One thing I have been feeling is defensive about my approach to service learning, since there is this emphasis on community partners, and in my class the emphasis is more on the topic, the issue, the goals of the class:
1. teaching students to integrate service learning into their own teaching strategies in the future as classroom teachers
2. to be an active participating citizens.
and part of this is USING STUDENT VOICE to find an issue and explore it and then do service around that topic and then reflect.
I do want to enhance my relationship with the community partner, don't get me wrong, but i think in some ways there is a continuum on this and the goals of the class differ from person to person.
so for me: my class is a methods class.
and among the various teaching strategies, service learning is ONE.
One analogy that came up today was on line teaching. That we all have taught a course and then started teaching it on line and when we taught it on line, we had a BIG learning curve, realizing we could no longer teach it the same way but rather a NEW way on line, but meeting the same outcomes and objectives.
service learning is another way to do this...
we can use it as a pedagogy, only I am using so many pedagogy's that this is not able to emerge as the only one.
But for me the emphasis has been on the value of STUDENT VOICE and that doing a project around something you are passionate about naturally is very important, and important for when they teach.
but I could put more emphasis on COMMUNITY PARTNERS. but not sure how to go about that.
Thought on my own class, and the evolution of it all as I began embarking on the whole MA compact grant on service learning. I started with 1.5 days dedicated...realizing that did not work, and it has evolved over time to really become integrated...more so each semester.
Like this semester including more about CITIZENSHIP AND GOVERNMENT and action...then critical attributes and procedural and informational knowledge.
Then making letter writing not service learning but a requirement in general for folks to get involved and take some political action...(that has to be cinched up and more clear).
Now, I would like to have them focus on sharing their community partner somehow...and create some kind of questionnaire to ask their community partner how it went...as a participant, but also if they were teaching, what would that partner want...I think if THEY ask these questions, this might actually get them more engaged in that process? I don't know.
the idea that emerged last week was CHOICE and letting students choose between the service learning and another project. I like this idea but also am not sure how it would pan out...what would the other choice be?
One thing that I think would be good to say to them, and Ann said this tonight "teachers should remain teachable" . This came up the other day when a student said to me "yea i like our class but i would like more resources and we have focused a lot on social justice but she would like to see more topics covered and so forth...and resources...which gets me thinking, i should.
I had that whole idea of teaching, but lesson planning is taking over. Hopefully after tomorrow we can start working more on resources and that sort of thing.
The last thought from today was changing my course...getting art OUT of it, regardless of NCATE since it DOES NOT HAPPEN there and increasing the notion of civic duty and citizenship. I would like to propose this change.
LAST thing, is the possibility of having them all watch food inc in the beginning and all of us doing the same project and all of us going to the food farm green whatever to do their project and eat their food etc.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The beginnings.
We had our second official faculty learning community meeting yesterday.
I facilitated a discussion, albeit brief, on 'LEARNING THEORY" from our "service learning toolkit" book.
We were not clear yet on agenda setting and facilitation, so I was asked to put that together, but the group leaders decided that we will not do that again in the future and they will do the agenda setting. I think we are getting more clear on roles and all that jazz as a community.
The agenda I set forth (with everyone's contributions of course):
We got through agenda topics 1-2 and 3.
What I got out of the discussion:
1. MAKE SERVICE LEARNING OPTIONAL. I have had this as a course requirement and had not considered making it optional. A colleague said she made it optional and was surprised when more than half her students opted for the service learning component. I makes me want to think this through and I actually think that this would be fantastic, but I would have to come up with some alternative assignment that would be equally challenging and educative. It is really hard to think of taking this component out because it actually is a teaching strategy I am trying to teach, as well as build active participating citizens...(DUAL GOAL). I am not sure this can work.
2. COLLECT DATA FROM COMMUNITY PARTNERS. Since I provide the students with places to go, but really have them make the cold calls, and while I do some leg work on building the community partners, I want them to be part of this process...(since they will have to do this when they are teachers), I need a way to really see if the community is being served by their service. I need to collect some data on this, not only how the students contact them, but then also if the students were helpful.
3. REFLECTION: how we use reflection. Are we helping students shape their minds with reflection or just letting them have a free for all. So this got me thinking about protocol with reflection, and how to use it better. We discussed the example from the book about creating multi-cultural attitudes and helping shape these...and the discussion was around how we frame experiences, and have "preps" (ala DEWEY) without maybe even acknowledging that we are doing that...and also how I do the "observation/ inference" thing in my class to make sure students are aware of their biases...and how we do this for teaching service, but I do not do this for the service learning component...AND to make sure they are really identifying their own biases and prejudices based on their experiences.
4. USING the bias thing that one colleague mentioned that assesses people's biases...I really want to get my hands on this. It is a bias test...she posted this website to check out: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ Click the demonstration option not the research option for the various tests.
I facilitated a discussion, albeit brief, on 'LEARNING THEORY" from our "service learning toolkit" book.
We were not clear yet on agenda setting and facilitation, so I was asked to put that together, but the group leaders decided that we will not do that again in the future and they will do the agenda setting. I think we are getting more clear on roles and all that jazz as a community.
The agenda I set forth (with everyone's contributions of course):
October 3, 2011 Service learning Faculty Learning Group Meeting
Time: 3-4:30 Central Campus
AGENDA
1. Ch 1 review with Eric
2. Ch 2 review with Anneliese
3. Intro to service learning person: Nicole. She will introduce herself and show us on line resources
4. Sharing out syllabi and projects and ideas.
5. Sharing resources
6. If time: maybe review timelines of IRB and portfolio’s etc.
What I got out of the discussion:
1. MAKE SERVICE LEARNING OPTIONAL. I have had this as a course requirement and had not considered making it optional. A colleague said she made it optional and was surprised when more than half her students opted for the service learning component. I makes me want to think this through and I actually think that this would be fantastic, but I would have to come up with some alternative assignment that would be equally challenging and educative. It is really hard to think of taking this component out because it actually is a teaching strategy I am trying to teach, as well as build active participating citizens...(DUAL GOAL). I am not sure this can work.
2. COLLECT DATA FROM COMMUNITY PARTNERS. Since I provide the students with places to go, but really have them make the cold calls, and while I do some leg work on building the community partners, I want them to be part of this process...(since they will have to do this when they are teachers), I need a way to really see if the community is being served by their service. I need to collect some data on this, not only how the students contact them, but then also if the students were helpful.
3. REFLECTION: how we use reflection. Are we helping students shape their minds with reflection or just letting them have a free for all. So this got me thinking about protocol with reflection, and how to use it better. We discussed the example from the book about creating multi-cultural attitudes and helping shape these...and the discussion was around how we frame experiences, and have "preps" (ala DEWEY) without maybe even acknowledging that we are doing that...and also how I do the "observation/ inference" thing in my class to make sure students are aware of their biases...and how we do this for teaching service, but I do not do this for the service learning component...AND to make sure they are really identifying their own biases and prejudices based on their experiences.
4. USING the bias thing that one colleague mentioned that assesses people's biases...I really want to get my hands on this. It is a bias test...she posted this website to check out: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ Click the demonstration option not the research option for the various tests.
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