Loebsack Introduces Legislation That Brings New Hope For Academic Service-Learning

Congressman Dave Loebsack today introduced legislation that will help students apply the knowledge and skills gained in the classroom to real world experiences by incorporating academic service-learning to teach curriculum. The Engaging Students Through Service-Learning Act aims to connect the classroom to the community by establishing a national center to expand opportunities for students to incorporate skills that are critical to success in the 21st century economy, such as critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration by engaging students in applying knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to solve problems in the community. The bill would also help teachers to provide students with this hands-on education.

Academic service-learning is key to addressing the most difficult problems our schools face, such as widespread lack of engagement, a widening achievement gap, soaring dropout rates, and rampant bullying. It has been found to promote behavioral and dispositional factors that mediate students’ educational success such as greater motivation for school, engagement in learning tasks, building of self-efficacy and self-esteem, and propensity to engage in pro-social behaviors. Service-learning just happens to be one of the strategies that captures the types of practices that will help our schools become more effective. Consider the following data points:

1. Students learn best when they are actively engaged in meaningful and challenging learning experiences that encourage higher order skills development, critical thinking, and problem solving;

2. Students invest themselves in learning when the educational experiences have personal meaning to students and are connected to authentic, real issues in their everyday lives;

3. Among the 33% of all students who drop out of high school each year, 69% state that they leave school because they find classroom learning uninteresting and the classroom curriculum unrelated to their real lives;

4. Research demonstrates that effective teachers are those who are adequately prepared to use instructional strategies that challenge students to use higher order thinking skills, engage students in solving complex problems, probe for deeper learning, and seek opportunities for students to transfer knowledge from one context to another;

5. The key elements of effective teaching and learning include active learning, authentic experiences, opportunities for peer collaboration, student leadership and empowerment, democratic classrooms that promote positive, safe, and caring school climate, inclusive environments that address the needs of all learners, and cognitively challenging academic activities.

At its best, academic service-learning is not a standalone pedagogy. Rather, it is incorporated into the very fabric of how we "do" education, and more importantly, it is experienced as a universal strategy that benefits all students. The Engaging Students Through Service-Learning Act is an important step in achieving that vision.

Teri Dary Co-Chair NCASL

Site visits are the best part of the job. Or is it just me? Okay maybe it is me.

I will make no apologies, as one cannot help but be lifted up even in times like these, about the learning going on in our schools after you have visited a service-learning site. There is nothing like seeing students, no matter the age, actively involved, engaged, and engrossed with community and education. Whether you visit elementary school students solving local hunger issues through a co-op garden, or high school students tackling issues like bullying or distracted driving by creating PSA’s for local news media, these are indeed the leaders of today.
However, as a program officer overseeing these fantastic efforts, you must have a structured plan going into any site visit. It is not enough to simply show up expecting to be told everything you want to know about the project. There are many aspects to each service-learning project, especially if you are administrating a grant for it, which you must be prepared to inquire about when you arrive on site.
I personally have found the following steps to be vital in insuring a successful site visit to any of my twenty-plus sites around the state of North Carolina this year:
• Develop (or personalize an already existing) rubric for site visit.
• Inform your sub-grantee of your intention to visit and what you will be asking on your visit (time frame is up to you). It is a good idea to share your rubric with your sub-grantee, because should not be a state secret!
• Review all documents to date about site before your visit.
• Arrive with a flexible schedule and nothing else that could take your attention away from your visit. It is vital that students, teachers, and staff who have put a year or semester work of time have your complete attention, so that you can completely grasp their efforts.
• Take copious notes. Trust me it is a lifesaver when you get to the final step.
• Save a detailed record of strengths, weakness, discussion items, who you met, and timeline of progress when you are finished with the visit.
This is my model and it may be different for your state office’s site visit procedure due to the programs you are running. It is more important for you to have a structure that is going to play to your strengths as a program officer in conducting site visits, than it is to replicate mine!
Remember, site visits are one of the few times you actually get to enjoy these great projects, interact with the students, and have heart-to-heart discussions with your project leaders. This is the best part of the job. Don’t let it feel like another day at the office!

Submitted By: Nick DiColandrea, North Carolina

Service-Learning in Wyoming

As a Commission, staff and commissioners at ServeWyoming have both a unique and precarious role in promoting service-learning. We find it easy to promote the advantages of service-learning to community-based and afterschool programs, but to schools it is harder because we are not a state education agency. One of our biggest challenges has been to convince the Department of Education that although the federal funding for Learn and Serve America is not huge, the benefits are. In Wyoming, it will take a long time to find evidence that service-learning will make a big impact on the academic success of all students because the current impact is only seen in small, local communities. Therefore, evidence-based research would assuredly help us inform policy-makers and teachers, especially since we don’t believe our commission has the level of expertise needed to be effective in our advocacy efforts. Should the evidence prove that service-learning enhances test scores, what a difference that would make in our discussions with key players! In addition, while the push behind service-learning is geared towards academic success, after school programs that often close the gap between in school and out of school time, play a critical role in service-learning. Our youth are “mines, rich with gems” and using all effective strategies, to extract their ideas and energy, will help us solve the most challenging issues facing our world today.
With the elimination of Learn and Serve America, many of us in the field are left with a lot of questions. One of the unanswered questions is, “What is next?” Two things are clear-we are not done yet and the fight is not over. America’s Service Commissions has recently held its first Youth Engagement work group. They hope to discover best-practices from the 14 state commissions that administer Learn and Serve funding and clarify a role for them to sustain service learning and other youth service opportunities. Nonprofits that work with schools on service-learning, like Kids Consortium, NYSL, and YSA, are also having discussions to determine their role.
It is evident, at events like the National Service Learning Conferences, list serves, and conference calls, that for many people, service-learning is not just a methodology or an approach to learning, but a spirit. It’s the spirit in which we all practice service-learning that gets us excited and underlines the benefits we see emerging in the youth and the field. It is why despite the funding cuts we will continue to find every effective avenue to keep service-learning alive, to finish currently funding programs with a bang, to capture results and stories, maintain partnerships and continue to nurture the enthusiasm of our youth! With this captured energy behind us, we will use this challenge as an opportunity to further legitimize service-learning. This is an opportunity to use all that we have learned, up to this critical moment, towards the services offered and provided by staff, program directors, communities, schools, and most importantly, the students. Hopefully, “What’s next” is answered with, “Just you wait and see!”

Submitted By: Nurieh Glasgow, Program and Training Officer ServeWyoming

Moving Forward in Service-Learning Practice in K-12: A Case for Infrastructure

The Learn & Serve America program, as we know it, is being eliminated, and service-learning in K-12 practice will now go through a transition period. As we all know by now, the FY 2011 Continuing Appropriations Act signed into law on April 15th eliminated FY 2011 program funding for Learn and Serve America. This means that the LSA program we have all worked on so diligently over the years is now discontinued. Whether the program will return at CNCS in FY2012, whether federal funding from another agency will support K-12 service-learning, or the national effort grows/stagnates/shrinks will depend on efforts we and others take now and in the near future.

Given the funding cut, it can be easy to get depressed about the future of service-learning in schools, but it is important to keep perspective. Congress eliminated many social programs in the final budget; L&SA, therefore, was not the only program impacted. There were also no public reports or statements about L&SA being ineffective as a program; it was a question of funding and we were an easy target given our grant size and scope and the lack of enough key voices speaking on its behalf.

Learn & Serve America as a program at CNCS may be ending for now, but we must remember that this does not mean that service-learning is “over.” There are too many schools, teachers, administrators, students and community partners out there completing meaningful high-quality service-learning and making a difference for all involved for this movement to disappear overnight. Service-learning is fundamentally important to schools and will always remain viable in education in one form or another.

The question is how we will maintain the infrastructure to support these existing high-quality programs—and help new programs get started--when there is no funding at CNCS to accomplish this? It is not difficult to maintain a service-learning program at a school using grants and community support at a moderate scale. But one isolated program without monitoring can easily devolve from existing best practices to “whatever works” on a given day.

We know that service-learning infrastructure is essential. We know that a state-level presence is essential to define and insure quality, to recruit new teachers and programs, to provide ongoing training and technical assistance and program monitoring, to create opportunities for networking and advocacy, to link service-learning programs to current education policy, to help identify and replicate exemplary efforts, and to ensure that activities are truly service-learning. Research states that service-learning does not necessarily have positive impacts on student outcomes, but high-quality service-learning does. The L&SA-funded administrators around the nation were the primary guardians of quality in the complex K-12 service-learning field; what happens when we are gone?

The potential here is a loss of the many gains that we have made over the last 20 years of service-learning practice. Without state-level support and guidance to sustain the field, service-learning quality will likely erode. It was hard enough to maintain quality with the minimal funding that we received from CNCS! Therefore, in moving forward we need to be clear and concise in our messaging that what has been eliminated was an essential component of maintaining service-learning as a quality instructional school-based pedagogy. Service-learning cannot be accomplished meaningfully without infrastructure to support it. It will devolve into programming of disparate quality and consistency in various school programs around the country; some programs will look like service-learning as we know it, but many will be community service, which is fine but does not result in meaningful student outcomes.

If service-learning is to have an impact on academics, drop-out prevention, school climate and turnaround issues (not to mention on communities that are served) then it must be done in a thoughtful, intentional, and organized way. We need to keep this argument at the forefront of our ongoing messaging about the immediate needs of our field based on the potential for widespread loss of program effectiveness in schools due to lack of infrastructure support.

Javier Betancourt, Florida Learn and Serve

The Service-Learning Impact on Teacher Quality

A unique opportunity lies before us. Over the next few years, the United States is expected to lose more than a million teachers due to retirement. At the same time, our current system of teacher preparation and ongoing professional development is woefully inadequate to the task of preparing teachers to deliver 21st century skills in a global economy.

To be successful, the new teachers will need plenty of preparation, including both education in content and instruction and ongoing professional development to hone their skills. They will need to continue learning as new research on effectiveness comes to light. Our democracy needs to both attract and retain more people in teaching professions, especially those who are drawn to the science and the art of teaching. Providing a process for more teachers to learn how to successfully use service-learning can transform the teaching profession, our classrooms, and our communities.

Principals report that service-learning has a positive impact on teacher satisfaction, school climate, academic achievement, and school engagement. Teachers who use service-learning are significantly more likely to use high quality teaching strategies like cooperative learning, participate in projects integrating technology and requiring data collection, use primary resources, and make meaningful connections to the community (Billig, Jesse and Root, 2005).

The Need:

• A review of research (Furco, 2007) indicates that high quality service-learning, because of its utilization of effective, experiential learning strategies, can enhance academic outcomes in such content areas as reading, writing, mathematics, and science. A variety of studies have shown evidence of a range of achievement-related benefits from service-learning, including improved attendance, higher grade point averages, enhanced preparation for the workforce, enhanced awareness and understanding of social issues, greater motivation for learning, and heightened engagement in prosocial behaviors.

• Schools in high poverty areas are less likely to employ service-learning as a teaching strategy, yet research has shown this is a particularly effective pedagogy for use in such schools. Fewer schools serving lower-income communities offer service-learning programs (29 percent versus 36 percent), even though principals at lower-income schools place a higher value on the benefits of service-learning projects (National Youth Leadership Council, 2004).

• In Philadelphia, low socio-economic status students in service-learning classes gained more on math and science standardized tests than their nonparticipating peers. Similar results occurred in Michigan and Texas when service-learning was of high quality (Billig, 2008).

• Service-Learning can significantly reduce the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. Low-income students who participated in service opportunities and had lengthier participation in service-learning had better school attendance and grades than low-income students who did not participate. (Scales, Roehlkepartain, Neal, Kielsmeier, & Benson, 2006).

• Scales & Roehlkepartain report evidence that service-learning may have particular educational benefits for low-income students and schools. Involvement in service appears to contribute to lessening the achievement gap, with low-income students who serve doing better academically than students who do not serve.

• A review of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) suggested that:
o Civic engagement activities raised the odds of graduation and improved high school students’ progress in reading, math, science and history.
o Students who participated in service-learning activities in high school were 22 percentage points more likely to graduate from college than those who did not participate.
o Students who participated in service-learning scored 6.7 percent higher in reading achievement and 5.9 percent higher in science achievement than those who did not participate in service-learning.
o Service-learning makes good teachers.

• Research demonstrates that successful teachers are those who are adequately prepared to use instructional strategies that challenge students to use higher order thinking skills, engage students in solving complex problems, probe for deeper learning, and seek opportunities for students to transfer knowledge from one context to another (Rosenshine & Furst, 1973; Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Pease, 1983; Good & Brophy, 1986; National Research Council, 1999).

• Less well-prepared teachers are less able to manage active, inquiry-oriented classrooms and more likely to resort to easier to manage strategies that rely on passive tasks and workbook activities (Carter & Doyle, 1978; Cooper & Sherk, 1989).

• Active pedagogies and inquiry-based instruction are the very methodologies that develop the 21st century skills our students need to succeed in their communities and workplace. Service-learning effectively addresses these 21st century skills, while also engaging students in their communities and meeting one of the essential, and neglected, functions of schooling: preparing students for active and effective citizenship.

• Service-learning studies have shown a large impact when done well. This pedagogy works because students are more likely to be engaged when their work is challenging, when they have some autonomy, and when they are given meaningful tasks to perform (National Research Council, 2003).

• Teachers that use service-learning in the classroom as a type of positive teaching strategy achieve better results in a variety of academic and behavioral categories than those who don’t (Billig, S. H., Root, S., & Jesse, D. (2005). The relationship between quality indicators of service-learning and student outcomes: Testing professional wisdom. In S. Root, J. Callahan, & S. H. Billig (Eds.), Advances in service-learning research: Vol. 5. Improving service-learning practice: Research on models to enhance impacts (pp. 97–115).

• Yet, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, of the approximately 53.3 million youth in the US, only 24% of K-12 students have engaged in any kind of service-learning experience, a decline from 32% in 1999.


When teachers and administrators work in a thriving educational system, performance improves, retention is greater, and continuous improvement is evident at every level. Service-learning has been shown to have a significantly positive impact on teacher attitudes, student engagement, and overall school climate. Students’ academic performance, civic engagement, and social-emotional functioning will improve when teachers are equipped with the skills they need to incorporate service-learning as an effective pedagogy. Schools will become vibrant centers of learning which radiate a positive, safe, and caring environment within which all students thrive. Teachers will be more effective, challenged, and energized within their chosen profession. And most importantly, students will emerge from our schools better prepared for success in college and the workplace, skilled in 21st century skills, which will increase their competencies as global citizens who contribute meaningfully to the global economy.

~ Submitted by Teri Dary, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

Youth: Ethics in Service (YES)

The School for Ethical Education's (SEE) organizational mission is to encourage learning experiences that foster positive ethics and character. SEE uses various strategies including college teaching, a state wide writing program and a service-learning program to further its mission. The service-learning strategy is delivered through a program called Youth: Ethics in Service (YES).

The Youth; Ethics in Service program works with teachers and after school providers to use service-learning as a teaching strategy to to engage students in learning through applying knowledge to completing a community service project. Service-learning is an evidence based teaching methodology proven to engage students in their learning while developing and providing practice using skills such as; reflection, project planning, ethical decision making and cooperative team work. Service-learning has eight teaching standards developed over 25 years. The staff at the School for Ethical Education has been teaching teachers and students the practice of service-learning for over 12 years. Since 1998, over 7,600 teachers and students have engaged in the Y.E.S. program. Participants have donated over 197,000 hours of service valued at approximately 1.4 million dollars at CT minimum wage.

http://www.ethicsed.org/

Submitted by: Agnes Quinones, Connecticut

Hawaii Statewide Service Learning Conference, Ho`olale i ka `ai a ka u`i, “Show What Youth Can Do”

The Hawaii Service Learning Partnership1 held an exceptional “talk of the town” statewide conference at Kapiolani Community College (KCC) located at the foot of Diamond Head, overlooking Waialae Kahala and the Pacific Ocean, on Saturday, March 5, 2011 from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (It turned out to be a beautiful day starting with a blessing of a light shower and gorgeous rainbow…wish you could have seen this!)

The original idea of this conference was typical, having a keynote speaker followed by various breakout sessions and closing with award recognitions. However, two months before the conference (through planning calls with Cathy Berger Kaye), we decided to revolutionize our conference and have participants engaged and active in the service learning process instead of being recipients of information only. The biggest challenge was finding facilitators to guide the 5 stages of service learning in the various sections and miraculously we were lucky to find 15 willing souls. The format of the conference changed by having participants 1) learn and practice the 5 stages in the early morning, 2) do the investigation and planning stages before lunch, 3) engage in a service action after lunch 4) convene in demonstration groups (sharing of projects) and 5) write meaningful reflections.

The biggest attendance ever (330 participants2) squeezed into KCC cafeteria to learn the five stages of service learning from the energetic and inspirational Cathy Berger Kaye. 1) Cathy focused on water issues and used Going Blue as a resource as well as experts from the Board of Water Supply to provide background information. After the morning break, the attendees participated in one of 15 sections3. One section focused on removing food waste from the waste stream. 2) The lead facilitator, a retired environmental education teacher, led her group in investigating the issue of overflowing landfills in Hawaii. The co-facilitator and community partner, EM Hawaii, shared success stories of people using EM4 in homes to reduce the amount of waste going into the landfills and to encourage the recycling of organic waste. The participants also learned and planned the logistics to make bokashi5 as their service activity.

Delicious bento (lunch boxes) consisting of rice, mahimahi, teriyaki chicken, and bar-b-que meat were prepared by KCC’s culinary academy. Vegetarian bento was also prepared consisting of noodles and vegetables. During this lunch break, participants interacted with 45 community and school exhibitors in the exhibit hall. 3) After lunch, participants went back to their sections to complete their service activity. The food waste group made bokashi to be used as a tool to transform food waste into nutrient-rich compost that can be used for gardening and landscaping. 4) During the demonstration stage, this group shared what they learned with other participants at the conference and 5) the reflections gathered revealed the value this food waste group had to improving the fragile island environment and the personal commitment participants made to use bokashi in their homes.

The general mood at the conference was one of excitement and engagement. The participants were active – understood the connections of learning and service; used various resources to gather information/data for their investigation including the internet, the Youth Service Hawaii’s chat room, and agency experts at the conference; made decisions regarding the type of service to provide; engaged in meaningful service activities; and completed deep reflections. Now the challenge is to sustain the momentum started at the conference through networking, collaboration, and workshops.

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1Hawaii Service Learning Partnership includes Hawaii State Department of Education, Youth Service Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, Punahou Academy, Hawaii Pacific Islands Campus Compact (Higher Education SL Consortium), Kapiolani Community College, and State Farm Insurance.

2Participants include students and teachers from public and private schools and higher education institution, community agencies, retired educators, VISTA and AmeriCorps volunteers, administrators at all levels, parents, and students from Matsuyama University (Japan).

3Sections – needs/topic areas include Access to Health Resources; Dependence on Fossil Fuel; Conservation of Natural Habitats; Solid Waste Solution and Mitigation; Foster Children and Healthy Living; The Importance of Physical, Emotional and Psychological Safety; Developmental Skills for Adolescents; Literacy Education for Underserved Communities; Health Issues and Developing Advocacy Initiatives (AIDS, Obesity, Bullying), Global and Local Peace Initiatives.

4EM – Effective Microorganisms. Contains food-grade microbials such as those used to make cheese, bread, yogurt, miso, and other foods. The microbes in EM are not harmful, non-pathogenic, not genetically energized or modified, and not chemically synthesized. When the correct conditions are provided, EM sets in motion a fermentation process to transform food waste and other organic materials into nutrient-rich compost.

5Bokashi is a fermented compost starter made from wheat bran and EM (a mixed culture of naturally occurring beneficial microorganisms). Bokashi (Japanese word meaning fermented organic matter) can decompose food waste in less than half the time of conventional composting methods, without any unpleasant odors.

Submitted by:
Colleen Murakami
Hawaii State Department of Education