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Feature Stories
You've Been Served | To Serve is to Learn
Rural Youth Impact Communities Through Living to Serve Grants
FFA Chapters Turn Community Service into a Habit of the Heart
To Serve is to Learn
Service projects are a great way for students to help others, but if you want to lend a hand to the community and your students at the same time, education experts say service- learning is a mutually beneficial teaching concept that can actually help students develop service as a habit of the heart.
“Because of No Child Left Behind and other accountability measures, teachers are under increased pressure to focus on academic standards,” says Dr. Michael Slavkin, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern Indiana (Evansville, IN) who also advises the Indiana Department of Education through Learn and Serve Indiana. “Teachers don’t have the luxury of doing something simply for the betterment of the community. That’s the role of government, churches and community organizations. Schools shouldn’t be in the business of doing service; they should be in the business of helping people learn. But, what educators need to realize is that they can do these projects and meet academic standards, and the best part is that it helps the educational experience become more real for the students.”
Slavkin says the main difference between service projects and service-learning is that the focus of the latter is based on academics, part of a course of study that also supports a need in the community. For instance, if a class was working on the history of agriculture in a certain area, students engaged in a service-learning project might go out into the community and collect and record stories from local farmers and produce and preserve a felt-life archive for a university or library instead of merely reading about the subject in the classroom.
“For a long time we’ve said it’s important for students to learn by doing,” says Slavkin. “That’s a core value of service-learning. Students learn best when they see that the learning has relevance to the community. Service-learning gives them a voice, helps them enact change, and they learn at the same time.”
Max Sherman, an agriculture teacher and FFA advisor at Tillamook High School in Oregon, has taught for 30 years and was an early convert to service-learning.
“I know it feels safer to be locked up in the classroom,” he says, “but service-learning—getting out of the building—is where you see students take learning to the next level.”
One of Sherman’s student groups completed a project on area flooding that was presented to state and local agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A project on forestry policy landed on the desks of governors from several western states. In both cases, Sherman says, student recommendations led to changes in policies that benefited the community. Moreover, students at his school have become so accomplished in subjects where service-learning was used, that it is not unusual for the students to teach other, younger students.
“When you can teach it to someone else, you’ve mastered it,” says Sherman.
He says he feels fortunate to be in a school system where service-learning is embraced. About six years ago, Sherman says, local administrators decided to make use of their geographic resources—the costal range, major river systems and the Pacific Ocean. Now it’s not unusual for all students—K through 12—to be working on such projects on a weekly basis.
“Service-learning can be messy,” he says. “I know a lot of schools are reluctant, especially in this economy when it’s easy to cut back on such things. So you could come up with a million reasons why you shouldn’t do it. But, I say, just talk to my kids.”
Last year, 100 percent of Sherman’s sophomores involved with service-learning projects met their science benchmarks and 94 percent met the math yardstick. Both statistics, he said, blew away the local, state and national averages.
“It’s pretty simple,” says Sherman. “Kids who are involved in this stuff are more successful.”
Slavkin recommends that teachers who are unfamiliar with or are afraid of service-learning reach out to mentor teachers or their state departments of education (each one has service-learning resources.)
“Almost every teacher has an area of curriculum that they struggle with or one that students don’t buy into,” says Slavkin. “These are opportunities for service-learning. Once students see it and hear it from your community partners, they’ll realize that what you are trying to teach has merit.”
Sherman advises that beginners start small.
“Don’t think too big too soon,” he says. “Start out with a project where you can guarantee yourself and your students some success. After that, success will build on success.”