What is Service-Learning?
Service-Learning is a teaching/ learning method that connects meaningful community service experiences with
- academic learning,
- personal growth, and
- civic responsibility.
Service-learning offers a unique opportunity for America's young people — from kindergarten to university students — to get involved with their communities in a tangible way by integrating service projects with classroom learning. Service-learning engages students in the educational process, using what they learn in the classroom to solve real-life problems. Students not only increase their academic skills, but learn about democracy and citizenship. They become active, contributing citizens and community members through the service they perform.
Service-learning can be applied across all subjects and grade levels; it can involve a single student or group of students, a classroom or an entire school. Students build character and become active participants as they work with others in their school and community to create service projects in areas like poverty/homelessness, community safety, elders, literacy or the environment.
Is It Service-Learning?
- 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.
Why is Service-Learning Important?
A national study of Learn and Serve America programs suggests that effective service-learning programs:
- Improve grades
- Increase attendance in school
- Reduce dropout rates
- Develop students' personal and social responsibility
What are the Characteristics of Service-Learning:
According to the National Commission on Service learning, service-learning:
- Links to academic content and standards
- Involves young people in helping to determine and meet real, defined community needs
- Is reciprocal in nature, benefiting both the community and the service providers by combining a service experience with a learning experience
- Can be used in any subject area so long as it is appropriate to learning goals
- Works at all ages, even among young children.
Service-Learning is NOT:
- An episodic volunteer program
- An add-on to an existing school or college curriculum
- Logging a set number of community service hours in order to graduate
- Compensatory service assigned as a form of punishment by the courts or by school administrators
- Only for high school or college students
- One-sided: benefiting only students or only the community.