Students Give Back with Service Learning

Service learning experiences can get students out of the classroom and involved in parts of their community they don't typically interact with. Students gain new knowledge and a feeling of purpose as they learn how they can have a positive impact on their world.  

Involving students in service learning can be as simple as arranging times for older students to work with younger students as reading buddies or to do art projects together.

When I taught service learning as a class, my middle school students met with their K-2 reading buddies once a week for about 20 minutes per grade. This worked with our school schedule though longer blocks of times are nice, too. Sometimes the middle schoolers met up with their buddies during recess. The middle school students had a blast playing with the younger kids! The K-2 students always looked forward to seeing their older buddies.

Another nice way to help students serve while interacting with people of different ages is to visit assisted living facilities. We were lucky to have several of these homes within walking distance of the school. One year the class interviewed an elder couple and learned that they had met and married fairly recently. Students collected their life stories and used them to create a play that they performed. The couple had some great stories to tell, so this made for a very entertaining play! 

On other occasions, students spent time at the assisted living facility playing board games with residents. One day, a student decided to bring along his new virtual reality headset for the elders to try.

As you can imagine, both the elders and students benefitted from this time spent together.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when visiting the assisted living facility was not possible, middle school students involved our entire K-8 school in creating cards for residents of assisted living facilities and nursing homes in our area. Students made cards for hundreds of elders in their community.

Also within the school's neighborhood is a community garden, and students helped out there by doing some weeding.

While working in the community garden, students had opportunities to try different herbs. Lemon sorrel was the most popular, and some ventured to try nasturtium flowers.

By trying different kinds of service learning, students had the opportunity to discover activities that they could enjoy while giving back to their community.

If you would like to read about how students gain voice and empowerment through their involvement in student council, follow this link to an earlier post on this topic:

Student Government

If you are interested in an opportunity to help collect data on pollinator populations, follow this link:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

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