08-13-2023 Back to School - Flipbook - Page 4
Service Learning Empowers Students Of All Ages
To Embrace Their Power To Make A Difference
By Katie Turner, Contributing Writer
B
eyond academics, teaching children
how to make a positive impact on their
communities is top of the list for most
educators. Service learning, or the
practice of combining community service into
academic lessons, has long been the approach for
most schools. However, best practices around service learning have evolved, and many schools are
working hard to make the experiences meaningful
and long-lasting for students.
In Maryland, community service hours are a
graduation requirement for many school districts,
and both private, parochial and public schools are
infusing service learning in the classroom and extracurricular activities starting as early as kindergarten. Traditionally, kids have been introduced to
service in ways that are facilitated and led by adults
– think bake sales and fundraising drives.
“It was largely a hand down approach to service,” says Bridget Collins, director of Greatest
Good McDonogh, the school’s signature service
learning program. “Service activities were organized by adults, and students became just the carriers, not really understanding the root cause of
the problem that they were addressing.”
She went on to cite research from the Do Good
Institute at the University of Maryland School of
Public Policy, which shows that although volunteerism and service in the U.S. are declining, surveys of young people show that they want to do
good at a higher level than ever before.
“We believe that there’s this gap because children don’t know where to begin, they don’t have
the skills or an understanding of how to do it,” says
Collins. “So, the idea is to embed it in the curriculum in such a way that we place the problem at the
feet of children and challenge them to come up
with solutions.”
Collins says that even the youngest children
are able to solve problems, sharing the example of
a kindergarten class that learned about people who
were cold in the winter, brainstormed reasons why
and ways to help, then created and managed their
own coat drive at the school. This approach allows
young people to discover their own power to influence change in their communities.
Also at McDonogh, high school students recently interviewed leadership at the Baltimore
Hunger Project about the organization’s challenges
and opportunities, then divided into teams to
come up with solutions.
“The kids gave organized pitches addressing
the issues and they came up with these awesome
solutions,” says Collins. “One of our lessons was
about being quiet and listening to the needs of the
community, not assuming that you know … it’s
about teaching these great skills.”
Similarly, John Carroll School in Bel Air combines facilitated experiences, such as classroom
learning, retreats and field trips, with requirements
for individual service hours. For their sophomore
retreat day, students spend a day at Mount Zion
Church’s Beyond Capernaum program, interacting with adults who have special needs
“I tell them that their goal for the day is to
make a friend,” says Kenneth Goedeke, director of
mission and ministry and John Carroll.
“We don’t want service to be a hoop they jump
through; we want them to develop a sense that
what they are doing matters and has value, and
it’s an opportunity for growth,” adds Kate Webb,
service coordinator at John Carroll. “We are trying
to cultivate the moral character in our students so
they have a sensitivity to people who are marginalized or disadvantaged, and as adults they can break
down those social barriers with whatever career
path or life path or that they follow.”
By their junior and senior years, students are
pursuing individual service projects that align
with their interests and skills.
“There was a student a few years ago who
wanted to seek out opportunities to work with
special needs people,” says Goedeke. “As part of
her senior project, she designed and 3D printed
a working prosthetic arm. She’s getting ready to
graduate from the University of Delaware, studying mechanical engineering. Her career goal is to
help make prosthetics for people.”
The Baltimore County Public School System
requires that students have 80 hours of community
service as a graduation requirement. Stacey Wade,
program specialist in the office of family and community engagement at Baltimore County Public
Schools, says that schools work with students to
ensure they meet that requirement by facilitating opportunities to get involved, but she says the
preparation and reflection are where the learning
really happens.
“We want to promote independent learning, and that means students seek out their own
projects in their community – like working with
churches or a community resource center in the
area,” says Wade. “It has to promote a community
need and the students have to show what they
wanted to do, what they learned about the community need, and that they were reflective of their
actions and what they did.”
She shared a recent story of a group of students
who organized a fundraising walk in memory of a
friend who passed away from sarcoma.
“The walk raised money for the foundation,
but they also included a lot of student-led groups,
such as National Honor Society, One Love, and art
students doing face painting,” says Wade. “It’s all
about teaching them to be great citizens, and citizens that can contribute to the good of the community.”
For all schools, the goal is to help young people
develop empathy and deepen their understanding
of the challenges in today’s world – and to know
that they have the ability to make change simply
by embracing their own inner spirit.
“How they use their passions for good in the
world doesn’t have to be separate from their lives,”
says Collins. “It doesn’t have to be extracurricular;
it can be a part of everything they do.”
Left: Students prepare a dish in Nonfiction Studies in Food Culture and Systems, a Greatest Good McDonogh partnership course in support of the Baltimore Hunger Project. Middle: Baltimore County Student
Council students hosted a memorial walk to benefit FINISH Sarcoma. Right: John Carroll students participated in the Archdiocese’s Appalachia Work Camp.