Curriculum
Service-learning is more than community service; it’s a way of teaching and learning to meet your existing academic goals. NYLC’s 25-year history of excellence in service-learning practice informs this compendium of resources to help you shape your service-learning projects to meet your learning goals, your community needs, and the interests of your students. The curriculum takes you through a step-by-step cycle and helps you infuse your projects and practice with the essential elements of high-quality practice outlined in the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice
High-Quality Practice
The K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice, developed under the leadership of NYLC, are the research-based standards that describe how teachers and other practitioners can ensure the best possible results from their service-learning. The GSN has developed its curriculum and professional development around the eight service-learning standards and their associated indicators. Download a copy of these standards here.
The Service-Learning Cycle
GSN classrooms navigate the entire Service-Learning Cycle. Flexible tools for teachers and students are available at each step in the cycle. Through the online GSN community, we provide project plans and examples, planning templates, reflection ideas, evaluation and assessment checklists — all the tools teachers and their students need to ensure successful learning and service.
Pre-Service
Identify the academic environment
Inventories and reflective questions guide educators in laying the groundwork for effective service-learning by outlining their academic obligations, goals, and resources. It sets the stage to describe the overarching academic goals their students will achieve.Identify genuine needs
Community mapping and other processes help young people explore their communities and connect with other people to recognize relevant issues, assess resources, and discover what’s important to themselves and their community.Establish learning objectives
What are the learning outcomes that can be achieved in addressing the needs students identified? Link your specific academic objectives to the planned service and identify the actions needed to close the gap between capacity and need.Develop ownership
Service-learning coordinators, classroom teachers, students, and community partners all develop a sense of engagement, investment, and ownership. Participants evaluate what they bring to the experience and set goals, laying a sustainable foundation on which to build.Plan and prepare
Using proven methods and tools, teachers and students collect relevant information, develop their project, engage in the necessary training, build vital partnerships, and gather the necessary resources to implement their ideas about how to improve their communities.Conduct meaningful service
Young people participate in interesting and engaging service activities that meet classroom objectives while addressing a genuine need.Observe the impact
Service-learning participants observe the effects of their project on different participants, exchange ideas with peers and community partners, look at the implications of cultural and diversity issues they encountered, or view the project in civic or political terms.Evaluate the experience
Participants analyze their observations to identify the significance of their service experience, comparing their prior knowledge with new understandings of academic content, their own skills and contributions, and the project’s impact on the community. Educators and students evaluate how they met academic objectives and service goals.Demonstrate new understanding
Students can reach out to other potential community partners – school boards, parent-teacher organizations, media outlets, legislative bodies – to present findings, share community outcomes, and consider possible next steps. This is another time students can practice the new skills and apply the knowledge they’ve gained through the experience.Go deeper
Educators, students, and other participants continue to use their new knowledge and skills to make decisions, solve problems, and grow as engaged learners and contributing members of the community. Students come to understand root issues underlying community needs. It is a natural place in the cycle to begin again, with the question, “Given what we learned, now what?”
