At TBS, we believe that service learning experiences lead children to ask themselves important questions:
“How do I relate with others?”
“How do I view others that are different from me?”
“How do I better understand those differences and similarities?”
“What should I do with my understanding?”
Asking these questions requires an ignited mind and an awakened heart; answering them allows students to engage their changing world and integrate core values of service into their lives and beings.
Cathryn Berger Kaye, a renowned educator and author of The Complete Guide to Service Learning, defines service as “contributing to or helping to benefit others and the common good” and defines learning as “gaining understanding of a subject or skill through study, instruction, or experience.” Kaye then identifies five stages necessary for effective service learning to take place: investigation, planning and preparation, action, reflection, demonstration of results, and celebration. By ensuring that these five stages are reflected in every service learning project, and integrating those projects into yearly curricula, we prepare students to participate in mutually beneficial community relationships.
We begin laying the foundation for that participation at the Early Childhood Center by expanding students’ perspectives about the world they live in and the world around them. Often, opportunities are emergent. This past year, when one ECC child broke her leg and needed to use a wheelchair, questions arose about people who need to use wheelchairs. The students thought that wheelchairs were only for “old people.” The child’s experience, and the teaching team’s ability to bring an emergent learning opportunity into the classroom, broadened the children’s views and understanding of human need. In addition, teachers and students explore big questions about who we think we are and how and where we fit into the world through the Montessori cultural curriculum. Students learn about communities around the world through story, geography, and forms of artistic expression. They also develop skills of empathy. Getting an ice pack for a hurt friend, sharing toys, or making cards for an absent teacher prepares these ECC students to engage the community outside the school walls.
We know that implementing an effective service learning program requires attention to two critical elements: duration and intensity. Projects/partnerships need enough time to form and develop, and enough frequency of engagement; if these elements are in place, students can meaningfully address a community need and benefit from learning outcomes established at the beginning of the partnership/project. For example, Sweet Briar Creek has established a partnership with the Women and Children’s Daytime Drop-In Center, just a few blocks away from the University Avenue Campus. In preparation for engaging in that partnership, the the students learn about people currently living with homelessness through literature and story, and explore differences and similarities through their work with All Kinds of Families. Next, students interview center staff to learn about the community need. Over the course of the year, students address the community need by making food, planting flowers, singing songs for the women, and making inspirational cards. By walking through the neighborhood to visit the Center, they understand that these people in our community ARE just like them, and, at the same time, are NOT just like them. It’s a great service learning opportunity, but it wouldn’t be successful without sufficient duration and intensity, both of which faculty are able to provide.
Students continue to deepen their understanding through the fifth grade, and become more independent and capable of taking on greater involvement across the five stages of successful service learning. For example, fourth and fifth grade students combine marine science as a core curricular strand with the service work of cleaning up the bay at the Berkeley Marina and the creek in Strawberry Creek Park. This work is in partnership with The Shorebird Nature Center and The Friends of Strawberry Creek Park. Students explore and investigate the impact of pollutants on marine life and the environment. They come to understand their roles as stewards of the environment and their responsibility for raising awareness about the danger pollution presents for marine life. Students increase and internalize an understanding of stewardship through moving through the five stages of service learning: scientific exploration of marine life, planning the ways in which they will effect change, doing the action of cleaning up the bay and creek, reflecting on human impacts, and celebrating the positive change that their work has created. In turn, classes build upon that reflection and celebration to effect greater change, assessing each cleanup by sorting the contents of the refuse on the beach or around the creek and providing data to scientists studying these various pollutants. Students leave with a sense of civic and social awareness about the community around them and the impact of their choices; they also gain a sense of agency in the world that promotes further and deeper engagement.
While Middle School students continue with whole-class service learning projects, students may also join our We Day Club, an opt-in group that promotes individual and small-group student-led service learning projects. This year, Middle School students are engaged in a growing number of partnerships and projects. They’re raising awareness, especially in their Middle School community, about a number of issues, including access to education and health care, violence against girls, animal rights, and community homelessness. Deciding to “be the change [they] want to see in the world,” our students have taken initiative to address local and global needs as they gain exposure to them. One of our 8th graders started a project that helps to bring clean water to a school in Temeke, Tanzania, near where she grew up. Her endeavor earned her an on-stage shout out from former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the 2015 national We Day conference last month. Click here to learn more about our students’ involvement with We Day and see clips of our students at the annual conference.
“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. And we have a choice: What sort of difference do we want to make?” -Jane Goodall
To learn more about our service learning program, to ask any questions, and to share ideas, please contact me!
Kate Klaire
kklaire@theberkeleyschool.org
