Teach Students About Service Learning: 4 Ideas
How can we teach students about Service-Learning?
It’s important for students to learn to serve others, but at times it becomes ‘just another box to check’ instead of teaching the importance of service. How can we teach our students about the importance of Service-Learning?
At my school, we require students to do six hours of service-learning per quarter. We include the service in the grade book as a giant test grade. Students get a chance to serve by participating in Honey Sunday and the Crop Walk. They also visit the Veterans’ Home and mow lawns for neighbors.
We decided to skip that requirement during the 4th quarter because of the quarantine. The students have plenty on their plates already and finding service activities is considerably more difficult when church and school are closed.
But, even as we decided to let students know that they didn’t need to complete their six hours, it made me sad. Service Learning has so many personal benefits! I know that if I’m having a bad day, I feel better if I choose to serve someone by making cookies for a neighbor or writing letters to cheer someone up. This fall, we’ll be back to requiring Service Learning hours, so here are a few tips to help teach your students the importance of service.
1) Suggest A Variety of Activities
Encourage students to use their personal gifts as service. In high school, I served by singing at church because I loved to sing! It didn’t feel like work, instead, it was a fun way for me to give. As teachers, we can help students find their service niche by suggesting a lot of activities.
- Social: Visit a nursing home, babysit, serve at a homeless shelter.
- Introverted: Write letters and draw pictures for people in the community (fire department, nursing homes, hospitals, etc).
- Physical: Offer to do yard work or cleaning for neighbors or grandparents, pick up trash around a park.
- Spiritual: Offer a rosary or holy hour for someone.
- Groups: Promote volunteer activities that happen in your community such as Honey Sunday, Crop Walk, and Salvation Army Bell Ringing.
- Church: Serve at Mass through music, reading, or Altar serving; or assist at Religious Education classes.
2) Start Teaching Students to Serve in Class
You can teach students about service throughout the year by adding service to your classroom and using service based language as rationales. Try to include small service projects in your classroom such as decorating the bulletin boards, putting up a Christmas tree, or writing letters to other teachers. When students are finished with a project early, I will ask them to color a picture or help decorate a card as a gift to another class.
I also use service as a rationale for many classroom management decisions by explaining that we put things away to be kind to others who will need it later. An explanation is that we wait for others to go first as a gift to them. All of these small actions (hopefully) convey a constant desire to serve others in small ways.
We also take the time to pray during class–including adding petitions as service for others. Click here to find out more about prayer in my classroom.
3) Reflect & Connect to the Church Teachings
Each quarter when students turn in their require “Service Hours” we take a day and reflect on how and why we served. This dedicated day reminds all of us why we made the effort and helps us see the good that was done in the community.
I like to have students write a reflection because it encourages deeper reflection than a class discussion. But, I also want students to learn from each other. For the past year, I’ve used Padlet as a digital reflection, and I love it! Padlet is a digital board that allows students to comment and collaborate. I like to use the Grid feature and ask questions at the top of each column. First, students can access the board and type answers, then they can read and react to other’s answers. There is a feature that requires teach approval before posts are public, which I like to use. If students aren’t putting effort into answers, I can correct that before a post is shared.
You can see some of the questions I use below, I’ve also asked students to connect their service to Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit or to their Confirmation Saints. What other questions would you ask?
4) Let the Saints Teach about Service
I love to turn to Saint and Bible quotes to help students understand the benefit and universality of service. The Saint & Bible Quote resource gives students a chance to read and reflect on the wisdom from the Church. Sometimes, I’ll ask students to read and summarize in discussion or in writing. I also use this as a chance to help students learn how to quote others in writing. I’ll ask students to write a paragraph about the importance of Service Learning citing some of the quotes from the cards. Students get to practice setting up the quote and explaining their choice in a way that easily connects writing skills with religion. Click here to learn more about the Quote Cards.
