Service Learning: You Can Make a Difference

 Reviews

Service-Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, and strengthen communities by influencing students to look at their surroundings. This includes the neighborhoods they live in, the recent earthquake tragedy in Haiti, and other social, ecological, and environmental issues that impacts on everyone. This how-to video and curriculum invites the viewer (student, teacher, adult) to think outside their individual box-neighborhood, city, and state) and invites the viewer to think in more global terms for the betterment of our world. This video guide details how to put into action a winning service learning project as an educational or after-school project. It showcases successful case studies of existing projects and the young people behind them. Each example breaks down service learning projects into four parts: preparation, action, reflection and demonstration. Here are some examples in the video: Nick develops a plan to organize his school and community and fills a 45-foot shipping container with educational materials for a needy school in Kenya; Raul recruits a group of 20 peers to teach Salsa dancing to elderly people; Linda participates in a class learning to build modular homes for families in need. While this entire video scenario takes place in a middle school scenario, the concept has expanded to high school and higher education environments. What was interesting was that the students developed a ‘communal’ relationship with a community that was very different from their own. As they communicated about their outcomes and what they accomplished, they learned that despite the differences in geography, and language “we” have much in common. The students’ reflection on the role of the service learning project and communication through writing on the success of their project was a heart-warming experience to view.
Highly recommended for junior high, high school and adult.

-LaRoi Lawton, Library & Learning Resources Department, Bronx Community College of the City University of New York
Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)