Abbie Manges

Dr. Schmalz

November 16, 2021

Service Learning Project: Candy and Cards for Soldiers

Time: November 1st through November 5th

Place: Freedom Area Elementary School K-4th grade

Teachers are always looking for ways to bring real-world application into the curriculum.

Service learning provides an avenue through which students are able to learn through the process

of serving in their community or globally. The main purpose of service learning is to launch

well-rounded citizens that develop empathy and care for others. It pushes students to look

beyond themselves, turning empathy into action. As author William Deresiewicz, stated, service

learning enables teachers to “leverage learning as an agent of social change,” making it the sort

of “objective that makes leadership and citizenship into something more than pretty words”

(Price-Mitchell, 2015).

Service learning projects may include the students, teachers, administration, parents, and

the people being served. For each of these participants, there are benefits. For the student, service

learning may boost their self-esteem as they become active in the community. Likewise, the real-

world application makes the academics more meaningful for the students. This benefit is similar

for the teachers. Service learning is an avenue through which the teacher is able to expand and

deepen the curriculum, often allowing for higher order thinking skills and questions during

classroom discussions and activities. Finally, as teachers aim to increase student independence,

the service learning project assists the teacher in this by encouraging students to take
responsibility for their learning. Administration may benefit from the project because their

engagement with the community allows for better public support for the school. In addition, the

parents benefit through connection with the school, enabling them to know what is going on and

supporting their student in serving. Lastly, the individual or group that is served through the

project benefits through having a specific need met, whether that is through direct assistance and

simply empowering the individual personally (“Why Should… Classroom?”).

In the service learning project I developed for the school, the students collected candy

and wrote cards for soldiers in order to encourage and empower them. After proposing the

project to the school principal and receiving his approval, I drafted flyers to give to each

elementary teacher in order to send home with the students. In my general education placement, I

connected the service learning to the curriculum as drafting a letter was the focus project for the

writing unit. I began by leading a whole group discussion with the students about heroes,

encouraging them to identify different heroes in their lives and communities. One of the students

mentioned soldiers as heroes, and therefore, I used this a transition to discuss how soldiers are

heroes and the sacrifices they have made to protect the country. With this discussion as a

springboard, I communicated to students that the new writing project for the unit was drafting a

letter. I identified that the students would be writing to a soldier in order to encourage him/her

and thank them for their service to the country. As a group, we brainstormed ideas and phrases to

incorporate in the letters. After this, I led a minilesson on the structure of a letter, and I guided

students to begin their personal letters to the soldiers. Students were given time throughout the

week to independently complete the letter. I ensured all students had a copy of the flyer to take

home as a reminder to bring candy in to the school the following week.

 As stated prior, service learning projects are intended to be an extension of the

curriculum by using the content learned to serve a person or group of people. This project

followed the model of service learning by using the curriculum as a guide to develop an activity

that extended beyond the content. Academically, students were exposed to and practiced

following the formal structure of a letter, and they continued to develop their writing skills by

focusing on using appropriate grammar, spelling, and conventions. At the same time, the

students were using their learning to serve the soldiers by encouraging and personally

empowering them. Furthermore, the students actively showed empathy by sacrificing their

Halloween candy to gift to the soldiers.

The main participants in the project were the soldiers, students, teachers, and parents. The

soldiers clearly benefitted by receiving the candy and words of encouragement. The students

benefitted by being able to connect their academic task to a real-world application, giving them

the ability to see the purpose behind their learning. Likewise, the students learned empathy as

they discussed the importance of soldiers and acted on the empathy through giving up a portion

of their candy. The teachers benefitted through observing student motivation within the

curriculum and growth to serve in the community. Finally, the parents, through the project, were

given a tangible opportunity to guide their students in serving and practicing empathy. Many of

the students wrote their letters at home and returned them to school. Therefore, numerous parents

were invited to be involved in the project by assisting and discussing with their students.

Through the service learning project, I learned the power of applying learning to a real-

world scenario. I observed the students being heavily engaged with writing the letters, often

choosing to work on them during free time or discussing how much candy they planned to
donate. I was encouraged to see that the students were so eager to serve and participate in the

project when they were not getting anything tangible in return.

The many strengths of the project clearly outweighed the minor adjustments that I would

make in the future. For instance, student response and engagement – both in letter writing and

candy donations – far exceeded my expectations. There were enough letters and candy collected

to send to over 150 soldiers. Additionally, especially for the third-grade classrooms, the project

directly aligned with the writing curriculum, therefore extending and deepening the students’

experience writing a letter. In an effort to build on these successes in the future, I would like to

communicate to the teachers in advance in order to provide them time to incorporate the letter

writing into their lessons. Because letter writing can be easily tailored to different academic

levels, I believe that the project may be further integrated with classroom curriculums across

grade levels. Finally, in the future, I think it would be powerful and motivating to the students if

they received a response letter from a soldier. Though it was important for the students to serve

without the expectation of something in return, I believe that receiving a response from a soldier

would deepen their experience from the academic side of writing a letter as well as illustrate just

how significant their sacrifice was.

 Resources

Augusburg College. (n.d.). Why Should I Use Service-Learning in My Classroom? Service

Learning Projects. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from

https://web.augsburg.edu/~erickson/s-l/why.html. 

Price-Mitchell, M. (2015, September 11). Empathy in action: How teachers prepare future

citizens. Edutopia. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-

pathways-empathy-in-action-marilyn-price-mitchell.