CFK reports from: Forum, Maximizing Civic and Academic Outcomes: Understanding What Works in Service- Learning
Organized by: The American Youth Policy Forum
Where/When: Washington DC, Friday, November 4th

Report by: Amanda Kuryluk

Researchers, teachers and students discussed how service-learning is being implemented in various schools nationwide. They described positive results such as increasing student test scores and graduation rates in high schools across the country.

Shelley Billing, vice president of RMC Research Corporation, presented research that indicated that many students in the Miami-Dade school district in Florida have parents who consider themselves to be “exiles” (the district has large numbers of Haitian and other immigrant families). Billing’s research found that this self-perception interfered with students’ feeling of connection to and appreciation of their community, and that this in turn had a negative impact on students’ school performance. Service learning has the potential, according to the panelists, to overcome the “exile” mind-set.

However, the panelists noted that service learning requires qualified teachers who are willing to challenge and engage their students in ways that go beyond the classroom. Service learning was described as offering students choices and a meaningful connection to life outside the classroom.

Teacher Chris Kirchner of the Turner Technical Arts School in Miami stated, "It is up to schools to fill in this void and excite children about their communities.” As a language arts teacher for 153 high school students, Kirchner said it just doesn’t work to assign her students nine traditional papers on reading materials and expect them to be motivated to achieve success.

Kathy Hersh, the intergenerational program consultant for the Miami Dade school district, said that "Service learning provides the Why, for the Who, What, Where, and When parts of learning." An example came from Fanny Olmo, a Cuban-born immigrant who came to Miami at the age of 13 and was immediately placed in Turner High School. Olmo said that after leaving Cuba she became disengaged from schoolwork and wasn’t motivated to achieve in class. For example, when studying the U.S. Civil Rights movement, it was difficult for her to connect what she was learning to her own life.

Olmo said that in her junior-year history class she began to see the importance of connecting history with her community during a service-learning documentary project that gave students a hands-on opportunity to seek out either relatives or community members and interview and film them on issues of their choice. The documentaries on topics that ranged from the Dust Bowl up to more recent issues occurring post-World War II are kept on file for the public to use as part of other original research. In addition, students also had to write reflective journals on each day of the process. Olmo found that to be a more meaningful writing assignment than traditional papers.

Today Olmo is a junior at the University of Miami. She is an example of how service-learning can have a lasting positive affect on students. She is majoring in broadcast journalism and political science and believes that if it had not been for the implementation of service learning in her high school she would not be as involved in her college community as she is.

Francisco Pardo, a graduate of South Miami High School, said service learning is important because “It is one method that bridges together so many other teaching methods and motivates students in and out of the classroom.” Pardo is now in his first year at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and now talks with educators across the nation about the importance of service learning.