When Ryan Steuer stepped into his language arts classroom at a middle school in Indianapolis, Indiana, he figured he'd simply teach the way he was taught. But the second-career educator quickly discovered that he wasn't engaging the hearts and minds of his 8th grade students with his mostly traditional instruction. He knew he had to switch things up, and he used a standard journal writing prompt as the catalyst: What would you do with a million dollars?
At first, the kids imagined buying multiple houses, cars, and other material indulgences. Eventually, however, they started thinking beyond themselves, wondering how this hypothetical money might be used to help others. "Many said they would give others money so [that] they could have enough food," Steuer says. Given their pivot in thinking about community needs, he challenged the class to design service projects.
"Learners started planning these huge projects like collecting canned goods and clothing for people in Africa. They were excited, and I was excited, but then we realized it would take thousands of dollars to ship all of these things," Steuer says. "But instead of scrapping the project, we found that we could help the local food pantry for free."
During this initial foray into service learning, Steuer explains, "I saw my kids in generational poverty light up. I knew I was on the road to helping [them] understand why learning mattered, especially when it connected to real life" and to real issues that many of them grappled with every day.
So, he set out to change the paradigm of what his classroom looked and felt like. Over the next four years, he worked on formalizing service learning into the curriculum at Decatur Middle School, eventually helping to create APEX, a "school within a school" dedicated to the practice. "Combining our academic instruction with service learning really took off when we focused on providing structure," Steuer recalls.
Service with Structure
Compared with volunteer efforts like food or clothing drives, service learning can be deeply rooted in classroom instruction, with students completing projects to benefit the local community that are embedded within existing academic standards and curriculum. Service learning doesn't have to be an "add-on" for teachers; they can make key instructional decisions to elevate their service learning efforts into meaningful, academically rigorous work.
Beyond helping classrooms and schools create more prosocial environments, service learning—done well—can lift academic achievement. According to a study by the American Association of Community Colleges, 69 percent of students who were involved in service learning believed it empowered them to better learn course material. In addition, a study by the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) found that children who participated in such projects performed better across all core academic areas. Well-implemented service learning also lets students work on "soft skills" like problem-solving, collaboration, leadership, and communication.
The K–12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice, developed by NYLC, provide a framework for embedding service learning into the curriculum. According to the group, effective service learning comprises eight essential components:
- Meaningful Service: Students engage in personally relevant service, gaining an understanding of the underlying societal issues being addressed.
- Links to Curriculum: Service learning projects have clearly articulated learning goals and align with existing standards and curriculum.
- Reflection: Students engage in ongoing reflection before, during, and after the service learning project.
- Diversity: Students are challenged to consider various viewpoints and value diverse backgrounds.
- Youth Voice: Students are encouraged to provide ideas and feedback, from the planning to the implementation to the evaluation.
- Partnerships: Service learning projects address community needs and engage community partnerships that are collaborative and mutually beneficial.
- Progress Monitoring: Educators assess the quality of service learning and use results for sustainability, improvement, and goal setting.
- Duration and Intensity: Service learning experiences allow enough time to meet community needs.
According to Elizabeth Koenig, NYLC professional development director, two of these standards—curriculum and youth voice—are foundational. "Often overlooked are the links to curriculum," she says. "As soon as teachers lose sight of the learning objectives, they won't get what they want from the project."
Several organizations can help bridge the gap between projects and standards. generationOn offers a wealth of teaching resources, including webinars on how to enhance rigor in service learning. Another organization, Learning to Give, has a resource bank with more than 1,700 teacher-written lesson plans related to real-world issues and aligned toward service. The organization's website (www.learningtogive.org/teach/lessons) allows teachers to search the free plans by theme, grade level, content standard, or keyword. A quick search for "poverty," for example, reveals interdisciplinary lessons and units that address issues like hunger, human rights, or overpopulation.
"For the 'next-level' exemplary projects we see," Koenig says, "students understand what they need to learn [standards-wise] and how they will demonstrate their learning. Then they can connect with and be creative in helping their community."
Room for Rigor and Reflection
Steuer, who now serves as the director of Magnify Learning, spent eight years at Decatur Middle School facilitating rigorous service learning projects, several of which stand out for him. One four-week interdisciplinary unit tasked students with writing biographies for local senior citizens and had links to the curriculum mapped out from the start.
The biography projects challenged Steuer to backward plan academic standards for both 8th grade language arts and social studies. He partnered with a global studies/history teacher who provided historical context, which tied to Indiana's social studies standards, to help students prepare for their senior citizen interviews. After studying historical events such as the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy's assassination, and desegregation, the students were challenged to further investigate those most relevant to their subjects' lives.
"They formulated much better questions by understanding the eras in which the senior citizens grew up," Steuer says. And when they wrote the biographies, students were assessed on a number of Common Core English Language Arts Standards, including anchor standards such as producing writing that is appropriate to task, purpose, and audience (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.4) and using technology to publish writing and collaborate with others (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.6).
Steuer observed that the biggest takeaways of the experience went beyond the standards, which he says is typical when kids have opportunities to be active through community engagement and emotionally involved in their learning. His students appreciated improving their conversational skills, as well as the hands-on aspect of the work, among other benefits.
Suzie Boss, author of Real-World Projects: How Do I Design Relevant and Engaging Learning Experiences? (ASCD Arias, 2015), believes implementing reflection activities throughout the learning process is crucial to effective project design. "Teachers should encourage various forms of reflection," she says, "like having students interview each other about how their thinking has changed, keep a blog or reflection journal, or make short recordings (audio or video) to capture their reflections over time."
One teacher, Boss recalls, set up a Survivor-style "video confession booth" in her classroom. Students took turns in the cardboard booth, recording themselves on an iPad "describing what they were most excited about or most challenged by in their project." Activities like these can more richly demonstrate metacognition and how thinking evolves over the course of the service learning experience.
Shaping Student-Led Investigations
Although some service learning projects may be meticulously planned, others emerge organically. "We really push teachers to do the backward planning to map out essential academic standards," Koenig says, "but then great service learning projects can occur when you leave room for student voice and choice." When Maria Tolliver's 7th grade language arts students at Seckman Middle School in Imperial, Missouri, wanted to know more about the foster care system, she followed their lead.
The project, "Backpacks for Foster Kids," emerged as her class read A Child Called It, Dave Pelzer's harrowing account of surviving child abuse and moving through the foster care system. "I wanted to use the book as a tool for students to begin thinking more empathetically," Tolliver says, "and students were immediately appalled by Dave's abuse." Her class was so engaged in reading the text that Tolliver reached out to the Jefferson County Department of Family Services. She invited social workers to her classroom so that students could develop a deeper understanding of the foster care system while practicing their research and interviewing techniques.
During the social workers' visit, students asked various questions: How many kids are in foster care? What are their ages? How long do they remain in the system? What forms of abuse are most prevalent? After learning that many kids are placed into state custody with only the clothes on their backs, the class came up with the idea of collecting backpacks and filling them with basic hygiene and school supplies.
Tolliver's students, many of whom had personal experience with the foster care system, began creating a communication plan to spread awareness about the needs of foster children, with the hopes of attracting attention to the problem. They wrote public service announcements that were read over the school's intercom, created informational posters, and crafted persuasive digital presentations. In the end, the kids collected and donated 70 backpacks.
"It was easy to integrate reading, writing, and speaking academic standards into the work," Tolliver says, "especially when the kids were tasked with communicating for authentic audiences." And empowering students to make choices throughout the process made all the difference. "A lot of times, school is the last thing on kids' minds," she says. "But when students were doing this, it touched them in a way to make them care about others. This was really exciting for me to see as a teacher."
From the School Walls to the State Hall
New Canaan Country Day School, an independent K–9 school in Connecticut, is in the process of formalizing service learning into its curriculum. One project that has long inspired New Canaan teachers was led by Kristin Quisgard's 4th grade classroom in the 1990s. When her students visited the state capitol in Hartford, Connecticut, they noticed that there was no officially designated state heroine. "When we were on the tour of the statehouse, we were told that a different 4th grade class had successfully lobbied the state legislature to adopt the European Praying Mantis as the state insect," Quisgard says. "So, when we stood in front of a statue of state hero Nathan Hale, some students started talking about the absence of a female statue, and this planted the seed for their advocacy."
They spent the next two years researching and advocating for Prudence Crandall, who in 1833 opened the first academy for African American women in New England. Thanks in no small part to the students' efforts, Connecticut named Crandall the state heroine in 1995 and erected her statue 13 years later. With this project as its inspiration, New Canaan is now planning to embrace service learning on a much larger, more intentional scale.
"One of our goals as an institution is to continue to hold ourselves to the expectation that we are a private school with a public purpose," says Will McDonough, New Canaan's director of service learning. Reflecting on the elements of the K–12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice, McDonough says he will emphasize two areas as he explores implementation of a schoolwide service learning project: continuously assessing the needs of the broader community (through partnerships) and linking to the curriculum across grade levels. "To me, this is where the heart of service learning lives," he says. "We want to find doorways into the community, then expose our students to them, providing just enough support along the way to truly empower and inspire them to make a positive contribution."
"It's just a matter of linking the two," McDonough adds—the needs and opportunities within the community and the work being done in the classroom.
Grooming the Next "World Changers"
Steuer says it's essential that teachers be bold and jump into service learning, even if they struggle along the way. "Your first attempt won't be the best, but you will be on the road to bringing learners great experiences," he says. "Think big and act locally. We shouldn't be telling our kids that they are going to solve world hunger. If that were possible, it would have been done already. But we can tell our learners that they can be world changers right where they live."
The pathway to a meaningful community impact, according to educators, is paved with a framework that ensures academic rigor and engagement. With learning objectives and goals in place, students will be able to gain the depth of knowledge needed to make a difference in their hometowns.
"If you aren't teaching kids how to be active in their communities, you're letting them—and others—down," Tolliver concludes.
