. Even before interacting with seniors, then, students heard from a local authority about some popular misconceptions of older citizens.

One teacher working on a similar project also mentioned that she found it helpful to prepare seniors to interact with youth. Seniors have been subjected to a host of media-driven stereotypes about today’s young Americans. A brief preparation helps them prepare for their encounter with well-meaning young people. Ultimately, preparing students is important whether the service-learning experience involves people of different ethnicities, of different economic backgrounds or with disabilities.

Ideally, service-learning courses that involve populations perceived as different should be continuous efforts. A one-time contact with a different population is not as thought-provoking as a continuing project, and can even serve to cement stereotypes. Continuous contact and ongoing exposure allows students to see for themselves that people are similar across age, ethnicity and economic background.

As students examine concepts of community, difference and service, well-structured reflection can lead them even further along the path of improved understanding and appreciation for others. First, teachers can ask students what caused them to believe stereotypes about the group they now know better. Their answers will likely be the source of other stereotypes which can in turn be considered more critically in light of their new insights.

Additionally, teachers can use the opportunity to discuss diversity around the world. Your students can reflect on lives committed to service by inviting Peace Corps volunteers to interact with the class and tell students about their experiences abroad. This experience provides an amazing role model for your students while connecting them to a community in another nation. Additional information is available here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/correspond/index.html.

Grant Opportunities provide additional project ideas >>