Building Blocks

Building Blocks
Social Justice and Democracy Bridging the Gap between Communities and Schools
Abigail Miller Shannon Cochran Jennifer Linsky Stephen Caruso-Taylor

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Rationale Schools and communities are intimately entwined. They face the same social, economic, and political problems, and are sometimes even drawn into conflict with each other. Even though communities and schools have much in common, in many instances they act as separate entities. Instead of working together to achieve goals that are mutually beneficial, they work separately, and sometimes against each other. In this project we sought to design a curriculum that gave students opportunities and support to enter their communities as agents of change. Students attended a workshop run by community members that illuminated the specific needs of the community and gave them some ideas to begin designing their service project. Over the next two weeks the students were asked to write an essay that communicated the specific ideas they had and the needs they wanted to meet. Students were then split into groups based on common ideas. The curriculum is based on one semester long project, within the first four weeks of the semester the students come up with a project proposal that would be reviewed by the faculty and eventually implemented by the students during the next eight weeks of the semester. These projects were field tested by students with faculty support. In this paper, we look critically at the shortcomings and successes of the project and provide some fixes that will be implemented next year. According to civicyouth.org (2009), the national volunteer rate for 16-18 year olds has decreased since 2005. Considering the average rate between 2005 and 2009, our curriculum values the idea of early intervention, starting in seventh grade, for student community service. As educators, we should promote the ideals of civic education and its implication in the community. More than two-thirds of students in America do not participate in volunteering opportunities. One reason for this is there are little opportunities presented in school district

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curriculums for community service. This decline can be explicitly seen in the amount of civic education classes provided in public schools. Until the 1960s, three courses in civics and government were common in American high schools, compared to now, there is only one course offered (civicmissionofschools.org). This isnt the only problem though. In an article on edweek.org, Stephen Herr (2013), argues that society itself contributes to this phenomenon, he says that we are creating a generation of observers. In addition, in her book Embracing Risk in Urban Education, Alice Ginsberg (2012) argues that in the era of relay race reform schools themselves are promoting this generation of observers by taking the risk out of education. She argues that by forcing teachers to teach to the test we are taking the thrill and discovery out of education, and by doing so are creating students who sit and watch instead of students who go and do. Our curriculum will meet these needs by providing early intervention of community service in the seventh grade. Community service will enable students to partake in community activities in a positive atmosphere. Both communities and schools benefit from this curriculum. Seventh-grade students are instilled with a sense of community purpose, while community members create positive relations with younger students. This early connection will help to foster more positive relationships in the future and will encourage students to continue to engage in their communities throughout their lives. Schools and communities should cooperate together in order to tap into student potential for civic engagement. Our curriculum also seeks to remove the observer generation that Herr and Ginsberg talk about. The required community service will not only ask students to step outside of their schools and homes, but also will also require students to think critically and creatively. By asking students to not only design projects, but to begin to implement them, we will teach

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students to take responsibility for their ideas and students will learn the thrill of having their ideas come to life before them.

Description This curriculum will be implemented at the beginning of the school year starting with an open forum that will bring students, teachers, community members, and parents together to discuss and brainstorm projects that are needed in the community. Community members, parents, and teachers will present different ideas for projects and different areas where needs are seen, but the development and ideas for the projects will come from the students. Students will be given two weeks after the forum to collaborate with each other, to discuss ideas with parents and teachers, and to write their project proposals. These proposals will be brief five hundred word essays that detail what the students want to do, how they want to do it, and how their project will help to meet the needs of the community. After students write their proposals, teachers and community members will review them, approve them (or bring them back to the student for further development if needed), and break the students into small groups based on similar ideas and projects. The groups will then have two weeks to rework their proposals, go in depth on what they need and how long the projects will take, and bring back a substantial (we define substantial as no less than four pages) action plan that covers materials needed, group roles, time commitments, schedules, and a detailed description of how their project meets the goals of the curriculum. Teachers and community members will again come together to look over the proposals, give constructive feedback and begin creating their own action plans on how to get the materials the students need and how best to support the students throughout the next eight weeks. The

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proposals will be returned to the students, and the students will begin work on their projects. They will have 8 weeks to dive in and get into the community. They will be provided with teacher and community support every day after school, and will have a free day every other Friday that will be spent in the community doing work on their projects. These free day Fridays are still school days and are required for students to attend, they will still come to school, but will then be bused or driven to their project sites to work for the school day. This reveals one of the key reasons that teacher and community supervision is needed, students need to develop projects that can be finished or that can be substantially worked on given the time they have. Teachers and community members will have to work together to bring the manpower required to supervise students in the field. After the eight weeks are over, students will individually write a four page paper in which they analyze how the project went, they will assess themselves, whether they met their goals, what setbacks they had, and the overall results of the project. They will then reflect on the project overall, how it was emotionally and physically, how their group worked together, and what they learned through this experience. Finally, students will end the curriculum and the semester with another forum where they will present their projects and their findings to the community and to the rest of the school, students will work together to give ten minute presentations about the project they have been working on for the past eight weeks and will answer questions from the audience. Understandably, this curriculum comes at no little cost to the school and the community. In order to fund this, we would apply for a grant through First Amendment Schools after becoming a part of the program as an Affiliate school. First Amendment Schools is an organization that promotes democratic freedom in schools and works with schools to apply the

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ideals of democracy and supports schools in different projects that relate to social justice and democratic freedom.

Concept Map In this project we sought to design a curriculum that gave students opportunities and support to enter their communities as agents of change. Schools and communities are intimately entwined. They face the same social, economic, and political problems, and are sometimes even drawn into conflict with each other. Over the next two weeks the students were asked to write an essay that communicated the specific ideas they had and the needs they wanted to meet. Students were then split into groups based on common ideas. They were given two weeks to come up with a project proposal that would be reviewed by the faculty and implemented by the students. These projects were field tested by students with faculty support. In this paper, we will look at the connection between our rationale and the example projects students could use to become involved in the community. Students will be required to evaluate other student presentations which will promote critical thinking and the development of respectful critiquing of others work. Our curriculum will meet the needs of students becoming agents of change in their communities by providing early intervention of community service in the seventh grade. Community service will enable students to partake in community activities in a positive atmosphere. Both communities and schools benefit from this curriculum. Seventh-grade students are instilled with a sense of community purpose, while community members create positive relations with younger students. This early connection will help to foster more positive relationships in the future and will encourage students to continue to engage in their communities

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throughout their lives. Schools and communities should cooperate together in order to tap into student potential for civic engagement. In conclusion, the curriculum also emphasizes and seeks to remove the observer generation that Herr and Ginsberg talk about. The required community service will not only ask students to step outside of their schools and homes, but will also require students to think critically and creatively. By asking students to design projects, they will also begin to implement their ideas. Students will learn to take responsibility for their ideas and the thrill of having their ideas come to life before them.

Example In order to view this new addition to our curriculum, we will provide a few successful examples of students working with the community. The great aspect of this project is student autonomy. Students will be able to choose an in-service project, based on their interests. If students wanted to volunteer at the retirement center, coach a sports team, or tutor elementary students, they had the freedom to choose whichever they thought would be most beneficial and engaging. Here is what three students had in mind. Mario, Jackie, and Cindy are all on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Every week, they know that they may not always have access to food. As a group, they came up with a great idea to work at a food pantry. They thought they would help students in the same situation as them. They were really engaged to try to aid others in the same situation because they were interested in relating to others around them in the community. We highly encouraged this because this is the heart of what we wanted our students to be producing for this in-service project.

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As a starting point, our teachers have resources for students to get a start on this project. We usually hand these resources to help students decide on where they would like to volunteer, but we always encourage students outreaching on their own. This was the case for Mario, Jackie, and Cindy. They searched online at feedingamerica.org to find a local food pantry that they could help out at. In their reflections, they were devastated to find that the child food insecurity rate in Ohio is 25.9%. From experience, they knew that child food insecurity is definitely an issue in the community but they did not realize that one of every fourth child is affected by food insecurity. Fortunately, they found a nearby food bank in Fairfield, OH. The pantry is called Shared Harvest Foodbank so they decided to check it out. They visited Shared Harvests website to see how they could volunteer. They were fortunate enough to find an online volunteer application. The application had the standard requirements of contact information and volunteer ability but it also asked what projects the students were interested in, providing even further choice. The projects were assembling food boxes for seniors, assembling backpack carriers of food for students, and processing mail. They all selected the second option, excited to help out all students possible. For the next eight weeks, Mario, Jackie, and Cindy volunteered once a week at Shared Harvest Foodbank. As they requested in their application, they were able to help assemble backpack carriers of food for students. According to their individual reflections, this project provided an opportunity that they would never had experienced before. They built some meaningful connections with the staff at Shared Harvest, as Jackie mentioned that she may continue volunteering there even after the project ended. This project also helped them see that they are not alone in this battle of food insecurity for children. They were intrinsically motivated from the

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start because this was an issue that they were interested in. Throughout this project, these three students were able to develop an invaluable experience within their local community as well as build a sense of perspective about their own lives and the lives that they were seeking to better while working at Shared Harvest.

Assessment The students will each construct their own neatly organized portfolio, which will contain four main parts. There will be three papers along with a presentation given to the community and school that will be evaluated and recorded by the teacher. The first paper will be the proposal of each group. Before the final draft there will be several interactions with teachers and community members in order to receive feedback. The paper is to be two pages and each group will turn in one paper. The second paper will be a group reflection paper written by the group as a whole. The third paper will consist of students writing their own four page paper of their overall thoughts of the project. This will include their reflection on themselves, the project, how they worked together, and what they learned. Finally the last main part will be the ten minute presentation evaluation. The presentation will be an assembly that will take place at the end of the school day. Each group will present what they did for the community and how they went about doing it. It will give all the steps they took for their project process. The teacher will be in charge of doing a video recording of their presentation to put into the portfolio. Along with the four main parts of the portfolio the students will be required to watch their peers and fill out an evaluation sheet for each group. In this evaluation they will give their

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comments on what they liked, did not like, what might need more work, and any other thoughts on how their project turned out. This portfolio will be put in a binder. Students will have their own binder for future usage. They are welcome to put any other plans, notes, or logs into the portfolio along with the two papers, presentation evaluation done by the teacher, and video recording.

Reflection When our group started this project, we began with students working in the community, but soon realized that finding research on this was more difficult than originally anticipated. Once we found the research, we were surprised at how little schools and communities interacted. This strengthened our interest in this topic because we wanted to change the curriculum to foster community/school relationships. We think our curriculum ties into social justice because it encourages students to become agents of change in their communities, thereby affecting the status quo. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. This quote by Nelson Mandela exemplifies our goals for this curriculum and drives our commitment towards enacting social change through schools and students.

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Bibliography CIRCLE. (2009). Volunteering/community service. Retrieved from http://www.civicyouth.org/quick-facts/volunteeringcommunity-service/ Feeding America. (2013). Feeding america. Retrieved from http://feedingamerica.org/ Ginsberg, A. (2012). Embracing risk in urban education: Curiosity, creativity, and courage in the era of "no excuses" and relay race reform. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Education. First Amendment Schools. (2013). First amendment schools. Retrieved from http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/involve/involveindex.aspx