Frequently Asked Questions
We have anticipated some questions you may have as you begin this project. As we collect more, we’ll post them for everyone’s benefit.
What is Developmental Disability?
What is Service Learning?
How are Service Learning projects typically structured?
How do we build relationships with service agencies?
How do my students earn academic credits for their service (or experiential) learning?
What is Developmental Disability?
A developmental disability is a severe and chronic condition. It begins before age 22, and can be a physical or mental disability, or both. Developmental disability makes it difficult for a person to do at least 3 of the following:
Move around
Learn
Speak
Understand language
Make decisions
Live alone
Earn a living
What is Service Learning?
Definition: Service learning is a method under which students learn and develop through thoughtfully organized service that:
• Is conducted in and meets the needs of a community, and is coordinated
with an institution of higher education, and with the community;
• Helps foster civic responsibility;
• Is integrated into and enhances the academic curriculum of the students enrolled;
• Includes structured time for students to reflect on the service experience.
• Getting Started in Service Learning
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How are Service Learning projects typically structured?
• Preparation -
What the students need to know (assess, train for, organize) in order to be ready to provide the service they are planning.
• Action -
The actual service elements.
• Reflection -
Journaling or documentation of learning and internalization of the experience.
• Celebration -
Presentation of documentation such as slide shows, posters or demonstrations. A public display and recognition of the service and its educational/civic value.
A fourth core element is Assessment, but this can usually be accomplished using rubrics for reflection and celebration products, eliminating a separate process of evaluation.
For ease of enlisting, Learning Through Assisting curriculum resource materials are organized around these core elements. For more information and background on service learning development and structure, visit the National Service Learning Clearing House or see The Complete Guide to Service Learning by Cathryn Berger Kaye, Free Spirit Publications, September, 2003.
How do we build relationships with service agencies?
You may need to present a short proposal to a community agency in order to enlist them as a partner. The individual involvement of the students in this first overture, and the personal experience of the agency with the student are priceless. The student goes to the agency site and represents his/her fellow students to the agency personnel. The agency gets to meet one of the teens that may come and provide service.
Building Partnerships in Service Learning
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How do my students earn academic credits for their service (or experiential) learning?
Students earn academic credits by documenting learning in a variety of ways.
They may use Language Arts skills to write in journals, but they may also compile and caption photos or drawings, create posters or cartoons, give oral reports or lead discussion groups. Remember, the highest level of attainment in language arts is to ‘bring out the best in someone else’! You can use standard rubrics for grading these activities. We encourage sharing the rubric with students while they are working, so that they know how they will be evaluated.
You can also set this up as a contract, in which the student agrees to perform at a certain level, thereby “buying into” an outcome or skill level.
In areas of psychomotor skills, there are also performance outcomes for Adapted Aquatics and CPR that are externally prescribed. Students in our program ranged in outcomes in water skills. One had never out her face in the water before she started the program, one was a strong enough swimmer to take the experience to an entirely other level, and worked to earn his lifeguard certification, which he leveraged into a City summer job as a fifteen year-old. This was in competition with many older students who did not have the “credentials” he had discovered as s result of participating in this project.
Affective growth is not impossible to measure. Activities, discussion and reflection on knowledge and attitudes about diversity and human rights have a place in this curriculum. Civics education and the research of Americans with Disabilities Act, the Olmstead Decision and the New Freedom Initiative are eye-opening reading for high-school students. This is fertile ground for discussion and affective development.
You can view the Curricular Connections page to see other associations to academic areas, with suggestions for activities in those areas.
Evaluating Service Learning
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