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Helping those in need brings lifelong lessons

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By Alisa Marie DeMao |
alisa.demao@onlineathens.com |
Story updated at 12:02 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Classwork these days is about more than worksheets and vocabulary lists. For Jennifer Aaron's third-grade students, it means interviewing government leaders, calculating ticket sales and even making soup.

A recent soup dinner at Chase Street Elementary School was just one part of a service-learning project Aaron's students have undertaken this year to help residents at Denney Tower, an Athens Housing Authority high-rise that provides housing for senior citizens. Money from the soup dinner - which raised almost $775 dollars - will buy books and movies for the facility's library. Meanwhile, educators say, students are learning important lessons that will stick with them.

Service learning - volunteer work and community-based projects tied to classwork - is showing up in the curriculum more often these days, woven through standard lessons in reading, writing, math and social studies. In addition to academics, the projects teach lessons in civics and citizenship, and they put a literal face on what students are learning, teachers say.

"It involves studying and addressing a need in the community and trying to find solutions, trying to resolve it or move the situation forward," said Jose Boza, director of instructional services for the Clarke County School District.

"Usually, in the past, if we volunteered, we called it service learning; if we did community service, we called it service learning. But that's not it. The key to academic service learning is, first, it begins with the curriculum, and then you look to the community to see if there are needs that could be served by what you're doing in class."

Figuring out needs in the community was key to Aaron's third-graders. The class interviewed Mayor Heidi Davison and Athens-Clarke County Commissioners Alice Kinman and David Lynn about needs.

They narrowed their focus to poverty, then interviewed Athens Housing Authority's Marilyn Appleby before deciding to work with senior citizens at Denney Tower, which is within walking distance of the school.

More interviews with the residents showed they needed books and movies in the facility's library; the soup dinner was an idea to raise money for the materials.

The project made students hone listening and writing skills, use math to calculate distance and time for trips to Denney Tower, and work with money to calculate ticket prices, Aaron said. Examining issues in the community and possible solutions pulled in social studies, and students also made pottery bowls in art class to sell during the dinner.

The goal

Service-learning projects are turning up in area schools at least partly because giving students a hands-on experience and showing them how math or writing or social studies is relevant to daily life helps them remember lessons better, educators say. Classic City Performance Learning Center, the Clarke County School District's non-traditional high school, is building service learning requirements into its curriculum, and Clarke Central High School may include it as part of its freshman academies.

Janet Fielding's kindergarten class at Chase Street Elementary is spearheading a community recycling effort that's pulled in the neighborhood, the U.S. Navy Supply Corps School and the University of Georgia's College of Education.

At Oglethorpe Avenue Elementary School, Kay Isley's first-grade class wrote last week about beloved pets and stuffed animals, families left behind in Mexico and New Orleans, falling asleep in a mother's arms and other favorite memories before gathering the pages to put together in a book that will be sent to the Highland Hills assisted living facility. The class has used art and language arts lessons this year to make valentines and construction-paper butterflies and to write letters to senior citizens at the facility. The project is spear-headed by three graduate students in UGA's College of Education, who are conducting the lessons as part of their own classes.

"You're connecting two communities that both have a need, and both ends benefit," said Caroline Sabet, who plans the lessons and works with students in Isley's classroom, along with Faye Black and Holly Hoch. "The kids are learning new things, and the residents ... the ladies have told us being connected to young people helps them."

Interaction with the Highland Hills residents also motivates students, Isley said. They try harder when they realize someone cares about their lessons.

At Whit Davis Elementary School, instructional lead teacher Dorsey Stroup has seen fifth-grade students reluctant to break for lunch because they're so focused on composing letters to area businesses to get them to buy into service-learning projects at the school, she said. Students also get to work on public speaking by talking to area businesses and organizations to urge support for projects.

The school is waiting to hear about a recently submitted grant proposal for $10,000 that would be spent on developing a local history trail at Southeast Clarke Park; the proposal promises matching funds of $15,000 that mainly would be the result of volunteer work and in-kind services, Stroup said. That makes student letter-writing efforts and public speeches a key part of the project.

It also will have a strong social studies focus, Stroup said.

Service learning "is absolutely the best way to integrate instruction with community issues," she said.