Peter Ritsema

Geneva College
EDU 434
Service Learning Project

Service learning is a teaching method that fosters skills and experiences beyond the
classroom while also serving a community. A service learning project identifies a need which
students meet or solve and includes reflection on the service. Some different types of service
learning include direct service in which students interact with others to fulfill a need, indirect
service like organizing an event or fundraiser whose proceeds will benefit others, or advocacy in
which students research and raise awareness about an issue or need.1 Often, service learning
gives students a chance to expand on knowledge learned in the classroom, while also growing in
service and understanding of their community.
There are many potential benefits for students, faculty, and communities who participate
in service learning. Students have an opportunity to grow personally in leadership,
communication, and empathy for others while also engaging in real-life problem solving as they
seek to meet a need in their community.2 By helping students learn about and meets needs,
faculty can build long-term connections with groups inside and outside school while also
engaging students in high-value learning. Finally, communities who receive service, gain human
resources and fresh energy to help meet whatever their need is.
In the junior high building, students frequently leave a mess in the cafeteria. On one
occasion, the vice principle called all the students back to the cafeteria from their classes to
observe what mess was left behind. In a similar fashion, there is often a considerable amount of
trash left on the floor of my classroom at the end of the day for the janitors to sweep up. While
measures have been taken for the whole school to reduce the mess in the cafeteria, I thought that
it would be a good idea for my students to think of the people who clean up after them. I would
like my students to learn empathy and respect for people who they may not know personally, but
whose work impacts them and also learn how to write a thank you note. On the other side, I think
1
What is Service Learning?. (2019, November 25). Elmhurst University.
https://www.elmhurst.edu/blog/what-is-service-learning/

2
Bandy, J. (2011). What is Service Learning or Community Engagement?. Vanderbilt University Center for
Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-through-community-engagement/.
it is always an encouragement for people whose work may often be unappreciated to receive
recognition and thanks.
Hopewell Area School District is united by the motto of Viking PRIDE: positivity,
respect, integrity, dependability, and empathy. At the beginning of class, I reviewed the acronym
with students and led them in a discussion of what each word means. To help students reflect on
the acronym, we talked about what each of these words means to them. When we spoke about
respect, I asked students who they think they should respect and some mentioned janitors; we
also spoke about empathy leading to being kind to others. I reminded students that they can
respect others by picking up after themselves and also saying thank you. This reflective
discussion led into the active portion of writing thank you notes to the janitors who clean the
cafeteria and our classroom.
After passing out cards, I reminded students how to write a thank you note. For who to
address, I wrote a list of names of janitors on the board for students to reference. I also wrote out
an example of other parts of a thank you note, such as thanking someone for something specific
and an optional personal note. After writing their notes, students used crayons to decorate their
cards and turned them into to me to distribute to the correct recipients. After reviewing the cards,
I passed them out to the specific individuals to whom they are addressed.
The results of this project were rather surprising; I led it with two different groups of
students who reacted fairly differently. The first class is fairly diligent and thoughtful. They
provided good examples in discussion and took the idea seriously. There was some debate of
why we should say thank you to people who we don’t know, but this question allowed for some
good discussion of what empathy means. Several students included personal notes in their cards
and many more demonstrated their creativity in decorating the cards. Unfortunately, the second
class was less serious both in thinking about PRIDE and in writing cards to janitors. Trying to
lead a cohesive discussion with this class was much more challenging and several students wrote
insincere or unprofessional notes (I had to explain that referring to someone as ‘boo’ was not
quite appropriate for this task). I am pleased with most of the notes and students’ reflections
during discussion, but I definitely needed to review and filter several notes.
The biggest strength of this project was in discussing the PRIDE acronym. There is a lot
of opportunity for personal growth in reflecting on this acronym and something I discovered
through discussion is that many students do not know or understand what all of the words mean.
Integrity and Empathy in particular were unfamiliar words and I think that we could have gone
deeper into examples of what they look like and how students could demonstrate them in their
actions. Similarly, discussions about the meaning of Respect were very telling. The idea of
saying thank you to relative strangers was foreign and even a little repugnant to some of the
students. In the second class especially, the students view respect as reciprocal and relational:
they believe that everyone is inherently worthy of respect regardless of differences. However,
that respect must be reciprocated and maintained: it is possible to ‘unearn’ respect. I think that
improvements to the project should capitalize on the discussion element and give students
greater control of how to respond to the discussion.
The weakness of the project was the presumption that students would understand why
they should write thank you notes. However, I think there is not enough relationship existing
between the janitors and the students. I would change my project to focus more on building
relationships between these two groups. Students could brainstorm ideas for building up this
relationship. I think that having students create and lead such a project would help them buy into
the idea more and take it more seriously. Such an endeavor would also lead to more direct and
lasting connections to the broader school community and even create lasting positive change in
the behavior of the student body.