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.