The Post, May 17, 2007
Learning by helping
 

The end of the school year is a logical time to reflect on what students have learned over the past nine or 10 months.

In addition to what they've learned, it's sometimes useful to think about how they learned it. From reading books? Lectures? Research projects? Team assignments? Field trips?

If your children or grandchildren are like ours, odds are you won't get clearly articulated answers if you question them about such matters. At this point in the school year, most students thinking only about summer vacation.

But before they forget about school all together, try this. Ask their opinion about any service learning projects they might have been involved with. Was it fun? Did you learn anything? Did you feel you were doing something nice for someone else? Did your ability to do something to help others change the way you feel about yourself?

In many instances, we suspect, you'll get a positive response - particularly if the service projects were well planned.

All this is part of the reason service learning has taken root at so many schools and communities in the United States. Many educators and community leaders see it as a way to advance learning in ways that are fun and at the same time instill in students a sense of their obligation to the community at large.

What is service learning? Definitions abound. We're content to call it a school-based effort to help others.

It can be something as simple as varsity soccer players helping out for an afternoon to teach younger kids who want to improve their skills. Or it can be as complicated as organizing a drive to collect children's books for school libraries.

Those are but two examples of what schools in Greater Cincinnati have done recently. The Post's Tom O'Neill this week profiled others, including one that saw Holmes High School students help preschoolers spruce up their playground at the James Biggs Early Childhood Center in Covington. Another saw elementary students at Saint Thomas School plan and execute a landscaping project for a nearby branch bank in Fort Thomas. Not only did the Saint Thomas students have to map the site accurately, they had to research which plants would produce the right colors, which needed sun or shade, which would grow tall and the like - and then decide where to put them. Oh, and then they had to go out and buy the plants, on a budget. Only after all that preparation did they go out and actually do the planting.

Service learning is hardly novel, of course. But it is, happily, an effort that seems to be growing.

For example, a national study based on a sampling of 204 schools in 1984 concluded that about 900,000 high school students were enrolled in community service programs, and of that number about 81,000 were involved in programs that were integrated into their curriculum.

Today, data posted on a web site maintained by the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse estimates that 15.5 million teenagers participated in volunteer activities through a formal organization during 2004, and that 10.6 million did so as part of a school activity or requirement.

In Northern Kentucky, more than 8,000 students from 50 schools in Northern Kentucky engaged in service learning projects this school year that were organized through a single agency, Children Inc. in Covington. This is in addition to the scores of other volunteer programs throughout Greater Cincinnati sponsored by other organizations.

Service learning programs are quite often more difficult to pull off than, say, a lecture or a class discussion based on a homework reading assignment. But, as the landscaping example cited above suggests, such projects often involve the types of skills that students will someday need in the world of work. Who among us, after all, has ever had complete autonomy over a project - and an unlimited budget to boot? 

Return to news links.