Serving, Learning, and Becoming Great | By: Committee for Children Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.” Dr. King’s simple statement captures the essence of what is possible for all children when they are given the opportunity to act in the service of others: to make a difference, to matter, and to have a positive impact on the world. In short, to achieve greatness. How can we help our children become great? First and foremost, they need skills: social, emotional, and academic skills. These are the skills children gain at school via social-emotional learning (SEL) programs and academic instruction, and through daily interaction with family, friends, and their community. But skills alone will not propel our children to greatness. Becoming great requires that children apply their skills in real-life situations that allow them to behave in ways that draw upon and embody these skills. So how can we help our children apply their skills and place them on a path to greatness? Enter service learning. Touted as “one of the surest paths between learning skills and living them” (Making the Case for Social and Emotional Learning and Service Learning, p. 5), service learning goes well beyond basic community service. It entails a structured process integrated into the regular classroom curriculum and requires sustained involvement over time. But before you dive in to organizing a service-learning project with the children you serve, there are a few basics you need to know: what it is (and what is it not), how it works, and how to get started. Service Learning: What It Is (and What It Is Not) At its core, service learning is simply what happens when service and learning intersect. The National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) offers this example: “Picking up trash on a riverbank is service. Studying water samples under a microscope is learning. When science students collect and analyze water samples, document their results, and present findings to a local pollution control agency – that is service learning.” So service learning requires going beyond basic community service by intentionally and systematically connecting service to learning outcomes. Service learning is not a yearly food or clothing drive for those in need. There’s much more to successful service learning than that! Research into truly effective service learning has revealed key elements that define quality service learning. After analyzing the research and consulting with key stakeholders in the field, the NYLC published its K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. They include eight evidence-based elements, each of which is accompanied by a set of indicators. The elements and their indicators have been vetted by youth, teachers, school administrators, and community members, to help guide practice. As you read these elements, consider how you could transform the food drive mentioned above into a quality service-learning project: Meaningful Service: Service learning actively engages participants in meaningful and personally relevant service activities. Link to Curriculum: Service learning is intentionally used as an instructional strategy to meet learning goals and/or content standards. Reflection: Service learning incorporates multiple challenging reflection activities that are ongoing and that prompt deep thinking and analysis about oneself and one’s relationship to society. Diversity: Service learning promotes understanding of diversity and mutual respect among all participants. Youth Voice: Service learning provides youth with a strong voice in planning, implementing, and evaluating service-learning experiences with guidance from adults. Partnerships: Service learning partnerships are collaborative, mutually beneficial, and address community needs. Progress Monitoring: Service learning engages participants in an ongoing process to assess the quality of implementation and progress toward meeting specified goals, and uses results for improvement and sustainability. Duration and Intensity: Service learning has sufficient duration and intensity to address community needs and meet specified outcomes. What’d you come up with? Perhaps you thought about ways to survey students to ensure the food drive would be meaningful to them. Or maybe you considered ways to assess where in your community the food was most needed. Surely you tossed around a number of options for tying this project to the curriculum. SEL, math, and literacy standards, to name a few, are viable candidates for curricular connections. Add in some student reflection, progress monitoring, and a few other key ingredients, and you’ve just transformed your annual food drive into a quality service-learning project. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to helping your children achieve greatness. How It Works As you might imagine, in practice there’s a bit more to it than that. Implementing quality service-learning projects in your school or youth-serving organization will take equal measures of effort and organization, and a fair portion of preparation to successfully get off the ground. But there is a helpful process to guide your maiden flight and even every venture thereafter as you become a more seasoned pilot of service-learning projects. The NYLC has defined a useful Service-Learning Cycle listed below. At each point in the process, they recommend asking three key questions to help deepen and extend your children’s experience and learning: What? – review your observations and findings, and determine what’s happened So what? – Why is this important? What have you learned? How has this transformed us and our community? Now what? – What should we do next? The Service-Learning Cycle is: A. Pre-service Identify academic goals. Identify genuine needs. Establish evidence of learning. Develop ownership. Plan and prepare. B. Service Conduct meaningful service. C. Post-service Evaluate the experience. Demonstrate new understanding. Go deeper. How to Get Started You’ve been introduced to the what and how of service learning, but may still be left wondering, “How do I get started?” Fortunately there are many resources available to help you do just that. Below is a collection of links to various publications, project samples, and toolkits to help you get service learning going in your setting. National Center for Learning and Citizenship Publications: On this page you’ll find links to issue and policy briefs, program case studies, and research findings. NYLC’s Getting Started: This page features articles and tools for getting started with service learning. NYLC’s Project Examples: Get service-learning project ideas for a range of levels and curricular goals on this page. National Service-Learning Clearinghouse Toolkits: You’ll find an array of toolkits here to help you create a service-learning project. On a Path to Greatness A recent survey of youth found that they are clamoring for the opportunity to serve. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed said they would definitely or probably enroll in service-learning classes if they were offered at their school. Hopefully you’ve found some inspiration and knowledge here to help you make service learning a reality for the children you serve. When able to apply their skills and knowledge in service of others, children will quickly find themselves on the path to greatness. And when our children are given the chance to be great, we all become greater.