Children, Inc.’s Mayerson Service Learning Initiative has served 23,000 k-12 students, their schools, and their communities. Our mission is to empower our youth, and help them become active citizens today, and valued community members for life. We accomplish this in collaboration with teachers and students across the area participating in service learning experiences.
- Studies have shown that Service Learning boosts students’ academic scores and gives them the skills to excel in school.
- Service Learning Invites students to be active members of society and their community.
- Through Service Learning, students are included in the dialogue and debate about real world social issues and critical thinking to be a part of the solution.
- Service Learning can give your students real life work experience.
- Through Service Learning, students start to build networks by forming community partnerships.
- Service Learning gives students a voice in the project and allows them to take ownership and manage the project from start to finsish.
- The community views students involved with Service Learning as assets and problem solvers.
Service Learning Defined
- A teaching and learning method that connects meaningful community service experiences with academic learning, personal growth, and civic responsibility. This powerful teaching methodology successfully unites classroom curriculum with identified community issues and needs, and it is an opportunity for reflection. By participating in high quality Service Learning experiences, students learn the invaluable skill of being able to organize information, resources, and people in order to improve the community. It allows the students to take ownership of their learning by engaging them in their own educations through experiential learning in course-related contexts, and fostering lifelong connections between students, their communities and the world outside the classroom.
References
Crews, Robin. “What is Service-Learning?” University of Colorado at Boulder Service-Learning Handbook. First Edition (1995)
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