How to Make Service into Service Learning
By Cynthia Parsons
Posted with permission of THE
JOURNAL OF VOLUNTEER ADMINISTRATION from its Spring 1996
issue, Volume XIV, No. 3, pp. 35-38. Copyright 1996, Association
for Volunteer Administration.
Presented at the 1995 International Conference on Volunteer
Administration.
ABSTRACT
The traditional placing of students in non-profit organizations
for a few required hours to get a taste of volunteerism, while
still in place in many school districts, is giving way to
service by students designed to enrich their academic course
work. For the volunteer administrator this requires new considerations
for volunteer student placements in order to enrich both those
being served and the student volunteers.
Introduction
There is a wonderful change taking place in student volunteer
work in traditional service organizations. Some might call
it a true paradigm shift.
In the past, teachers did not ask their students to make
any connection between their volunteer service experiences
and their academic course work. This meant that volunteer
administrators did not have to concern themselves with linking
service activities to academic pursuits. Generally they were
asked only to comment on the quality of a student's service
and on whether each student had fulfilled his/her time requirement.
Now a growing number of schools and colleges want today's
service learning experience for students to be part and parcel
of academic course work.
Twenty years ago almost no colleges or universities asked
students to write essays about their volunteer work, nor did
they place student volunteer work high on their list of acceptance
criteria. This is not so today. It is a well-accepted bit
of college-prep folk wisdom that if there are two students
matched academically, with comparable scores on national standardized
tests, and one has done some service learning while the other
has not, the student with service experience has the edge.
Volunteer supervisors in health facilities have long noted
that children who volunteer in their institutions (visiting
with the residents, drawing pictures for them, assisting them
in the recreation areas, recording their oral histories, etc.)
have not been directed by their teachers to connect what they
learn in the health facility with what they are reading in
their health texts during the regular school day. Instead
most health teachers have treated student volunteer time in
a health facility as a "learning to serve" experience,
period. These teachers have not treated volunteer service
as a time for their pupils to test theories they have read
as homework, discussed in class or heard in classroom lectures.
Today volunteer administrators are discovering that even
primary school pupils expect to learn something about how
the health facility operates, and how the residents are cared
for. The students want interactions with the residents to
"make a difference." Once back at school the pupils
know that health teachers expect them to have learned something
about health care, and to have observed the impact their volunteer
assignment has had on the organization and its clients.
A student who spends an hour a week at a nursing home for
the elderly--and usually is assigned to a recreation area
to play Chinese checkers with residents--is expected to note
if the residents remember how to play the game from week to
week, and if playing it helps them remain mentally alert.
In addition to reading about memory loss in class, health
teachers may ask their students to observe the elderly whom
they see during their weekly volunteer visits, and participate
in class discussions, sharing anecdotal evidence about their
visits.
Some Examples of Service Learning
Learning a foreign language
Service learning calls for volunteer administrators to make
assignments for students that are not only appropriate for
their age and experience level, but also supportive of their
academic course work. Using volunteer time to support the
study of a second language is an obvious example. Here the
volunteer administrator pairs students with those who would
welcome helping them learn another language. While one native
French-speaking (or Spanish-speaking) resident of a veteran's
hospital might enjoy sharing a foreign-language video with
an advanced language student in order to discuss it in the
"second" language, another might be more comfortable
sharing simple children's poems and stories with students
just beginning the study of the language.
Volunteer administrators can help set up pen-pal relationships
with residents for foreign-language students. They can also
suggest that a phone-pal arrangement might better serve the
needs of the bed-bound while at the same time providing foreign-language
students an opportunity to hear and respond to a native speaker.
Meanwhile the foreign language teacher might expect students
to turn in papers and tapes that translate interactions during
the volunteer assignments into both English and the foreign
language. Perhaps the second year French student would write
a letter in French about Halloween to imaginary relatives
in the south of France. Or, if preferable, students might
want to write to a native French speaker at the local veteran's
home. The language teacher might say, "If you get a letter
back from your friend in the veteran's home, you can translate
it [into English or French], and hand it in for extra credit."
Warning: The volunteer administrator must be alert to an overload
on a friendly and garrulous veteran by several eager students!
Let's consider another situation where high school students
learning French volunteer at a veteran's hospital. An llth
grade student is taking third-year French. She is expected
to improve her written French and her ability to translate
from French into English and vice versa. The volunteer administrator
knows a French speaking veteran who dearly needs and craves
companionship, but who is severely deaf. The volunteer administrator
thinks this is a good match. The student can share French
translations from class with the veteran. He can respond in
writing. Other veterans may be physically disabled and unable
to write, but able to hear and speak clearly. Students could
converse with these residents, practicing oral expression
and developing vocabulary in the process.
The wise volunteer administrator will make sure that the
interested residents spend time with the French-language students
when they perform skits, sing songs, recite poetry, and engage
in folk dancing. These events take place at school with the
residents coming to the school. Or the school or a volunteer
organization may be the transportation provider to get the
students to the facility. All the residents, not just those
for whom French is their native language, get a chance to
enjoy the students and the cultural enrichment.
Those who have seen service learning know how students enrich
the lives of long-term care residents and recognize that the
quality of life for the residents dramatically improves. For
the students, what was once a "chore" or "do-gooding"
becomes a true learning experience. For the student, talking
about one of Guy de Maupassant's essays with a native French-speaking,
wheel chair-bound veteran (in French), and laughing together
over his exploits, beats reading the essay alone and trying
to translate it precisely with only a dictionary for help.
One can easily assume that senior citizens are immensely buoyed
knowing they can help their young friends not just with vocabulary,
but also with insights about French culture.
One can similarly imagine the fun the student can have with
his or her language pal. The youngster might arrange to have
a birthday cake baked for his language pal by a home economics
class, and ask a choir group to sing popular French songs
in celebration. Perhaps the young language pal will want to
write a puppet play, getting a craft class to make the puppets,
and asking classmates to participate in the dialogue. The
students can present the puppet play twice: once in French,
the second time in English, taping the performance and receiving
a translation grade from the language teacher for the quality
of the work.
A History Lesson
While the impetus for using service experiences to enrich
the curriculum should rightly come from teachers, volunteer
administrators may be in a stronger position to know what
service learning experiences would best serve not only their
clients, but also their institutions. An example:
The volunteer administrator at one small rural nursing home
within walking distance of the local elementary school had
a brainstorm one day about how to raise the interest and activity
level of the residents while enriching the lessons of the
5th grade class at the same time. The class was studying the
Civil War. Some of the residents actually knew people who
participated in that war. The volunteer administrator asked
the teacher if the students would like to record the nursing
home residents' recollections of what they had been told about
the Civil War.
Thus began a series of tape recordings about historic events.
Students wrote reports in booklet format incorporating the
residents' comments. When the class began studying the era
of the Great Depression in the United States they discovered
all of their nursing home friends had been affected. They
even found the residents had opinions about the Beatles!
For students, the opportunity to do primary research was
invaluable for scholarly growth. For the nursing home residents,
personal histories grew in richness because of student interest.
The volunteer administrator gained satisfaction from developing
a more active environment for the residents.
The teacher recognized that the children's visits were always
special events, times of happiness for the residents. She
was astonished at how much more productive the history sessions
were after the children had listened to the taped recollections
and written their booklets. The students wanted to know more.
They were full of questions, keenly interested in hearing
the residents' personal histories. Awkwardness disappeared
as the children and the residents discovered common interests.
Residents who could, read the booklets before the children
arrived. In other cases the children came prepared to read
portions of their booklets to the residents. The students
received more praise than criticism and learned to ask better
questions. The residents worked hard to remember not only
what had happened, but its impact on them at the time.
Other Opportunities for Service Learning
Teachers who never thought that volunteer service time was
anything but "learning-to-serve" time are recognizing
that they have missed some golden opportunities to help students
who are the types of learners who thrive when what they do
correlates with what they study.
Let's look at this new way of viewing student community service
from a teacher's point of view.
The Typing Teacher in the Business Skills Class:
- The pupils need to learn how to create mailing labels.
Almost every non-profit agency needs up-to-date mailing
lists and must generate new mailing labels.
- The pupils need "letter-perfect" practice writing
text material. All non-profit agencies need letters processed
and directed to multiple audiences.
The English Composition Teacher:
- The students need practice summarizing material in news
form. Almost every non-profit agency needs shortened, summarized
articles for newsletters.
- The students must learn how to take oral data and transfer
this information to the written essay form. Almost every
nonprofit agency preserves historical data for its clients.
The English Literature Teacher:
- The students must read serious literature and be able
to discuss it with familiarity. Most residents in senior
centers, nursing homes, hospices, and the like love to review
a classic text, and welcome the opportunity to talk over
meanings and impressions with new readers.
The History (Social Studies) Teacher:
- The students need to serve as historians as well as read
what historians have written. Every senior residence has
oral history waiting to be recorded and processed.
The Chemistry Teacher:
- The students need to learn the difference between the
physical characteristics of potable and polluted water.
Every residential facility needs to have its water supply
checked for potability.
The Math Teacher:
- The students need to know how to synthesize relationships
in understandable charts and graphs. Every non-profit organization's
annual report needs explanatory charts and graphs.
Conclusion
All of the service learning experiences described in this
article give new duties to volunteer administrators. There
is not much literature about service learning. Most volunteer
administrators find they have to "play it by ear."
All report that since service for learning is new to teachers,
finding placements for the student volunteers almost always
has to be done on an individual basis taking into account
student's needs, abilities, and maturity.
While service learning appears to enrich all involved, it
takes time and creativity on the part of the volunteer administrator
to carry out and coordinate. Service learning requires finding
out a great deal about those being served, and those wanting
to serve so that the experience is positive for both.
Cynthia Parsons is the founder (1986) and coordinator of
SerVermont, a statewide initiative to provide service learning
experiences for all Vermont students, kindergarten through graduate
school. She is the author of Serving to Learn, Learning to Serve:
Civics and Service from A to Z (Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks,
CA). She has been a service-learning teacher since 1948, and
for fourteen years was the education editor of The Christian
Science Monitor.
For books on this topic in our bookstore,
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link(s) below:
Service-Learning
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Permission is granted for organizations to download and reprint this article. Reprints must provide full acknowledgment of source, as provided:
Excerpted from THE
JOURNAL OF VOLUNTEER ADMINISTRATION, Spring 1996
issue, Volume XIV, No. 3, pp. 35-38. Copyright 1996, Association
for Volunteer Administration.
Found in the Energize website library at: http://www.energizeinc.com/art.html
