Darcy Richie: Service learning makes a difference

"Potential" is a word that we use too rarely when speaking about many public school systems. The statistics about underperforming schools, dropping graduation rates and failing test scores have been drilled into our heads so effectively that they seem to spill out of our mouths. But we now find ourselves at a bend in the road, with a promising change around the corner: service learning.

By the time I stepped into a school to student teach in West Philadelphia, I had already discussed the "public education predicament" so often that I was barely surprised by the jailhouse feel and the lack of motivation and enthusiasm among the students. I was so desensitized to the current conditions that I considered the prospects of seeing an overwhelming amount of potential in each of the students to be almost nonexistent.

In public school systems across the country, the curriculum teaches toward the middle. The current model has attempted to accommodate all students, both the faster progressing and slower progressing, while slowly neglecting the potential across the board. A concise article by Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, proposes that we are forgetting to challenge students. She claims that "we take the children who have less to begin with and then systematically give them less in school, too."

Our current model allows schools to become grounds for babysitting. Truancy rates are the highest they have been in many major cities in over a decade and a half, and students are only losing motivation. It feels as though teachers are forced to spend more time on noncurricular elements, such as classroom management and attendance, than on educational elements. But many of these extra time commitments translate into a growing lack of commitment from students, and therefore lead to growing disillusionment from instructors.

For me, the risk factors are clear: parental involvement and extreme lack of resources. But I wasn't ready to trust the reality proposed by Haycock, that "quality and intensity of coursework is the single most important determinant of who succeeds in college" or of who succeeds past high school work.

Service learning delivers the quality and intensity required to develop the curriculum in many underperforming schools. More importantly, however, is the fact that service learning highlights the potential in every student.

Service learning is an educational method taken on by many schools throughout the country and by educational advocacy programs such as those developed through the Center for Community Partnerships. The service learning programs combine an interdisciplinary approach to teaching with action.

Students take part in budgeting, producing gardens, building nonprofits or working with community organizations to start after-school programs. Working with CCP on curriculum development, and actually implementing those lessons, was the first time I realized firsthand the specific disparity between challenge and potential. Service learning gave me something tangible to hold on to and close that gap.

In service learning, students not only see their seemingly gigantic ideas come to fruition, but they are personally responsible for every step of the process. Service learning imparts confidence and responsibility, while allowing students to take an active role in the development of their own communities.

Service learning takes a pedagogical approach that empowers the instructors as much as the students. Disillusioned and overwhelmed, many teachers find the same revamp of motivation in service learning as students receive. The truth is that the educational risk factors, such as overpopulation in the classroom, are honest challenges. But these challenges have translated into low expectations, and we cannot let that continue.

Haycock details images of schools where an A grade is regularly given for C- or D+ work. With this image, it is clear that the challenge is not there, but it is also implied that the lack of expectations evolves from the instructional loss of motivation as well. Rather than teach students at the level where we want them to be, we teach them where they are. We don't teach them one step harder or one step more intense. But service learning allows teachers to push, incorporate many disciplines and get results.

Service learning in no way ultimately corrects the complexities in public school systems, nor does it make up for the drop-off in educational challenge early on. What it does is incorporate many learning levels, making room for and challenging students from several ability levels.

Darcy Richie is a senior urban studies major from Birmingham, Mich. Strange Fruit appears on Wednesdays.

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