Service learning is an educational teaching method in which students are given the opportunity to not only engage in community service, but are ultimately responsible for researching the topics, organizing the response, and reflecting on the process. For example, while some students actively engage with the idea of helping to feed the hungry through volunteering at a soup kitchen, a service learning project would center on the organization of the event itself as well as the purpose for the event in addition to the time volunteered at the kitchen. Service learning is supported with a wealth of research from leading higher education institutions as well as the US Department of Education.
In my English classes, students had the opportunity to engage with service learning experiences and projects as a way to apply the principles and skills of English communication with the “real world” and community surrounding Doherty High School. Following are some of the examples of projects that students engaged in:
School Beautification:
In 2010, freshmen students at Doherty High School partnered with Keller Williams Realty and C & C Sand in order to beautify the campus. The students researched communication methods and reached out to these businesses with the intention of completing a landscaping project on the school grounds as well as setting up a campus wide clean-up day for the students at Doherty High School. The results included a total of 400+ students helping with the campus wide clean-up and the installation of an 85 foot planter bed in front of the school. With help from the Doherty Treehuggers, an environmental club at the school, the planter bed was populated with yellow bushes, ground cover, and decorative grasses. Keller Williams generously donated their time, tools, and experience to the installation through their Red Day program and C&C Sand generously donated supplies and discounts for the raw materials for the project. – top –
Swaziland Orphans:
In 2010, freshmen students at Doherty High School partnered with Beyond Survival after conducting research on the needs of African orphans in landlocked countries. The students conducted a clothing drive, coordinated the sale of handmade Swazi items in order to raise funds, and operated a movie night at Doherty High School for the benefit of the orphans. The ARC of Colorado Springs on Barnes Rd. donated clothing racks for organizing the donated clothes and Beyond Survival hand delivered over 400lbs of clothing to the orphans in Swaziland. In addition, between the purse sales and the movie night, the students were able to successfully raise over $500 to help purchase medical supplies for the orphans from locations in Swaziland, a benefit to both the orphans and the Swazi economy. While some supplies were purchased stateside, the majority of the money was used once the Beyond Survival representatives arrived in the country.
The clothing drive was so successful that nearly as many items as those delivered to Swaziland were unable to be sent due to shipping costs and restrictions on baggage by major airlines. The remainder of the clothing donated to the students was given to various charities including the ARC, the Springs Rescue Mission, and an organization that supports women and children whose fathers/husbands have been incarcerated. – top –
The Food Pantry:
In 2011, sophomore students at Doherty High School identified the issue of hunger in our community as an issue after researching a multitude of issues. They arranged a movie night for our school, successfully purchased a movie license from Movie LicensingUSA, and organized/oversaw concession sales in order to support The Food Pantry, a food distribution organization run by one of Doherty High School’s special education teachers. They successfully arranged for the staff member to speak to the students in the class, and once their movie night was completed, were able to donate approximately $300 to the food pantry in order to support people in our community in need. – top –
F.A.I.D.:
In 2011, senior students at Doherty High School worked together to organize an anti-influenced driving campaign for our student body. They titled their project Friends Against Influenced Driving, and connected with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police department, Borriello Brothers Pizza, Wendy’s fast food restaurant, the radio station KILO 94.3, the city of Colorado Springs Police Department, Drive Smart, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a T.V. station in Texas that covered the death of a Doherty alumnus at the hands of an influenced driver, and Fire Station 10, EMS, and our safety resource officer in order to provide the students at the school with multiple presentations on the effects of influenced driving. Over 1,200 students and staff attended the presentations arranged by the students over the course of the day and over 200 students attended the mock crash demonstration put on by the fire department, emergency services, and the police. The other community organizations and businesses provided the convincer (a seatbelt demonstration machine), golf carts that simulated influenced driving reactions, goggles that mimicked the eyesight of an influenced driver, mock sobriety tests, free food, and entertainment.
This class did such a good job with their documentation that a modified and slightly scaled down version of their project could be repeated in May of 2012 and influenced another 700+ students and staff throughout the course of the morning presentations. – top –
Making Wishes Come True:
In 2011, senior students at Doherty High School worked together to plan a volleyball tournament for students as a way of raising funds for the Make-A-Wish foundation. Unfortunately, timing and locations prevented them from being able to hold their event, but in true Spartan style, they organized a community fundraiser through California Pizza Kitchen, which allowed them to raise a modest amount for the charity. While not the most successful fundraiser, these students showed problem solving skills and support of a local organization and partnered with a local business for the benefit of others none-the-less. – top –
The Spartan Project 2012:
In 2012, senior students at Doherty High School identified child abuse as being an underpublicized issue in our community. Through the presentation of students in the class on the issue of safe houses, the class decided to support TESSA, a local organization that helps victims of domestic abuse including children. The class arranged for a presentation to the class from a TESSA representative, and after the presentation worked to organize a fundraiser, donation drive, and publicity campaign on behalf of TESSA. Their fundraiser was successful and after more research they decided to give the money that they earned to an organization that TESSA discussed, Safe Passage, an advocacy organization for victims of physical, emotional, and sexual child abuse. The money that they raised helped to provide medical exams to victims of child abuse, while the donated items from the donation drive were given to TESSA to help children and adults in safe houses. In addition, the class worked with The Colorado Running Company to publicize a run that benefitted TESSA on Mother’s day in 2012. The class had a volunteer presence at the run in addition to helping publicize the event. – top –
Doherty Big Siblings:
In 2012, senior students at Doherty High School decided that the best way to improve the school in the long run was to build the character of those younger students who would one day grace the halls of Doherty. With that in mind, they worked together to create the outline of a mentorship program that would partner Doherty clubs and activities with a feeder elementary school and provide the clubs and activities the opportunity to influence younger lives. To do this, students contacted the administration at Freedom Elementary School and proposed the idea of expanding the partnership that already existed between the two schools. They then approach the Friends of Rachel club at Doherty High School in order to propose the idea that the FOR club could take on this project as a way to experience success in their first year, as a way to connect the clubs and activities within the high school, and as a way to hi the ground running. The Friends of Rachel club is a club dedicated to the ideas presented by the Rachel’s Challenge, an organization that presents to school populations about their power to make a positive change in the world. The students wrote scripts, organized mentoring statistics, designed logos, and created a documented project proposal that could be used by the FOR club in order to pick up with many of the tasks already completed in the fall of 2012. – top –
Pursuit of Life – Overcome:
In April of 2012, a class of seniors at Doherty High School identified suicide and bullying a pressing topic of concern to the student body in our school. Through weeks of research they shed light on the issues of bullying and suicide. They arranged for presentations to their class by outside presenters, presentations to the student body about these issues by the Pikes Peak Suicide Prevention Partnership, local law enforcement, and the Doherty High School counseling staff. These presentations affected over 500 students and staff over the course of the afternoon, led to at least one suicide prevention, and engaged the students in relevant conversations about real world issues. These students also organized an act of kindness chain that gathered acts of kindness from the student body and made a chain of over 1200 links that explained kind actions that students and staff had done for one another in our school. More importantly, the process that the students went through to organize the event was documented and the chain was given to the FOR club at the school. At the end of the 2012 school year, the FOR club had vowed to continue adding to the chain over the course of future school years in order to continue the legacy of kindness that these students began. – top –
F.A.P. – The Food Awareness Project:
From April to June 2012, a class of seniors at Doherty High School worked to address hunger both locally and internationally by engaging the community in separate localities with information about hunger causes. Specifically, the students attempted to increase the number of people supporting Stamp Out Hunger, the largest single day food drive in the United States. In addition to working to address hunger by increasing the number of participants locally in that food drive, the students were able to collect a modest number of food items at the school for donation to Care and Share. On the international side of the campaign, the students partnered with Serbs for Serbs in order to raise funds for use by a class of Serbians in Serbia to run a hunger awareness and action night. A Serbian foreign exchange student helped the class to understand the issues raised when dealing with another country and helped to illuminate the biases that the class did not even know they had. The Serbian event comprised a donation of food items purchased with funds through Serbs for Serbs, which was cooked by Serbian families of the school students and entertainment provided by local entertainers. The event was held in an elementary school and the community was invited to discuss issues related to hunger and to partake in a potluck organized by the students. – top –
Conclusions:
After my experiences with service learning, I can honestly say that students can do amazing things and want to make amazing contributions to the world. I wonder often if we spend too much time telling them what to do without making sure that what we are asking them to do is really aligned to the world they live in. Over the course of these projects, an overwhelming majority of students continually say that they are valuable additions to the general curriculum and that the amount of time they might take away from the normal curriculum is worth the amount of real world communication that they engage in. I am tempted to say that all students who partake in the project walk away with some kind of learning in regards to communication as well as numerous soft skills that are difficult to measure (but there are always a few students who might be the exception…so I won’t make the absolutist statement). Character, maturity, and an appreciation for the value of communication are characteristics that the students consistently credit…but why not let their own words speak for the value, or lack thereof, of the projects?