SISI - Standards and Indicators

Standard 1 - Academic Performance - Curriculum
1.1.a There is evidence that the curriculum is aligned with Academin Expectation, Core Content for Assessment, Transformation, and the Program of Studies.
1.1e The school curriculum provides specific links to continuing education, life, and career options.
1.1.g The curriculum provides access to a common academic core for all students.

Standard 2 - Academic Performance - Classroom Evaluation/Assessment
2.1.a Classroom assessments of student learning ar frequent, rigorous, and aligned with Kentucky's core content.
2.1.c Students can articulate the academic expectations in each class and know what is required to be proficient.
2.1.f Performance standards are clearly communicated, evident in classrooms and obervable in student work.
2.1.h Samples of student work are analyzed to inform instruction, revise curriculum and pedagogy, and obtain information on student progress.

Standard 3 - Academic Performance - Instruction
3.1.a There is evidence that effective and varied instructional strategies are used in all classrooms.
3.1.b Instructional strategies and learning activities are aligned with the district, school, and state learning goals and assessment expectations for student learning.

Standard 4 - Learning Environment - School Culture
4.1.j There is leadership support for a safe, orderly, and equitable learning environment (e.g., culture audits/school opinion surveys).
4.1.k The school/district provides support for the physical, cultural, socio-economic, and intellectual needs of all students, which reflects a commitment to equity and an appreciation of diversity.

Standard 5 - Learning Environment - Student, Family and Community Support
5.1.a Families and the community are active partners in the educational process and work together with the school/district staff to promote programs and services for all students.
5.1b Structures are in place to ensure that all students have access to all the curriculum (e.g., school guidance, FRYSC's, ESS.).
5.1e The school maintains an accurate student record system that provides timely information pertinent to the students' academic and educational development.

Standard 6 - Learning Environment - Professional Grwoth, Development and Evaluation
6.1b The school has an intentional plan for building instructional capacity through on-going professional development.
6.1d Plans for school improvement directly connect goals for student learning and the priorities set for the school and district staff development activities.
6.1e Professional development is on-going and job-embedded.

Standard 9 - Efficiency - Comprehensive and Effective Planning
9.3b The school/district analyzes their students' unique learning needs.

Scenario

At Murray Elementary School in Murray, Kentucky the students started discussing the needs of animals and the role domestic animals play in our lives.  They also discussed the characteristics of responsible pet owners and researched the needs of common household pets.  Through group presentations, students learned how to care for various pets.  The teachers also demonstrated how people in other cultures viewed pets.  The students decided that the local Humane Society had a real need for pet food and care.

 A guest speaker was invited to share information about the local facility and ideas of how students could help.  They decided to collect needed supplies for the shelter and to spend time helping to clean and feed the animals.  The speaker talked about careers related to animals and left pamphlets for the students to review.  They used this information to learn more about the Humane Society and to plan their project.  

They began organizing their collection drive.  The students publicized the drive with posters and announcements, which helped everyone understand the needs of the Humane Society.  They graphed and categorized items as they were collected.  The supplies were delivered and the students began visiting two days per week for two hours.  During this time, they cleaned cages and fed the animals.  Students kept a journal about their feelings and what they had accomplished for the animals.  They talked about how they felt, their work habits and how they could improve.  The students found that animals have feelings and needs just like people do.

 

Introduction

According to the National Youth Leadership Council, service-learning is an experiential teaching method that enhances learning by engaging students in meaningful service to their schools and to their communities.  When integrated with established curricula, service-learning projects heighten interest in academics, enhance citizenship skills and enrich character development.  Service learning is a proven key to education reform that also makes significant contributions to the development of community (http://nylc.org/sl_definition.cfm/). 

As an experiential learning method, service-learning benefits and excites all students because it connects them to their community, their nation, and their world.  However, it is a particularly engaging learning method for students at risk because of its impact on academic performance and on social development.  Why?

Students who drop out of school typically demonstrate poor academic performance, alienation, low self-esteem and feelings of helplessness.  Service-learning uniquely addresses each of these areas of concern.  When struggling students participate in solving real problems in their communities, connections to curriculum and content take on a meaningful purpose.  Service-learning can provide exciting and meaningful standards-based learning opportunities. 

Impact on Academic Performance
 
A major and widely recognized indicator for dropping out of school is poor academic performance (Schargel and Smink, 2001, p.21).  Service-learning is proving to be an effective intervention strategy.  In a review of the research literature over the past decade, Billig reports eight findings of improved academic performance (for example, “students in more than half of the high quality service-learning schools studied showed moderate to strong gains on achievement tests in language arts or reading, improved engagement in school, an improved sense of educational accomplishment, and better homework completion”).  (Phi Delta Kappan, May 2000, p. 658). 

Impact on School Attendance and Attachment
 
Students who drop out of school tend to be disenfranchised from their school and community.  These students do not have healthy social connections that many of their same-age peers have had.  Schargel and Smink state that most dropouts are from learning-disabled populations or from the non-college bound track.  Poverty, ethnicity, and pregnancy further alienate students (Strategies, p. 22-23).  Service-learning has the potential to provide alienated students with a sense of belonging. 

When students work with a team of classmates to solve an authentic community problem, a bond between students may be forged and networks of support may be developed between and among students.   Billig found two research findings that show increased school attendance and eight that show increased school attachment (for example, “students who engaged in service-learning were more likely to treat one another kindly, help one another, and care about doing their best”). (Phi Delta Kappan, 2000).

Impact on Social Development and Civic Responsibility

Lastly, students who drop out of school typically harbor feelings of helplessness and lack of control over their life, although they may act otherwise.  Students feeling this way may not have learned skills that could give them feelings of empowerment.  By becoming involved in service-learning projects, which address real problems, students become problem solvers.  When students work together, they become team players.

Students working with school staff and community leaders develop much needed communication and social skills as well as exposure to positive adult role models in the community.  All of these experiences enable the student to acquire skills needed for a feeling of empowerment. 

On this point, Billig cites ten research findings of improved social competence (for example, “male middle-schoolers reported increased self-esteem and fewer behavioral problems after engaging in service-learning”) and eight that show improved civic involvement (for example, “elementary and middle school students who participated in service-learning developed a greater sense of civic responsibility and ethic of service-learning”). (Phi Delta Kappan, 2000). 

 Research evidence such as Billig reports is beginning to confirm advocates’ beliefs and anecdotal success stories of the power of service-learning!

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Strategies

How does a busy teacher incorporate service-learning?  This section describes the steps and hallmarks of quality programs and examples from other middle schools, including curricula in some cases.

Ten Steps for Bringing Service-learning to Your Classroom http://www.studentsinservicetoamerica.org/guidebook/classroom.html

The following steps will help you create an effective service project or service-learning program. While all these steps are useful to consider, you may not need to perform them all, or follow them in the order presented here. The planning and implementation of service and service-learning programs are dynamic processes, and projects vary greatly. For brevity, the details of each step, which can be found on the website above, were omitted here.

1. Step 1: Assess the Needs and Resources of Your Community and School
2. Step 2: Form Community Partnerships
3. Step 3: Set Specific Educational Goals and Curriculum
4. Step 4: Select a Project and Begin Preliminary Planning
5. Step 5: Plan Your Project in Detail
6. Step 6: Acquire Necessary Funding and Resources
7. Step 7: Implement and Manage Project
8. Step 8: Organize Reflection Activities
9. Step 9: Assess and Evaluate Your Service Program
10. Step 10: Celebrate Achievements

Hallmarks of Effective Programs

http://www.studentsinservicetoamerica.org/guidebook/classroom.html/

Service and service-learning can be used to teach any subject and meet a wide variety of community needs. However, to provide valuable service, build civic skills, and increase student achievement, project and program designers may wish to consider including some of the following practices, which program experience has shown to be effective:

• Service activities should be of sustained or significant duration. Program experience suggests that a minimum of 40 hours over a school year is necessary to yield positive results for students and the community.
• Teachers, after-school program coordinators or sponsors need to work with students in order to draw the connections between what the students are doing and what they should be learning. Even if service activities are conducted outside of class, it is important that the project have clear and specific learning objectives.
• The service that students perform must have a strong connection to the curriculum they are studying or to their after-school activities.
• The relationship between service and democratic practices, ideas, and history should be made explicit in order that students see service as a civic responsibility.
• Project participants must be given time to reflect on their service. That may involve asking students to keep a journal, or having teachers and organizers lead discussions or coordinate activities that get participants to analyze and think critically about their service. These activities need to be planned, not left to chance.
• Students should have a role not only in executing the service project, but also in making decisions about its development. Students should be involved in leadership roles in all phases of the project.  Many schools have established a Service-Learning Youth Council.
• In order to ensure that service is really useful and strengthens community ties, strong partnerships with community groups based on mutually agreed upon goals, roles, and responsibilities are essential.

Links to Model Elementary School Service-Learning Programs
 
The Teachers Network website ties service-learning to learning standards and social competencies.  There were 36 entries for elementary service-learning curricula; 31 for middle school; and 25 for high school in their searchable database.  See http://boston.teachnet.org/.

For a variety of K-12 lesson plans for service-learning in all subjects.

See http://www.servicelearning.org/resources_tools/.

Maryland requires service-learning in its public schools as a graduation requirement.  Examples of practice can be found at http://www.mssa.sailorsite.net/.

The Leader School Award is given by the Corporation for National and Community Service to schools with high quality, curriculum-based service-learning programs in place.  Established in 1999 there are over 100 Leader Schools in the nation.  Elementary schools are not eligible for this award. 

However, three middle schools in Kentucky have received this honor: 

• East Jessamine Middle in Nicholasville-2000
• North Laurel Middle in London-2000
• Garrard County Middle in Lancaster-2001.

 Two high schools in Kentucky have also received this honor:

• Warren Central High School in Bowling Green-2000
• Boyd County High School in Ashland-2001.

Contact these schools directly for information on their award winning programs.

 To view the names and service-learning profiles of the Leader Schools go to http://www.leaderschools.org/.

 

 

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Barriers

As with any “real life” learning environment, implementing service-learning can be challenging.  The most common challenges are logistics, community coordination, and understanding the difference between community service and service-learning.

Logistics
There are logistical problems to solve while arranging for the service component of the curriculum, mainly scheduling and transportation.  There is down time in every school field trip and down time subtracts precious minutes from the six hours per day when students are expected, under Kentucky Law, to be “on task.”  In addition, with six or seven class periods in a day, one every 50 minutes, it is impractical -if not impossible- to leave the building with 10-20 students and return for the next period.

If several teachers combine students and teams, then transportation becomes an even larger challenge.  These are not insurmountable barriers but it may mean that the service-learning portion of the curriculum must be limited to only one or two field trips, with the preliminary work being done at the school during the class period with the site coordinator and perhaps clients to be served coming into the schools.

Coordination Compatibility and Investment
There needs to be two coordinators: a classroom teacher must represent the school and a site coordinator from the host or receiving site must be involved.  The service goes smoothly if these two individuals have established rapport and have developed the action plan together with the students.  Even then, the site coordinator may not understand or care about the learning goals as much as the teacher needs in order to accomplish the learning tasks. 

The Case of Mistaken Identity:  Service Without the Learning
Perhaps the biggest challenge to service-learning is the perception by many teachers that service-learning is not compatible with meeting the state standards in a given academic subject.  It is true that activities that are  primarily community service or job shadowing, while beneficial to the student’s social development, are not service-learning.  Due to clarity of definitions in this emerging methodology, many people mistake community service for service-learning.  In fact, when incorporated into curriculum units as an experience component, service-learning helps students learn more effectively and make higher grades.

“To achieve stronger academic outcomes, program designs must include intentional integration with specific subject matter in the curriculum (e.g., building a playground or wheelchair ramp needs to be explicitly connected with geometry), alignment with standards (since this is typically what is measured in test scores, grades, unit tests, and other measures of achievement), and reflection activities that use such higher-order thinking skills as analysis, evaluation, and problem solving as ways to understand the service-learning activity and its relationship to the community need. When these additional factors are present, strong academic outcomes ‘as measured by enhanced learning of subject matter, higher grades, or higher test scores’ can result.”

(Billig, Phi Delta Kappan, May 2000 v81 i9 p658)

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Resources

Other Exemplary Kentucky Service-Learning Programs
 
Elementary School Level-Augusta Independent
Contact: Phyllis Reed, 307 Bracken Street, Augusta, Kentucky 41002, phone 606/756-2105, email preed@augusta.k12.ky.us

Projects: Painting Playground Equipment, Thanksgiving Greeting Cards, Drug Awareness, Christmas Angel, Adopt a Grandparent, Music Presentation for Holidays

Elementary School Level-Murray Independent
Contact: Jean Bennett, 208 South 13th Street, Murray, Kentucky 42071, phone 270/753-4363, email jbennett@murray.k12.ky.us

Projects: Humane Society, Drama Workshops, Spanish Culture

Resources

There are resources available in Kentucky and nationally to help teachers who incorporate service-learning as a teaching modality.  Here are a few.

1) The Kentucky Department of Education Division of Student, Family and Community Support Services is the state agency that provides training, program planning, and technical assistance in service-learning to educators.  To view the services offered go to http://www.kde.state.ky.us/odss/family/engage.asp.

2) AmeriCorps members organize and conduct community service-learning projects as part of their assignment.  These projects are focused on health, the environment, housing, jobs or schools, including K-12 literacy.  Projects currently funded in Kentucky can be found at http://www.americorps.org/.  If interested, the school contacts one of these programs to request that an Americorps member be assigned to them for the year.  There is a modest cost to the school.  Typically, the Family Resource Youth Services Center or school counselor provides supervision. 

3) Community Education addresses the needs of students at risk through its emphasis on service-learning and community schools in addition to its traditional mission of offering adult special interest and basic education classes.  (http://www.kde.state.ky.us/odss/family/ceconcepts.asp).  Your local school district’s Community Education Director is knowledgeable about these strategies and may be able to connect you with resources in your community to get started.

4) Community Schools (http://www.communityschools.org/partnerships.html#nine/)

Community Schools typically incorporate service-learning.  What is a community school? According to the Coalition for Community Schools, “a community school is both a set of partnerships and a place where services, supports, and opportunities lead to improved student learning, stronger families and healthier communities. Using public schools as a hub, inventive, enduring relationships among educators, families, community volunteers, businesses, health and social service agencies, youth development organizations and others committed to children are changing the educational landscape - permanently - by transforming traditional schools into partnerships for excellence.

5) Developmental Assets (http://search-institute.org )

Search Institute, developed a framework of 40 critical factors that youth need to succeed.  Twenty are internal to the child; twenty are environmental.  The Developmental Assets model is closely related to service-learning because both are intended to increase students’ self-esteem and self-efficacy.  Many practical activities for implementing the assets in home, school, and community are compiled in their publications.   One notable publication of interest to teachers is Ideas That Cook: Activities for Asset Builders in School Communities.  Each activity includes ideas focused on learning, unique mentoring and service-learning opportunities, and activities for fun and recognition. 

6) Grants are always helpful and a project is more fundable if a small pilot project has been implemented successfully. 

Learn and Serve--block grants to state educational agencies for service-learning projects.  In Kentucky, KDE Division of Student, Family, and Community Support Services administers the Learn and Serve grants. See http://www.kde.state.ky.us/odss/family/kserve.asp.

21st Century Community Learning Centers--Funds are available to schools and to community partners for after school programs for K-12 students under the 21st Century Community Learning Centers.  These are block grants administered through the state education agency.  In Kentucky the KDE Division of Student, Family and Community Support Services administers these grants (http://www.kde.state.ky.us/odss/family/21stCCLC.asp).

Many other grants designed to promote experience-based curriculum in the arts, environment, science, literary, health, technology, etc. can incorporate service-learning as part of the curriculum design. Sources include federal and state government grants and foundation grants. 

See http://www.schoolgrants.org/ for your “one stop K-12 grants site.”

7) Learning In Deed (http://learningindeed.org/) is a four-year, $13 million initiative by the WK Kellogg Foundation and others to encourage more school systems across the country to adopt service-learning.  One component of the initiative, The National Commission on Service-Learning recently released a report entitled Learning In Deed: The Power of Service-Learning for American Schools.  (The report synthesizes the state of the art, summarizes the Commission's recommendations, and provides the basis for an intense period of outreach).

The Commission was established to bring a new level of public commitment to service-learning by (1) developing recommendations and an action plan to make service-learning available to all K-12 students and (2) encouraging adoption of service-learning among education leaders and policy makers.  Learning In Deed offers resources for teachers, including an eye-catching map to service-learning resources on the web. (http://learningindeed.org/map.html).

8) The National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC) (http://www.dropoutprevention.org/) promotes research and advocacy by business, educational and policy interests to reduce America’s dropout rate.  NDPC is committed to meeting the needs of youth in at-risk situations by reshaping school and community environments to ensure that all youth receive a quality education and associated services.  Service-learning is one of four core strategies (mentoring, service-learning, alternative environments, and out-of-school enhancement) identified through center research as having potential to impact positively a student at risk.  Nationally recognized for its work, the Center staff has written STRATEGIES to Help Solve Our School Dropout Problem, 2001, Schargel and Smink, 2001, Eye On Education, Publisher. This book forms the organizational structure for this website.

The Journal of At-Risk Issues (http://www.aera.net/anews/calls/ca99-009.htm) is published by the National Dropout Prevention Center and the National Dropout Prevention Network.  The journal is nationally refereed, published twice per year, and abstracted in ERIC.  These organizations also publish the National Dropout Prevention Newsletter quarterly.  Subscription to both publications is free with membership in the Network.(http://www.dropoutprevention.org.)

9) The National Youth Leadership Council  (http://www.nylc.org/) (NYLC) sponsors a variety of programs that support service-learning in schools, colleges, universities, and community organizations across the country.  Of particular interest to middle school educators is the National Service-Learning Exchange that provides peer-based technical assistance and training.  The Exchange will link you with a local Peer Mentor who can provide customized information about how to strengthen your service-learning program.  It can direct you to the right resource to respond to your immediate service-learning concerns.  Visit the Exchange Web site at www.nslexchange.org.

10) Youth Service America (YSA) (http://www.ysa.org/) is a resource center and an alliance of organizations committed to increasing the quantity and quality of opportunities for young Americans to serve locally, nationally, and globally.  YSA’s mission is to strengthen the effectiveness, sustainability, and scale of youth involvement in service-learning.  The website has information regarding awards, grants (on line applications), programs and resource tools.  YSA also offers an email newsletter, “National Service Building.”  The first issue is free.

SERVEnet is a program of Youth Service America.  Through SERVEnet, a user can enter his/her zip code, city, state, skills, interests, and availability and be matched with organizations needing service/volunteers.  SERVEnet is striving to post volunteer activities for every zip code in the nation.  Go to http://www.servenet.org/.

References

Billig, S.  (2000).  Research on K-12 school-based service-learning: The evidence builds.  Phi Delta Kappan. 81, 658.

Schargel, F., & Smink, J.  (2001). Strategies to help solve our school dropout problem.  Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education.

 

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Key Words

Service activities, after-school activities, civic responsibility, leadership roles, service-learning programs, Grandparents Gathering, Family Read-Alouds, Working for a Cause, Buddy Program, environmental education, character education, Leader School Award, academic performance, school attendance and attachment, social development, learn and serve

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