Service Learning and Civics

Note About the Centerfold Lessons: Service Learning and Civics

Perhaps more often than we care to admit, service projects end up as isolated events—good deeds generating good feelings, but without much linkage to core curriculum objectives. These sample lessons are intended to help teachers bridge those gaps by providing leading questions to guide background research and promote greater understanding of the context in which the service takes place.

The examples—cleaning a park and visiting senior citizens residing in a nursing home—are popular service activities. The main goal of these KAT exercises is to tie such service into the broader civic picture by practicing language arts, mathematics, economics, science and other academic disciplines. Each lesson demands some quantitative work. Each requires consideration of both public and private sectors in their environment. Each asks about administrative structures in a real context. Each touches public health and human resources.

Weaving the service into academic lessons accomplishes several objectives simultaneously: it integrates the service activity into your busy classroom schedule and it gives the students a deeper base for their new experience, which should, in turn, make the lessons more generalizable and transferable.

The KAT model thus helps make the service more meaningful and useful to the students. It also is your vehicle for incorporating writing, reading, comparison, and analysis into a service learning program.

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