Service-Learning: A Pedagogical Approach

1. Service-Learning:A Pedagogical Approach What is Service-Learning? • Service-Learning is a pedagogical approach and philosophy designed to connect students and curriculum with the community. • Service-Learning provides educators with multiple ways to assist students in applying and demonstrating learning, to develop socially, and to fulfill the citizenship mission of public education.

2. The TEAMS/AmeriCorpsService-LearningPhilosophy • TEAMS promotes an empowerment approach to service-learning for teachers and students. • TEAMS believes Service-Learning provides teachers with an integrated model for the, moral, political, intellectual, artistic, and social development of their students.

3. The TEAMS/AmeriCorpsService-LearningPhilosophy • TEAMS believes Service-Learning enables teachers to develop into excellent multicultural educators through their commitment to and service of the community. • TEAMS believes Service-Learning promotes a more humane and socially just world.

4. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 1. Integrated Learning • The service informs the academic learning content, and the academic learning content informs the service. • Life skills learned outside the classroom are integrated back into classroom learning.

5. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 2. High Quality Service • The service responds to an actual community need that is recognized by the community. • The service is age-appropriate and well organized. • The service is designed to achieve significant benefits for students and community.

6. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 3. Collaboration • The service-learning project is a collaboration among multiple partners. Potential partners include: students, parents, community-based organizations, local businesses, public libraries, school administrators, teachers, and recipients of service. • All partners benefit from the project and contribute to its planning and implementation.

7. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 4. Student Voice Students participate actively in: • Taking on roles and tasks that are appropriate to their age. • Choosing and planning the service-learning project. • Planning and implementing the reflection sessions, evaluation, and celebration.

8. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 5. Civic Responsibility • The service-learning project promotes students' responsibility to care for others and to contribute to the community. • By participating in the service-learning project, students understand how they can impact their community.

9. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 6. Reflection • Reflection establishes connections between students’ service experiences and the academic curriculum. • Reflection occurs before, during, and after the service-learning project.

10. The Seven Elements of aService-Learning Project 7. Evaluation • All partners, especially students, are involved in evaluating the service-learning project. • The evaluation seeks to measure progress toward the learning, developmental, and service goals of the project.

11. Serving the Local Community: Building A Service-Learning Project Around the Life and Valuesof César Chávez

12. The Values of César Chávez • Service to Others • Sacrifice • A Preference for the Most Needy • Determination • Non-Violence • Tolerance • Respect for Life • Celebrating Community • Knowledge • Innovation http://www.cesarechavezfoundation.org/cesarechavez.html

13. César Chávez onService and Education • “The end of all education should surely be service to others. Students must have initiative, they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves and be free.” • “Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity.”

14. César Chávez onService and Education • “It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful...so they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good livings, so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows. Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not enough to progress as individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind” • “Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people.”

15. Service-Learning and César Chávez A Pedagogical or Philosophical Approach • At the core, Chávez’ life was grounded in the community. He was a student and servant of the community. • Chávez’ life and values were an integrated web of self-learning, social responsibility, and public citizenship with the goal to enact American democracy equally for all.

16. A TEAMS Service-Learning Project and César Chávez Student and Teacher Empowerment • Chávez sought to empower Farmworkers, some of the most needy in society, by educating them about their rights. This, of course, meant that he had to also educate himself. Integrated Model for Teaching • Chávez believed that political activism flowed from a commitment to and commonality of faith, solidarity, and community.

17. A TEAMS Service-Learning Project and César Chávez Being Multicultural Educators • Chávez’ life is a model to us of a man seeking to understand, empathize with and be committed to others for the common good of society’s most needy. Humane and Just World • Whether it is a commitment to non-violence or celebrating community, Chávez’ values and life provide us with an example of how we can strive to create a more caring and just world.

18. S-L Elements & César 1. Integrated Learning • Chávez knew and learned about the community because he was part of the community. In serving farmworkers he learned first hand of their needs and this in turn led him to further serve the community in specific ways. • Select a variety of curriculum goals and standards that can be related to the community. Start with what you know of your curriculum and the community.

19. S-L Elements & César 1. Integrated Learning (con’t.) • Learn about and from the community through the lenses of these goals and standards so as to understand it (before and along with your students). • As you serve the community capture the nature of the service so as to revisit the future teaching and learning you have planned for the classroom.

20. S-L Elements & César 1. Integrated Learning (con’t.) • 2.2.1. Locate on a simple letter-number grid system the specific locations and geographic features in their neighborhood or community (e.g., map of the classroom, the school). • 2.4.2. Understand the role and interdependence of buyers (consumers) and sellers (producers) of goods and services.

21. S-L Elements & César 1. Integrated Learning (con’t.) • “The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness down which farm workers have had to walk for many years. It is a gate of hope through which they expect to find the sunlight of a better life for themselves and their families.” • “It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.”

22. S-L Elements & César 2. High Quality Service • Chávez Could serve the farmworkers faithfully for he knew their needs, for they were his needs as well. He also learned of new needs as the community developed. In response, he was pragmatic and strategic in setting priorities for service. • Having learned about the community,select a need from the various needs identify.

23. S-L Elements & César 2. High Quality Service (con’t.) • Select a need that can be best meet by the educational, social, economic, political, and moral abilities of your students. • As you develop the S-L project, make certain that the service is aligned with specific educational, social, economic, political, and moral goals set for your students.

24. S-L Elements & César 2. High Quality Service (con’t.) • “We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice. But if you give yourself totally to the non-violent struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone. And in giving of yourself you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love." .

25. S-L Elements & César 3. Collaboration • Chávez worked with Filipinos, Anglos, African Americans and others who were willing to assist. His work with the United Farm Workers was successful because the work was organized by multiple individuals, not just Chávez. For Chávez, one form of collaboration was organizing. • Develop with your students an understanding of what collaboration is and can be.

26. S-L Elements & César 3. Collaboration (con’t.) • As you select a community partner(s), consider the type of collaboration you want for your students, your class, your school, your parents, and yourself. • “Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life.”

27. S-L Elements & César 4. Student Voice • Chávez sought to improve working and living conditions for farmworkers. One way he accomplished this through was through the picket line. • “We are confident. We have ourselves. We know how to sacrifice. We know how to work. We know how to combat the forces that oppose us. But even more than that, we are true believers in the whole idea of justice. Justice is so much on our side, that that is going to see us through.”

28. S-L Elements & César 4. Student Voice (con’t.) • “Talk is cheap...It is the way we organize and use our lives everyday that tells what we believe in.” • Consider the multiple ways to direct your students into taking leadership for developing, implementing, and evaluating the project. • Find the balance between modeling and allowing students to create.

29. S-L Elements & César 5. Civic Responsibility • For Chávez, the work of the UFW was not just work on behalf of farmworkers. It was work on behalf of the nation. • “We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community … our ambition must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”

30. S-L Elements & César 5. Civic Responsibility (con’t.) • “In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.” • The S-L project is an opportunity for you to develop a necessary link between the classroom and the community. Create a context in which students understand democracy not just as casting a vote, but of caring for their own lives and those around them.

31. S-L Elements & César 6. Reflection • For Chávez, the work he undertook and values he stood for emerged from his own reality. He sought to understand his life so as to change it. • “We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.”

32. S-L Elements & César 6. Reflection (con’t.) • As you develop and implement your S-L project consider establishing regular and thoughtful time to consider what is being learned and by whom. • Ensure through reflection that the S-L project continues to reflect the various goals established at the outset and engages the students on multiple levels.

33. S-L Elements & César 7. Evaluation • The success of the work and values of Chávez was evident in that lives were changed and conditions were improved for those on whose behalf he fought. Equally important was the fact that his work was consistent with a set of values that continue to inspire. • “However important the struggle is and however much misery and poverty and degradation exists we know that it cannot be more important than one human life.”

34. S-L Elements & César 7. Evaluation (con’t.) • “A lasting organization is one in which people will continue to build, develop and move when you are not there.” • “In this world it is possible to achieve great material wealth, to live an opulent life. But a life built upon those things alone leaves a shallow legacy. In the end, we will be judged by other standards.”

35. S-L Elements & César 7. Evaluation (con’t.) • As you develop your S-L project consider how you evaluate each goal you set for yourself, your students, the nature of the service, etc. • Develop a matrix which links the evaluation to the curriculum and the service. But more importantly, ground the matrix within the lives of the students and the community.