MacArthur South – A Service-Learning Academy

By: Janis Klein-Young, MacArthur South & Robyn Stegman, Learn and Serve – Michigan AmeriCorps*VISTA

Recently I came across an amazing school in Florida: MacArthur South, an alternative school and service-learning academy. Many of the students of MacArthur South have committed serious criminal offences such as fighting, substance abuse, gang activity, and truancy. They enter the school impulsive, aggressive, and hostile with failing test scores and serious attendance problems.

MacArthur South is located in Homestead, Florida, a community that has seen many troubles. The youth of Homestead make up for 75 percent of the crime rate, a result of their struggle with substance abuse and gang violence. Sixty percent of students drop out of Homestead’s schools, which ranks far below others in academic performance.

In 2005 MacArthur South was selected to totally restructure its curriculum under the districts “Secondary School Reform” initiative. The school decided to expand their pre-developed arts-based service-learning program and transform the entire school into an alternative high school emphasizing service-learning.

In one program students attend weekly workshops with local artists-in-residence who teach them South and Central American indigenous art techniques. They learn sculpting, painting, quilting, pottery, and more. These students become responsible for keeping these dying art forms alive.

The students revitalize their community with these skills. Their artwork is used to revitalize their abandoned downtown district. The body of work of these young people reflects profound statements about social change, legacy, and cultural enrichment. Their work has become a catalyst for Homestead’s resurgence. It has stimulated tourism, employment opportunities, and economic development.

Throughout the year these students teach these vanishing techniques, as well as create their own original artworks that inspire others to pick up these art forms. The students conduct workshops in homeless shelters, special education schools, hospitals, and assisted living facilities to help people with brain injuries, mental illness, and disabilities.

Other MacArthur South classes also work with local partners. Spanish classes read a local Hispanic newspaper to the elderly. The Language Arts classes read books to the local individuals and interview and help write their biographies to share in the school newspaper. The culinary arts class has opened an intergenerational café after being trained by a nationalist to provide age-appropriate food to the elderly. Science classes raised a travelling amphibian petting zoo to bring to each center. Math classes plan and sew quilts, build kites, and play interactive math games designed and built by the woodshop class. Physical education students conduct adaptive exercise classes for immobilized partners at the park. Horticulture students plant a campus butterfly garden. Art students have constructed a ceramic butterfly mural alongside the garden where all students can spend time reflecting in their service-learning personal diaries.

The students integrate lessons learned with art into lessons learned at school. The student’s have been shown to have higher grades, better test scores, and improved behavior. A fewer number of students in this program drop out. These students are changing the way the community perceives its youth by changing the way they see themselves.

Rethinking the Process of Qualifying Service-Learning Partner Sites

By: Gary Kosman, Founder & CEO of America Learns

My friend Andrea is a high-powered, super smart lawyer and do-gooder in Los Angeles who cringes at the idea of working for a small, community-based nonprofit.

When Andrea was engaged in service-learning, the site where she was placed provided her with an incredibly exciting project that was supposedly going to add a ton of value to the organization. While Andrea’s supervisor loved Andrea’s deliverables and while Andrea’s professor awarded her with an “A” for her service, the project Andrea spent countless hours on was never actually used at her organization. Why, thought Andrea, should I spend my time somewhere when the organization doesn’t have the capacity or formal plans to implement the “really important project” they asked me to work on?

This experience led her to steer clear of the idea of working for a community-based organization.

The Problem Doesn’t Stop with Andrea
Last year; a university approached America Learns with a problem: its students were living Andrea’s service-learning experience. Students were being placed in nonprofits, completing supposedly important projects (databases, implementation plans for special initiatives), and then finding that while their projects received rave reviews, their host sites never asked themselves, “Do we really have the capacity to implement what these students create for us?” Nor did they ask, “What steps are we going to take to ensure the projects these people work on will truly help us to realize our mission while giving our those in service-learning a meaningful experience?”

The Host Site Qualifying Process
After listening to the concerns of the university, we spent some time creating this document. Here’s what happens when this document is used:

1. The host organization confirms, even pledges, the project the service learners will work on has real value for the organization. By doing this, we take steps to ensure those involved in service-learning walk away from their experience with the knowledge they really made a difference, hopefully inspiring them to continue making a difference in their community.

2. We try to make sure the host site has the student’s interests in mind. We ask the organization to clearly define the purpose and intended outcomes of the experience for those in service-learning, not just for the organization.

3. The host organization holds one person accountable for the project being successful, both for the organization and for the student. The organization identifies the one employee who will be held accountable for the student receiving everything that’s needed to achieve the project-based and student-focused outcomes described earlier in the application. By holding one person accountable in advance for the student’s success, we make sure the organization itself is not only held responsible for its commitments to the student, but that there’s a single face, a real person, that teachers and professors can hold accountable for how the student is treated on-site. Setting up group meetings or calls to figure out “what happened” should problems arise shouldn’t be necessary.

4. The organization states up front that it has already developed a plan to implement the student’s project (so long as it meets expectations and other variables affecting the organization have not changed). The organization actually submits that implementation plan as a part of the application, and also lists any factors that may hinder the project’s implementation.

This qualifying process would obviously need to be modified for non-project based service experiences (e.g., providing tutoring or mentoring services), but we encourage the organizations we serve to qualify their partners in a similar way by:

· Making sure a student’s service has the potential to deliver real value to the organization;

· Making sure the organization has the capacity to really benefit from the student’s service and has created a plan to really benefit from the student’s service; and

· Making sure the organization’s team members are committed to ensuring that the student truly benefits from the service experience.

Bonus!
Once you have this document, you also have clear criteria that can be used to evaluate the project’s impact.

Technology Integration in 21st Century Service-Learning

By: Heather Wells

“Education is the foundation of our democracy -- the stepping-stones for our youth to reach their full potential.”
- George Lucas

It may not be an obvious fit for some, but technology integration and service-learning go hand in hand. Both capitalize on the 21^st Century Skills our students need to reach their potential to individually grow, socially develop, and create a better world.

At this year’s National Service Learning Conference there were clear examples of how students were embedding technology into their service-learning projects. Pioneer High School was one of the leading schools for utilizing technology and social media. As part of the onsite service-learning projects they promoted a mobile phone application to students and the conference community called Cause World that allows people to log “Karma Points” when visiting participating businesses. The points are then converted to dollars backed by corporate sponsors Citi, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble the user can donate to charitable organizations, such as Carbonfund.org. This is just one example of how one technology tool can be used for service but it has the potential to go much deeper then that.

When thinking about technology integration, educators must think about changing the way they teach. The George Lucas Education Foundation, Edutopia, has some great resources to begin rethinking the process. Project Based Learning (PBL) is just one area Edutopia supports and provides one way for creating a richer experience for students. PBL offers the opportunity for educators to create lessons that are hands on and relevant to the students’ lives. Both technology integration and service learning are key components to successful PBL. Where traditional education is often irrelevant, applying both Service-Learning and Technology Integration gives students the 21^st Century Skills they need to be successful in the future economy.

There are many technology-enhanced, service-learning opportunities out there. Two projects that utilize h.323 videoconferencing are Alex’s Virtual Lemonade Stand and Stand up. Speak Out. Lend a Hand! These projects are coordinated by the Mid-Atlantic Gigapop in Philadelphia for Internet2 (MAGPI) and open to all schools that have h.323 equipment.

Global Kids is another fantastic organization that has some great tools and offerings for using technology with service-learning. They are on the cutting edge for the tools they integrate and are proponents for video game development that approaches global situations differently and with depth that engages students to creatively solve problems.

Other popular social media tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr all are great for communicating and sharing resources. They are popular tools and utilizing them will get the word out to a larger community at a faster pace. There is a plethora of tools out there; it can be daunting to try to tackle all of the information at once. My advice to teachers just starting and considering the use of technology is to start with one tool for one purpose. And remember that your greatest resource for learning is your students – and also remember that all of this will not just go away, technology is here to stay.

Engaging Families in Service-Learning

By: Jenny Friedman, Executive Director of Doing Good Together

Horace Mann was an educational reformer, so it’s not surprising the school in St. Paul, Minnesota that bears his name is leading the way on school wide community involvement. Working with Doing Good Together (www.doinggoodtogether.org), a nonprofit I began in 2004 to encourage family service, Horace Mann Elementary created a Family Service Committee charged with organizing events and providing resources to enhance service-learning efforts, build school community, and support local nonprofits.

The school’s annual winter Family Service Night, for example, consists of six to eight “stations” scattered around the building where families can work on a service project together, such as making sandwiches for a local shelter or creating blankets for a local hospital. Each station is stocked with materials to enrich the experience – including talking points to jumpstart family conversations, children’s books on issues like homelessness, and suggestions for other community volunteer projects to delve into.

The Horace Mann program is just one example of how parents and families can be a valuable component in a school’s service-learning efforts. Family-centered programs are great for modeling service for students, encouraging student participation in service, contributing time and talents to current initiatives, and deepening the culture of service. In turn, service-learning offers parents and families the chance to become engaged in schools and community organizations in unique and powerful ways. Yet it can be difficult to find meaningful roles for parents and to encourage busy families to weave service into their lives – two essential ingredients for engaging your students’ families as partners in service-learning. Below are a few tips for getting started:

• Introduce families to the concepts of service and service-learning through simple in-house events such as Family Service Night. (To learn more about holding this event, visit http://www.doinggoodtogether.org/index.php/resources-and-services/family-service-night/)

• Act as a resource for families by providing simple ideas for how they can integrate service into their lives. The Blake School in Hopkins, Minnesota, posts a list of family service opportunities on its website each month. One school has students add a loop to a paper chain for each service project their family completes. This “chain of caring” circles the cafeteria, a visual reminder of all the community work families are doing.

• For a richer experience for families, incorporate service-learning principles into your family service efforts, include families in planning and celebration, and encourage reflection.

• Consider using surveys and interviews to determine the talents and skills each family could contribute and how they’d like to be involved. Options could include: assisting with service-learning planning, networking with community organizations, providing transportation to service sites, helping with fundraising or promotion, documenting projects, and acting as mentors to youth. More experienced parents could also act as resources and mentors for new parents and families.

These resources (some the result of my organization’s own experiences) can be helpful as you contemplate ways to engage families as service-learning partners:

• Doing Good Together (www.doinggoodtogether.org)

• Engaging Families in Service: Broadening Service Learning’s Reach, Impact and Support (National Service Learning Clearinghouse, 2009) by Gene Roehlkepartain and Jenny Friedman http://www.servicelearning.org/instant_info/fact_sheets/cb_facts/engaging/expanded.php.

• What Is Service Learning? A Guide for Parents (National Service Learning Clearinghouse, 2007) by Cathryn Berger Kaye http://www.servicelearning.org/filemanager/download/What_is_service-learning_guide_for_parents-updated2009.pdf

• Doing Good Together: 101 Service Easy, Meaningful Service Projects for Families, Schools and Communities by Jenny Friedman and Jolene Roehlkepartain
(Free Spirit Publishing, August 2010; available for preorder at www.amazon.com or www.freesprit.com)

You’ll find that with a little focus and effort, enlisting families as partners in service-learning will enrich your service-learning programs, build community, and help nurture compassion and community involvement in young people. If you’d like information about engaging families into your service-learning efforts, you’re invited to contact me at jenny@doinggoodtogether.org.