Engaged Youth » Service Learning Proposal

Service Learning Proposal

November 6th, 2007 at 01:53pm Chris Tugwell Permalink

Learn and Serve America defines Service-learning as a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

Puget Sound Off (PSO) strives to be a catalyst for increasing youth involvement and engagement within the community while encouraging expression of one’s beliefs, respect for others, and a commitment to public service. We believe that if youth are given an opportunity to express their voice, they can better their communities.

Seattle Schools require all students to earn 60 hours of service learning in order to graduate. Our goal is to provide a new, exciting way for

Seattle

youth to earn their service-learning hours by providing them space to host an issue on the PSO website.

Hosting a group involves:

· One semester commitment

· Willingness to improve your civic awareness

· Identifying a local issue you want to do something about

· Interacting with the following 21^st Century learning tools: blogging, video production, photography, social networking, and podcasting.

· Reflection

· Community Action

Plan:

Local youth, in partnership with the YMCA of Greater Seattle – Metrocenter Branch and the University of Washington Center for Civic Communication and Engagement, will participate in a semester long civic engagement project. Youth will gather for 15 hours of training at the beginning of each semester. The trainings will include: an overview of the project, service-learning 101, an opportunity to identify their issue, blogging 101, video production 101, and other relevant trainings.

After the initial 15 hours of training, youth participating in this project will be paired with an undergraduate student participating in the U of W CCCE’s Becoming Citizens program. Their role is to provide support, resources, and additional training when needed. In addition, all participants will attend a mandatory monthly meeting to engage in additional trainings, and troubleshoot issues.

Each participant will also be required to organize a community service activity utilizing the tools available to them through PSO, primarily social networking tools. The following are a list of possible activities:

· Meet-ups

· Serving food to the homeless

Organizing a rally

Entry Filed under: partner strategy

4 Comments Add your own

1. Deen Freelon | November 10th, 2007 at 11:58 am

This looks good—right now I’m thinking that we’ll be able to sell PSO service learning to kids as a digital voice skills package. So anyone who wants to learn blogging, video, podcasting, advanced social networking, etc. can get that through us. They’ll have an advantage in college or the business world over those who haven’t used those tools. But we should also think of ways to make this attractive to disadvantaged kids who might not have college or knowledge-society type jobs available to them after high school. That’ll be a real challenge . . .
2. Toby Campbell | November 15th, 2007 at 10:16 am

Chris, this is an excellent brainstorm on how we can use Service Learning to get youth directly involved with PSO. We definitely picked up on this line of thought at our RA meeting last week on integrating Becoming Citizens and service learning with PSO. I think we should definitely pursue a commitment along these lines this winter and spring. We’ll keep the discussion going on how we can use our BC program to help make that happen.
3. Chris Tugwell | November 15th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

Seems like implementation starts with getting an approval from Lois Brewer. Once the proposal is approved we could start to recruit kids to take part in the service learning opportunities.
Lois’ network extends far and wide. I’m sure that she would be able to help us recruit.
There are couple of major obstacles. One obstacle is we don’t have a sight. Kids will want to check out the sight before agreeing to commit a bunch of time to this project.
The second major challenge is going into a program prepared. We don’t have a full curriculum or a plan of action.
First impressions are lasting impressions. In my opinion, we use this time to get the curriculum finalized, develop a concrete plan of action, and then roll out the programs. Probably means we don’t get going until fall 2008.
4. Toby Campbell | November 29th, 2007 at 11:19 am

This is excellent. How did the service learning meeting with Lois go?