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