Service-Learning – A Strategy to Keep Kids Engaged

By: Cathy Berger Kaye 

Seeing service-learning as part of a viable strategy to improve high school graduation rates makes good sense. Increasingly, high quality service-learning is seen to improve attendance, test scores, and lessen disciplinary referrals. I also see service-learning adding meaning, purpose, and relevance which kids (and teachers) crave. In the February issue of Principal Leadership, a magazine of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, I wrote the lead article “Work that is Real.” The opening paragraph includes these lines: “Like adults, students want a significant reason to turn off the alarm clock in the morning, get out of bed, go to work or school, and learn. They crave purpose to their lives like everyone else. And they want relevance—they want to know that what they are studying, practicing, researching, and remembering can be put to use.”

About six years ago the Los Angeles Unified School District asked me to develop a program that could be used as a summer transition experience to help keep kids invested in school as they move in or out of middle school. Having many years of working with kids often seen as being on the brink of dropping out, I was thrilled by the opportunity and the challenge (I had three weeks to develop the original version). This grew to be Strategies for Success: A Learning Curriculum that Serves, a comprehensive program that we implemented with more than 40,000 students in Los Angeles with most favorable results. This research-based approach integrates high level literacy skills and social and emotional development with service-learning opportunities integrated throughout. Now the program, in its fourth edition, has found a home in many states and districts from Hawaii to New York to Florida to Texas. And Michigan! Implementation varies from a summer experience to being integrated into existing academic classes during the school year to being a program for every seventh grader in a New York district. Adaptations have been made for students as young as fourth grade and all the way up through tenth.

What makes this approach unique, desirable and effective? Several key elements include:

• Engaging teaching methods modeled during the professional development create a platform for bringing learning to life and encouraging even reluctant participants to give their all.

• Incremental skill development that breaks down complex skills into their discreet parts allowing transparency into the learning process so students learn HOW to learn; this aligns with all current ideas about the value of metacognition. Keep in mind also that once you know how to learn you can learn again and again and ... you get the idea!

• Worthwhile experiences that move the acquisition of skills and knowledge straight through to application (service-learning). This improves retention and makes good sense if you agree with educator Ralph Tyler who said, “Learning is like fish. If you don’t use it, it won’t keep.”

• Transforming the entire learning process from “Do I have to?” to “I want to!” replacing boredom in school that can lead to dropping out with staying in school!

Of course this approach is part of a larger response to the dropout issue; however I am certain this approach works. What’s also fun (for me) is how the professional development provided for Strategies for Success with Literacy is a pure pleasure to lead. I have the best time watching teachers light up as they go through the processes, remember the best teaching methods we all too often forget as they acquire new knowledge that rejuvenates them as professionals. The well-articulated and designed curriculum materials, the integrated literature approach, the cross-curricular possibilities, and examples of what students have achieved inspire and prepare teachers to effectively take the process to their kids. And teachers of all grade levels K-12 attend due to the learning theories and how so much of what is presented can be adapted to improve teaching across the board.

Come to the Michigan Strategies for Success with Literacy Summer Institute hosted by Ionia this summer – August 10-12. Find out more by contacting me at cbkaye@aol.com or Deborah Wagner at dawagner@ioniaisd.org. Other institutes are being held in western Massachusetts in later June and another in the Chicago area in late August with yet another still being planned. Please let me know if you are interested in finding out more, or in bringing these ideas and the program into your school or district.

Thanks to Learn and Serve – Michigan for asking me to blog on this subject and share ideas about this program!

All the best in service,

Cathryn Berger Kaye, M.A.

CBK Associates
Author of the revised The Complete Guide to Service Learning, Second Edition  (Free Spirit Publishing, March 2010)

Contact her at: cbkaye@aol.com or www.abcdbooks.org