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What is Service Learning?

Service Learning refers to a combination of academic learning with community service. By integrating meaningful community service with learning (and reflection), we are able to teach civic responsibility - providing participants the opportunity to learn the value of giving to the community, for the common good.

Service Learning provides an opportunity for students to build meaningful relationships with the community in which they serve. This opportunity strengthens the individuals within the group, and the relationship between the groups. Those who participate in Service Learning projects gain self-satisfaction from their contributions.

Service Learning is all about connections: Connections between learning and doing; between giving and taking; between students and the community; between young, old, rich, poor, women, men, nature and societies. The best Service Learning projects are those that are tied to specific learning objectives.

Further, successful Service Learning projects incorporate learning objectives from multiple strands. For example, a successful Service Learning project of building a boardwalk across an ecologically sensitive area would incorporate objectives from science,

mathematics, history and geography strands within the curriculum.

It is estimated that 38% of students (10.8m people) have participated in Service Learning in the United States (2005). servicelearning.org

For an excellent analysis of Service Learning, visit the National Youth Leadership Council.

What are Some Different Examples of Service Learning?

Service Learning can include any learning with a community service aspect to it, which means that the only limitation to project ideas is your creativity! The greater the learning objectives that are tied to the project, the more significant the learning may be. Here are some Service Learning project examples from the National Youth Leadership Council, at nylc.org:

  • "Facing a growing threat of buckthorn - a tall non-native shrub that spreads aggressively, forcing out local flora, including tree saplings - students did an issue analysis, community education program, and cleanup projects." - from National Youth Leadership Council: Middle School Projects (pdf).
  • "After learning that schools in Honduras lacked books, elementary students launched The Honduras Project. They wrote letters in Spanish to their peers in Honduras, raised money, and charted the progress of their fundraising. The students raised $1,000, which they used to provide books for the Honduran students. Through the process, they enhanced their skills in math, reading, Spanish, art, geography, and design." - from National Youth Leadership Council: Middle School Projects (pdf).
  • "A high school biology class decided to test the water in their local lake and found it was polluted. After researching water pollution and ways to reverse it, the students developed a five-year plan to clean up the lake." - from National Youth Leadership Council: High School Projects (pdf).

 

How are Maningful Service Learning Projects Created?

It takes a dedicated individual within the group - one who is passionate about the students developing strong civic responsibilities, and one who has the time to:

  • Identifying specific learning outcomes (from school curriculum frameworks or elsewhere) then creatively designing Service Learning projects that help match those outcome goals.
  • Identifying specific meaningful Service Learning projects, then finding ways that the specific project can be tied to outcomes within the various curricula.
  • Tie together multiple objectives from a broad range of subject areas, so that the students are learning about history, math, science, geography and other subjects, simultaneously.
  • Follow up with reflection upon completion of the specific Service Learning project - it is during the stage of reflection following the Service Learning project that significant learning takes place. Students will naturally debrief with one another, but some carefully selected questions can help guide them to realize a whole lot more about the learning that took place.
  • Understand that just like any other Experiential Education, the students are primarily learning by doing.
What sets Berkshire Outdoor Center Apart from its Competitors?

Service Learning at the Berkshire Outdoor Center can be as involved or as simple as you wish. Typically, groups that want to incorporate Service Learning into their stay here include it as part of a wider program. For example, a school or civic group may wish to participate in a regular Outdoor Education or Leadership Development program, but tie in some meaningful activities that would involve service projects.

Here are some recent examples of community service projects at our camps in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts:

  • As part of their stay, Timberland built a new footbridge across a section of trail that would otherwise need to be abandoned. This footrbidge sees thousands of pairs of feet across it annually.
  • City Year Boston regularly works on BCCYMCA trails and footbridges as part of their service contribution each September to our programs.

But Service Learning is a whole lot more than simply community service. This is where the school comes in. Before contacting us for project ideas, we recommend:

  • The school makes a careful analysis of the number of students they wish to involve in a specific project.
  • The school explore the intended curricula they wish to cover in their Service Learning project.
  • The school calculate amount of hours that they can afford to spend on the Service Learning project.

 

Then when you contact us for particular project ideas, we will be able to help plan the type of project best suited to your group. We can meet with you at your school or here at our camps (or via conference call) to create a meaningful service learning program for your needs.

Here are some examples of Service Learning projects your school may participate in during your stay at our facilities:

  • Trail Maintenance - Trails always need work, building waterbars, redefining boundaries, establishing culverts, redirecting around regeneration areas.
  • Building Footbridges/Boardwalks - This work allows heavy traffic to pass over environmentally sensitive areas, creating a safe, level, handicap-accessible way of viewing sensitive wetlands and other areas.
  • Painting Buildings - The best way to protect the timber in a building is to keep it dry, clean and sealed with paint. There's a lot of painting to do - we have 141 buildings!
  • Habitat Restoration - Building bird-boxes, bat-houses and planting locally native species of trees in areas that saw recent construction.

Finally, we recommend that the pre-project and post-project reflection exercises be administered by the school. Our staff are happy to attend the school both before and after your visit to talk with the students about the Service Learning projects, but it is certainly most meaningful when school teachers and youth group leaders are directly involved in this reflection process.