How Do High School Students Get Academic, Leadership, Work Skills, and Still Manage to Serve the Community?

A Forum Brief — April 7, 2006

“We have discovered that if there is a problem in the community, we are not helpless. There are steps we can take to make a difference. This puts a human face on our education and we carry that outlook into our future.” -- Heather Shumate, Senior at Howenstine High School

Background

Service-learning is a teaching methodology, similar to experiential education, which involves a cycle of planning, action and reflection, integrating academic studies with community service. Through service-learning, students acquire knowledge and skills while applying what they learn in community settings meeting community needs. Service-learning incorporates much of what is known about effective instruction and can be an alternative strategy for improving student achievement to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind.

Results from a recent national study by RMC Research, featured in AYPF’s forum on November 4, 2005 - Maximizing Civic and Academic Outcomes: Understanding What Works in Service-Learning, found that:

• service-learning has an impact above and beyond the implementation of active learning strategies alone;
• the duration of the service-learning project and teacher experience makes a difference; and
• certain types and components of service-learning have a greater association with positive outcomes than others.

The RMC study identified that young people do better if they have a choice or projects, giving them some ownership of their learning. When the service-learning programs have a strong link to standards, students do better on assessments that test those standards. When students work with teachers who have more experience facilitating quality service-learning projects, students do better. Teachers make the biggest difference in the final cycle of service-learning called reflection, especially when reflection requires advanced thinking and analyzing skills rather than simply journaling or recalling the experience. Students who have direct contact with those being served have better outcomes. The type of activities in a service-learning program also made a difference. Students who participated in civic or political action had higher post-test civic knowledge. Students who performed direct service had higher scores on community attachment. Students who provided indirect service had higher levels of academic engagement.

Howenstine High Magnet School in the Tucson Unified School District is a magnet school with 200 students with a service-learning component that is incorporated throughout the school day and across the curriculum. Once students have met school district requirements for ethnic diversity, selection for admission to the school is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Formerly a school that served only students with disabilities, Howenstine High Magnet School graduated its first integrated class of students in general and special education in May 2001. Several students and two teachers from Howenstine presented at this forum.

Howenstine receives a competitive Learn and Serve America grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. The $10,000 grant is divided into mini-grants awarded to individual teachers at Howenstine. The school also receives funds from a three year magnet assistance grant awarded to the Tucson Unified School District in the fall of 2004. This grant has allowed Howenstine to integrate state-of-the-art technology into all of its classrooms.

Shelley Camp, Service-Learning Coordinator at Howenstine, says a school theme of ending poverty is infused throughout the curriculum as students identify their service-learning projects.  Service-learning is embraced as an alternative teaching methodology to achieve academic objectives. It integrates civic responsibility with academic achievement, encourages team building, and creates thematic cross curriculum learning to fulfill a community-based need. At Howenstine, service-learning is integrated throughout  all levels of the curriculum for all students, including students who remain in self-contained special education classes.

Todd Dollard, a U.S. government and history teacher at Howenstine, explained that service-learning incorporates core curriculum standards into a project. The teacher helps students understand particular standards and how they relate to the project. He calls this “academic-based service-learning,” as opposed to community service that may entail simply collecting cans or blankets.

Dollard says all teachers must work with their peers in other academic core classes to create an atmosphere of cooperation. Students learn to work with each other, with teachers and with the community. Every class in every grade has a service-based project. By the time students graduate, they have a professional portfolio of their projects. Dollard says students “leave with a diploma and something they can take to the professional world.”

Camp explained that students meet with mentors each week to make sure they are on track to reach milestone markers in their portfolio completion.  The portfolios showcase student work and represent 5% of the students’ English grade.

As Service-Learning Coordinator, Camp says she makes sure every teacher is doing at least one service project that is truly need-driven. She meets with teachers twice a month to brainstorm and track student work. The Tucson Unified School District has mandatory professional development activities one afternoon a week. At Howenstine, four to five of these afternoons are devoted to service-learning.

Camp and Dollard explained several Howenstine service-learning projects. Each project is linked to specific Arizona State curriculum standards.

• Food Bank – Eight different classes support the Community Food Bank in Tucson. The biology class raised worms for a demonstration neighborhood garden. The drama class produced a video to educate the community about the Food Bank. Students in special needs classes planted their own garden and donated the harvested food to the Food Bank. Flowers from the garden were delivered to nursing homes. Hispanic/Latino American studies classes educated the Spanish community about the Food Bank. On-the-job-training students worked at the Food Bank.  “We also did a traditional canned food drive,” said Camp, “but it was done at non-peak times and we targeted the items the Food Bank normally needs to buy, such as tuna and canned meat.”
• Habitat for Humanity – building technology students built 60% of a house on the Howenstine campus before the house was moved to its final location. Students learned skills in plumbing, electricity, drywall and general framing. Students participated in a “wall raising” celebration and returned for the actual dedication. Wells Fargo sponsored this project.
• Linking Generations – Students created a production company to film interviews of elderly people in the community. The goal of the project was to produce both a publishable book of oral histories as well a documentary film while creating better understanding between young and old. Three students who participated in this project spoke during the forum.  Heather Shumate said she learned how to talk to people in a professional setting and found pre-existing connections with older people in the community. She said her senior year participation in the Linking Generations project was the most rewarding year of her education and opened her eyes to a “whole new world of career opportunities.” Donna Guillen, the administrative leader of the student-led project, said it was her job to secure equipment and convince elderly citizens to open up and tell their stories. “I gained a lot of PR skills,” she said.  Tosha Meshell worked on the writing team. “We educated ourselves about book design and publication and created lists of questions for the interviews,” said Meshell, who said she learned to take a leadership role and motivate others.  Teacher Dollard said there were many technical challenges to be overcome but ultimately, he expects students to donate a finished video to libraries and senior centers in the community.
• Recycling – Students in self-contained special education classes provided recycling bins for each classroom and worked with recycling companies in Tucson.
• Individual projects – Aaron Gundy talked about an individual science class he created with a teacher during his senior year. He photographed stars through a telescope at the University of Arizona. On the computers at Howenstine, he tested software used to measure the brightness and distance of the stars. Ninth graders in Arizona are required to understand the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a graphical tool used to classify stars. Gundy created materials that are now available online to help Arizona educators teach students how to use this tool.

Impact of Service-Learning on Student Outcomes

Camp said there is no hard data yet to show the academic impact of service-learning as a teaching methodology at Howenstine. Students in Arizona must pass the statewide AIMS (Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards) test to graduate; more than almost half the junior class at Howenstine have already passed this test. Camp said many Howenstine students are above average in other test scores; writing test scores also improved over the past two years while there has been a particularly strong focus on writing. Service-learning requires a written reflection following the completion of a project.

Dollard says there is a visible change in student life on campus because of service-learning. He says attendance improves when students create their own service- learning projects. Student Aaron Gundy said service-learning is hard work, “but the benefits for the community are endless.” Another student, Sammy Kunk, noted that student learning “gets you out of the classroom and into the community.”

Asked if the service-learning experience changed the way any of the students saw themselves being engaged in the community in the future, Heather Shumate said, “We have discovered that if there is a problem in the community, we are not helpless. There are steps we can take to make a difference. This puts a human face on our education and we carry that outlook into our future.”

In response to another question from the audience, Dollard says it has been difficult as a teacher to sit back and let students run with their projects – including letting them make mistakes. Camp says she frequently reminds teachers that the projects must be student-driven.

Policy Implications

Learn and Serve America, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, provides direct and indirect support to encourage service-learning in K-12 schools, community groups and postsecondary institutions. At a cost of less than $25 per participant, Camp said Learn and Serve America is an extremely cost-effective federal program. Explaining that the President’s budget includes $34 million for Learn and Service America – a 20% reduction from the previous funding level of $43 million - Camp urged people to work for continuation and expansion of the Learn and Serve program. In the Tucson area, Camp said such cuts would reduce the number of projects that could be completed during the school year.

The students from Howenstine concluded the forum with a musical timeline from the 1960s, presented in song, dance, and American Sign Language. One Congressional staff member in the audience commented that no one in Tucson would ever know from looking at Howenstine that such great programs are going on inside.

Resources

Howenstine High School Service Learning
http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/howenstine/Service%20Learning.htm

Learn and Serve America
http://www.learnandserve.org/

National Service Learning Clearinghouse
http://www.servicelearning.org/

Corporation for National and Community Service
http://www.nationalservice.org/

Cathy’s Corner
http://www.service-learningpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PUB_cathycorner1
Advice and resources on high quality service-learning practice by Cathryn Berger Kaye

Learning in Deed/National Service-Learning Partnership
www.learningindeed.org
The National Service Learning Partnership, created through the Learning in Deed initiative, is a national membership organization providing information services and educational opportunities for educators, administrators, policy-makers, researchers, community leaders, parents and youth.

Youth Service America
http://www.ysa.org/

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