Memorable Lessons, Stronger Citizens

At Arcade Middle School in the San Juan Unified School District, students air the difficult social issues they faced

as sixth graders — peer pressure, bullies, cliques. Then they work up lessons with their teachers and take them back to elementary

schools, where they help younger kids work out some of the same problems.

The project is rooted in a promising teaching strategy called service-learning. Its goals are to expand on

lessons from the regular school curriculum through civic action and community service, and its potential benefits are potent:

lessons that kids remember, awareness of the larger community and better school-community relations.

While community service alone has long been recognized as a valuable adjunct to education, rarely are student volunteer hours dishing up food to the homeless or cleaning up parks linked to what’s being taught in the classroom. Service-learning takes a step beyond community service, to connect service and community awareness with lessons in science and math, civics, reading and writing.

The concept has been growing in popularity nationally for several years, but is embraced unevenly in school

districts throughout California. The other day, a task force convened by state schools superintendent Delaine Eastin outlined its

recommendations for integrating service-learning experiences at each grade level. It did not recommend mandating service-learning or

community service — a wise move, since schools already must adapt to tougher new standards and curriculum, squeezing ever more

material into the limited school day. But carefully designed service-learning programs, offered as electives and linked clearly to

state and local standards, should help kids become both more engaged as students and more involved as citizens. As community organizations provide mentors for students and benefit from student volunteer hours, it’s also likely that communities will become more involved in their schools.

Opportunities exist at every grade for instilling an ethic of service into the educational process. In Bakersfield, for example, kindergartners learned about trees from local experts and books, then went out to count diseased trees in their community. They told

neighbors how they should take care of their trees. Back in class, the kids wrote a play about the importance of trees, and performed it for school and community. Students in fifth and sixth grades can strengthen their own basic skills by tutoring younger students. In high school, service-learning offers opportunities for students to explore careers they might one day pursue. A win all around, and certainly preferable to programs that require kids to do community service but offer them little direction for making the service relevant

to their studies.

Too often, schools are like sheltered islands within the larger community, and kids feel and behave as if

disconnected from the world outside of school. Service-learning offers a welcome way out of that box, with lessons in better citizenship that should stick.

Problems? Suggestions? Let us hear from you.

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