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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Student Government

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

One of the things that made me most proud of the school I attended as a child, George C. Soule School in Freeport, Maine, was that we had a powerful student government. Students truly had a say in what happened at our school. One example of this was when as a member of the Student Council, I helped hire the person who would be my math teacher in fifth grade. Student voice was a core value at my childhood school, and it is a value I continue to promote as a teacher. 

Years ago, when I taught fourth grade, I helped students create a class government as a way to teach civics while giving students some say in what happened in their classroom. Students led meetings while I sat quietly at the back of the class, interfering only when necessary. At the end of the unit, I asked students about their opinions of the student government, what they had learned, and what they thought my purpose was in doing the activity. I laughed when I read one response stating that maybe I had formed the government so that I didn't have to do as much work! I took this as a good sign that I had succeeded in allowing the students to take the lead. Their feedback on the experience was overwhelmingly positive. 

In my current position as a middle school teacher, I facilitate a Student Council that plans school events and addresses school policies. This year they hosted a Harvest Festival for all the K - 8 students at our small school and organized a middle school dance. They are now working on a spirit week to be held in the coming weeks. Their current policy initiative is to allow middle school students to take a 15-minute nap at the beginning of study hall on Fridays. We'll see where this goes! They did make some pretty good arguments in favor of this idea...

The structure I use for our current Student Council includes these offices:

* President to lead meetings

* Vice President to help lead meetings and write things on the board, and to serve in the President's absence

* Secretary to take meeting minutes and do a roll call

* Office Ambassador to communicate with the office

* Ambassadors for each tier (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) to communicate with teachers

* Grade representatives to be a voice for each grade (only grades 6-8 currently)

Student Council meetings can get pretty heated, especially in middle school! I have learned that teaching students to follow Robert's Rules of Order has helped with this. Some key points of these rules are to wait until you have the floor to speak, and to address the president rather than other members during a discussion/debate. Here are some videos on Robert's Rules of Order that I have shared with my class:

How to Make a Motion According to Robert's Rules of Order

The Basics of Making Motions 

The first link shows a vintage (80's?) student council in action. The second gives an example of a board meeting. We sometimes follow the rules loosely, but they do help keep discussions civil and allow all members to have a turn to speak.  I tell students that becoming familiar with Robert's Rules of Order can be helpful because they may see this structure used in other organizations as well. Learning Robert's Rules of Order takes time, and students often need reminders from me during their meetings. 

Allowing students to have a voice gives them a feeling of agency in their school life, much of which is typically planned out for them. It has been my experience that serving on a student council makes students feel like an important part of the school community and motivates them to come to school! 

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