THREE-PART JOURNAL ENTRIES
The purpose of the 3-part journal is to allow you to turn your service experiences into substantive learning. To do this effectively, you must be careful to differentiate among three kinds of responses: objective accuracy, personal awareness, and intellectual analysis. You should make a journal entry after every community visit or major service task. Write the three parts as follows: Normal font: an objective, detailed description of what you did. Your description should be organized in 10-minute segments. If you find yourself simply saying “more of the same,” you are not being sufficiently specific and may not have paid careful enough attention to what was going on. Grading criteria for this section are (1) amount of useful detail, (2) degree of objectivity; Bold font: a self-critical response to your visit, including feelings, thoughts, judgments, and what you can learn about yourself and your assumptions from what you did and how you reacted. This section is particularly concerned with discoveries you make about yourself and your attitudes toward other people you encounter in the course of your community-based work. The grading criteria for this section are skill in self-analysis and demonstrated self-awareness – not just what but why; not just how you reacted but how you evaluate your reactions and what you can learn from them; Italics font: a discussion of your experiences in terms of concepts and themes discussed in class and/or class readings. This section should contain NO narrative (section 1) and very little subjective reaction (section 2). Instead, it should demonstrate your skill in making connections between community-based experiences and class concerns as well as your skill in using concepts discussed in class to analyze and illuminate your community-based experiences. Always check your class email to see what specific class-related topics and/or texts have been selected for use in any given week. Grading criteria for this section are skill in using course concepts to interpret community experiences and ability to use community experiences to illustrate or challenge course concepts.
All journal entries should be double-spaced and dated. There is no required length, but anything less than one page each for parts one and two, and two pages for part three may be thin or underdeveloped.
CASE STUDY: SERVICE-LEARNING IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Last year, Dr. Beverly Cope, an associate professor of education at SW State University, decided to experiment with a new service-learning assignment in her science education class. Towards the end of the fall semester, students in the class exchanged visits with middle school students at an Indian reservation. She then asked her students to write a journal entry in response to their activities at the reservation. She was not thrilled with the results. While her students certainly seemed to enjoy the experience, it was not clear just how much they had actually learned. Two sample student journal entries follow.
JOURNAL ENTRY NO.1 I learned many things about science. Most of the experiments our class did were new when they first started doing them. I learned that having materials ready to go and laving plenty of supplies to do the experiment more than once is a good thing. Students will want to do the experiments more than once. I learned that some experiments do cause odors which may or may not be a good thing. I learned many things about the reservation school. The children’s teacher told us that if a white teacher comes in and is really not that interested in the culture, the children know end will not accept that teacher. The students will run that teacher off. I learned that there was a culture barrier and both cultures were not very interested in mixing with each other. They were somewhat friendly, but I didn't feel like we were overly welcomed. It was an experience. If I made the first gesture to speak or inquire about their culture, they seemed open and ready to share. I thought that was great. It was super that they fed all those people. What an undertaking. Their meal was very nice and the potato salad was outstanding. I wished that more parents and adults would have come around to view the students and the science projects. I wonder if we needed to invite them to come over to the tables. Did we need to invite them to come outside to see the Alka-Seltzer experiment? Did we need to find a way to better display the posters we had made. Did we need to find a way to feature those children being involved with the experiments more? I guess perhaps, I was waiting for the teacher to invite the parents to come over, but she never did. I didn't think it was our place to invite them. Perhaps we needed more visuals to post on the walls. Could we have used more room to spread out so that each person could have had a table for their experiment? That way more could have gathered round to see each one. Overall, I thought it was a great cross-culture adventure. It should be continued. It gives us all a closer look into their culture and way of life. I liked how the students came to our classroom the first time to see our experiments and then we went to their school to have a science fair.
JOURNAL ENTRY NO. 2 The opportunity to travel to the reservation last Wednesday was a very eye opening experience for me. This was my first trip to a reservation and a Native American school. My parents grew up about an hour from a reservation in Montana so I grew up hearing about many of their experiences, but I loved the opportunity to see the many cultural differences for myself.
I noticed several cultural differences the first time I worked with the two students in my group. At first, they were very quiet and respectful of us when we spoke to them, but unlike most of the other groups our students did warm up to us. They were very excited about their experiment and how many variables they could change to give the film canister greater height. When we traveled to the reservation last Wednesday, the children’s teacher taught me so much about Native American schools. I never knew that the success rates of most of the Native American students were so low. She told us that they have several students that are not even reading at a second grade level when they finish eighth grade. The saddest cultural difference that she talked about was the amount of physical, alcohol, and drug abuse there is on the reservation. I really liked her statement that, "you don't have to travel to a different country to do mission work, it's right on your doorstep." That really hit home with me. The only change I can think of that would make this experience even better would be to spend more time with the students. I felt that maybe we could go beyond just being a college student doing science experiments to being somewhat of a mentor to these students. Maybe if they had some college students to look up to, they might think the idea of working hard and getting into college would be a great experience. I had a wonderful time with this project. You can learn so much more from a hands-on experience like this than any abstract setting on campus. Your task is to help Dr. Cope improve the educational quality of this fall’s visit by 1. Analyzing these entries, identifying their strengths and weaknesses; 2. Identifying a set of activities that should take place before this year’s visit. These activities can take place in class and/or can draw upon other institutional programs and resources; 3. Creating a set of no more than six questions that will help guide students in writing their follow-up journal entries. Your questions should be challenging and should focus on a variety of topics including, for example, subject mastery, interpersonal relationships, stereotypes and assumptions, historical and/or contemporary considerations as well as other issues you feel would be valuable.
SERVICE-LEARNING PARTNERING ROLES
Dr. Edward Zlotkowski Identify appropriate activities for each of the following stages of service-learning course development and implementation: 1. Initial identification of possible projects Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
2. Project design Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
3. Introduction of project and preparation of student participants Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
4. On-site orientation Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role: 5. During the project’s implementation
Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
6. Upon completion of the project Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
7. Upon completion of the course Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
8. Creating a project/course portfolio Faculty Role:
Partner Role:
Student Leader Role:
SERVICE-LEARNING COURSE DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE Dr. Edward Zlotkowski COURSE REVISION PROCEDURES In the process of converting a traditional course into its service-learning equivalent, consider the following items. Try to address them as specifically as possible. 1. Identify both the objectives of the course as it presently exists and the ways in which community-based activities could reinforce, deepen, broaden and/or complement those objectives. Note: The value of these activities may be content-specific or related to more generic outcomes such as critical thinking, appreciation of diversity, enhanced communication skills, and leadership skills. Original objectives:
Value added by community-based activities:
2. What kinds of community-based/public sector organizations might be able to facilitate the activities envisioned in #1?
3 What concrete benefits would the community-based activities provide for the course’s community partner(s) and/or the larger community in general?
4. What would be the best format for the course’s community-based activities: (a) mandatory or elective; (b) single or multiple engagements; (c) individual or group? Explain your choices. Mandatory/Elective Reason:
Single/Multiple Engagements Reason: Individual/Group Reason:
5. Would you need to make adjustments to the course’s existing workload to accommodate community-based activities? Is there anything apart from those community-based activities you would want/need to redesign to accommodate better a focus on civic and community engagement? Adjustments/Substitutions:
6. How can you best prepare your students both (a) conceptually – i.e., with regard to course content – and (b) personally – i.e., with regard to stereotypes, basic skills, anxieties and concerns – for their community-based work? Should anyone else be involved in the preparation process? Conceptual preparation:
Personal preparation:
Preparation assistance:
7. Identify some of the topics your students will need to analyze or reflect upon in order to learn effectively from their community-based activities.
8. (a) What specific contemporary issues and policy questions will the new course help students better understand? (b) How can the new course help prepare students for democratic dialogue and public decision-making regarding those issues and questions?
9. Identify important assessment goals related to the community-based work. Identify both academic and civic/personal competencies students should be able to demonstrate – and you should be able to evaluate – as a result of that work. Academic competencies: Assessment tools:
Civic/personal competencies: Assessment tools: