As Coordinator of Service Learning, it is always my goal to engage students in the wider community, helping them to build civic character, and gain an understanding of their place in the community and their responsibilities to their neighbours - whether on a global or local scale.
When teaching Civics, I believe that it is important to focus on the skills, not just content knowledge. According to David Light Sheilds, author of the article "Character as the Aim of Education," civic character is better learned through action, rather than rote memorization of facts.
Knowledge is important. Yet knowledge of governance structures and political practices is insufficient...Civic character requires both an inclination and a capacity for self-transcendence. It requires a disposition to consider the common good and to work toward it in collaboration with others. Civic knowledge gains its potency as individuals use it to address real issues connected with the good of a community. The passion for the public good can motivate the attainment of the relevant competencies: civic and political knowledge, such intellectual skills as critical thinking, and social and participatory skills (Light Shields, 51-52).
I agree with Light Shields, and have been a strong supporter of Social Action education since first learning about it in a course called "School in Society" during my teacher training at OISE. As part of this course, I read a book called Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom, which details author Brian Schultz's experience in motivating students to make change in their Cabrini-Green neighbourhood school in inner city Chicago. Schultz presented his students with the opportunity to explore a problem within their community -- something they cared deeply about -- and students set about trying to secure funding to rebuild their crumbling school building. Along they way, students learned about political processes, socio-economic issues, and were empowered to stand up for their rights. Schultz noted that this process flipped the traditional model of education: “No longer is the teacher the supplier of knowledge. . . . Instead, my students became constructors of meaning, vis-`a-vis questions they sought to answer, while my role as teacher provided assistance and support in their problem posing and meaning making" (Schultz 135). Through my experience as a educator at the Center for Urban Pedagogy in Brooklyn, NY, I had the opportunity to facilitate a similar transformational learning process with students who set out to explore their neighborhood. CUP's Urban Explorations program through Brooklyn College presents students with the opportunity to investigate an issue in their neighbourhood that appeals to them. This type of inquiry based learning often puts the teacher in a position of having the same basic knowledge of the problem as the students, and the learning becomes a collaborative process of discovery. Rather than possessing all of the content knowledge, teachers have knowledge of systems and critical thinking skills -- which students will naturally acquire along the way with teacher guidance. I bring this belief in the power of social action-based education into the classroom through both the Civics course and my Green Industries course. In Green Industries, students will be working in partnership with a local public school to green their school grounds; and in Civics, students go through the social action process in their final projects. The Civics final project was already set up by my colleagues when I adopted the course in 2010. Over the past two years, I have attempted to refine both the project by streamlining the process and integrating it into the course earlier in the year. I am now teaching the Civics course for the fourth time, and each time the project has been presented slightly differently. Originally, students were presented with a word document, which they worked through over the course of 3-4 weeks, both in class and as homework. I found the instructions were wordy and often left students wondering which step they were at and where they should go next (there were steps within stages). In order to streamline the process, I took the advice of my colleague, Kyle Acres, and attempted using a flow chart to direct students through the process, which I embedded completely within Groodle. Each box in the flowchart linked to a submission point for each stage of the process. However, after using this process in two semesters, I found that students were still confused by where they were to turn in different stages, and often missed entire sections and needed to be redirected in order to fully complete the project. In addition, I found that the wording of the questions in stage one did not provide enough emphasis on research, and students required more scaffolding in order to successfully conduct research and then link that research to their projects. Therefore, this year, I have once again revamped the way in which the final project is delivered; adjusted the questions in stage one to emphasis research; and provided an organizer for students to help them develop effective research notes. I also created a lesson to teach students about effective research and citations. Instead of using the Groodle flowchart, this semester I opted to have students complete their entire project within a Google Document. I created the outline, shared the document with them, and had them each make a copy and then share it with me. The result is that I can monitor students as they work through each stage of the project, providing feedback along the way to help them succeed. I have also started introducing the project earlier in the course, providing opportunitinties for students to make connections between the core content of the course and their final projects. To view a copy of the revised assignment, click here. To view copies of student work with feedback, click here. Light Shields, David. "Character as the Aim of Education." Kappan Magazine 29.8 (2011): 48-53. Print. Schultz, Brian D. Spectacular Things Happen along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom. New York: Teachers College, 2008. Print.