Facts about student engagement in school in the U.S.
(Steinberg, 1996)
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Over one third of students do not take school seriously and get through the day by fooling around with classmates
Half said their classes were boring
Two-thirds say they cheated on a school test
90% copied homework from someone else
80% say it is not important to get good grades in school
20% say they don’t try hard in school because they are worried about what their friends might think
20% say disengagement is a result of confusion or difficulty of subject matter, particularly in math and science

Ames (1992), Strong, et al. (1995) and Anderman &
Midgley, (1998) show that teachers who are most successful in engaging students develop activities that address intellectual and psychological needs, including work that:
 Develops their sense of competency
 Encourages self-expression and originality
 Allows them to develop connections with others
 Gives them some degree of autonomy

 Other researchers recommend:
 Ensure course materials relate to students’ lives and highlight ways learning can be applied in real-life contexts
 Allow students to have some degree of control over their learning
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Assign challenging achievable tasks
Stimulate student curiosity about the topic
Design projects that allow students to share new knowledge with others
Develop caring and trust between teachers and students

Service Learning is a Promising Practice for
Engaging Students!
 What is it?
 A way of teaching & learning that connects meaningful service to the community with classroom instruction
 Why is it useful?
 It supports the best practice recommendations of the experts for engaging students in their learning.

Research shows repeatedly that without high quality, there is limited benefit to students.

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INVESTIGATING a community issue through research and community needs assessment
PLANNING the ways students will address the issue
ACTION--performing the service activity
REFLECTION--thinking about the impact on others and self, what worked and what did not, and the relationship of oneself to the world
DEMONSTRATION--showing the impact of the project on self and others (especially to an authority figure)
CELEBRATION of the impact

 INVESTIGATE
 Guest speaker: the National Guard
 Internet research: What do troops need?
What is already supplied?
 Create a baseline: a needs statement that measures the current situation

 PREPARE
 What will the service be?
 Who are my partners?
 How will the kids contribute?
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What skills will the kids need--academic and civic?
Do we need any “sensitivity” training?
 What content info is relevant?
 What are my learning goals?

 ACTION
 Writing poetry & letters
 Working in a writing group for the writing process
 Gathering & organizing donations
 Promoting our project in the school & community
 Packing the boxes

 REFLECTION: done throughout!
 Investigation: What did we learn from Mr.
Collins? How could we help him?
 Preparation: What is a free verse poem?
What is a metaphor? What are the features of a personal letter? What do we need to be sensitive about? Is my writing effective and vivid?
 Action: How could we organize our donations? How can we promote our project in the school & community?

 DEMONSTRATION / CELEBRATION
 Viewing photos together
 Enjoying our voice thread with snacks
 Designing a display case
 Sharing about our project through a bulletin board near the gym

Examining the connection to English
Language Arts &
Literacy in History/Social Studies,
Science, and Technical Subjects

The heart of the standards:
Make sure students are college and career ready by the end of high school

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Create readers, writers, speakers, and listeners across content areas
Develop literacy as an integrated skill for all fields, including social studies & STEM
Provide students opportunities to conduct research and to produce and consume media in all content areas
Address college and career readiness skills through general, cross-disciplinary literacy expectations

The New ELA Core Standards recognize that teachers in other content areas must have a role in helping students develop literacy skills.
The reality: students are not ready to encounter the complex informational text required in college or the workplace.
The new common core standards have a special emphasis on informational text and inter-disciplinary literacy.

…mastering literacy skills for common core standards
Is Service Learning the vehicle…
..to take us to our destination?
…being ready for the real world

 Students are in the driver’s seat of their learning
 Promotes career readiness and job skill identification through real world contexts
 Provides an opportunity for curriculum integration across content areas
 Fosters teamwork, leadership, mutual achievement, and social development

 Billig, Shelly. RMC Research
Corporation, 2008.
 Michigan Department of Education,
Common Core State Standards
Initiative, http://www.corestandards.org