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SERVICE-LEARNING PROFILESHorace Mann Academic Middle School
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Service-Learning
In Action|
"One student said that he had to really look at what
it meant to be a hero. He thought of a hero as being somebody
very far from his life, very distant, and this project enabled
him to see - no, ordinary people, everyday people can do extraordinary
things." |
The class began creating a "living history," by talking to individuals identified as "community heroes." After hearing the stories of the heroes, students decided to create a mural to document the period and celebrate the accomplishments of everyday heroes.
Javier Rodriguez, currently a seventh grade student at Horace Mann, explained the class' intent, "This project is about the Mission Heroes and how they helped the Mission, but most of these people haven't been recognized and this mural does that." In the process of recognizing the accomplishments of these heroes, the class not only furthered their own learning, but also provided an impetus for future documentation of a period that had been largely ignored by historians.
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Community artist Josef Norris helped complete the mural and said the students experienced everything he goes through as a professional mural artist. They wrote a project budget using math and multiplication tables, helped develop grant proposals for funding using writing and research skills, learned interview techniques from an investigative reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, practiced phone skills by inviting community members to speak to the class, worked on multiple writing competencies by compiling biographies and writing letters to community members, and also used considerable math skills again in creating graphs allowing their smaller drawings to be represented in proportion on the larger mural panels. |
Community artist Josef Norris said service-learning mural projects are quite different than other student mural efforts that tend to depict pleasant but unsophisticated designs. "There is a real danger when doing student mural workshops to get very simple images. What service-learning does, because it's tied into the curriculum, is create a structure where students decide what they are doing the mural about, complete their own research, find their own information and create a mural in their own voice."
When the school year ended and the mural was not complete, students volunteered to spend part of their summer vacation finishing the project. As a result of their hard work and hundreds of hours painting, the community now enjoys a mural representing 28 community figures, including political and community activists, educators, artists, a policeman and a firefighter.
Impacts
How Service-Learning Has Benefited Students and the Community
Drummond said the project had obvious benefits for her students, "I don't know how anyone could ever say there is no academic benefit because there is so much writing, there is so much research, there is so much involvement and when kids are involved they do more - they just perform better."
Alex Carrol, another 7th grader who participated in the Mission Heroes project last year, says the project changed the way he thinks and acts toward others, "Because of this project, I know people in my neighborhood better. If I see something happen in my community, I will react."
The mural is not only a learning experience for this year's students but a contribution to the overall and intellectual climate of Horace Mann. Marianne Chatfield-Taylor, Director of Linking San Francisco said, "The mural will have a life of its own. Generations of people will see that mural, the school can come back to that mural with future classes...and the mural will act as a catalyst and focal point for other projects, so in a way it's a gift from students to the school."
Along with the academic and civic engagement impacts on future and current students, Mission Heroes has also shaped the way the community views Horace Mann and its students. Herman Gallegos has more than forty years of experience in civil rights activism and was a pioneer as one of the first Latinos in the areas of corporate and philanthropic service. One of the students' heroes represented in the mural, Gallegos said, "I was just amazed at the diversity of these youngsters and the fact that they learn how to work together, how to collaborate together on a project. The fact that they can all say this was ours and we did it ourselves will have long lasting effects for society and we should not lose sight of the importance of these programs for that reason."
Service-Learning in the San Francisco Unified School District
Growing the Practice
The Mission Heroes project is one of many service-learning programs in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) supported by an organization called Linking San Francisco (LSF). A network of 50 schools and multiple community partners, LSF works with schools and community organizations to improve San Francisco through service-learning.
Mark Sanchez, San Francisco School Board Member, is an advocate of service-learning for the district. He supports the work of LSF and says the district has made a commitment to service-learning, "We have just adopted new graduation requirements for high school and said that service-learning will be part of every academic subject."
Financial and technical support from LSF is intended to support the district's larger service-learning goals. LSF provides mini-grants to K-12 schools in the SFUSD and works most closely with a cadre of 25 teachers and 15 schools leading the way in service-learning for the district. The organization works mainly from a "train the trainer" model, where teachers become well-versed in the principals and implementation of quality service-learning. Teachers return to their home schools with seed money for projects and also lead in-service training for other teachers interested in service-learning.
Along with Horace Mann Academic Middle School, many other schools in the district benefit from the training and support of LSF. For example, San Francisco Community School (SFCS) is another school in the LSF network implementing quality service-learning in multiple phases of the curriculum. At SFCS, a group of parents, students and staff organized themselves to transform their asphalt school-yard into a garden and park that their community could be proud of. The Outdoor Learning Environment (Project OLE) got students out of the classroom and into the community to see other community gardens and determine the possibilities for their own community garden.
Diana
Sumuelson, parent coordinator of project OLE, said, "The design
portion of the project incorporated all of the disciplines. The
kids prepared the surveys - that's language arts; they went into
the community to interact and present - that's community service;
they prepared a model of the project - that's math. At every level,
I saw my daughter becoming so interested in her school and I think
that happened with everybody who participated."
Seewan Eng's seventh grade class at SFCS is complimenting a science unit on photography by participating in a service-learning project with the Jewish Community Center for Aging Adults. The class is completing a "pin-hole camera" project that will be used to capture memories with friends at the Community Center. One element of the project is learning to take a portrait, learning about light, color and the workings of a camera. These academic ties to science curriculum will provide students with the skills to create their own camera and photograph their elderly friends.
Another element of the cross-generational project is providing students with the skills to document and present their interaction with residents of the Community Center. A strong link to English and writing competencies will allow students to develop interviewing techniques. If both the scientific elements of the camera and the written elements of the interview sessions are successful, Eng's class will have a book that documents their service and provides evidence of their learning.
Eng says the service element of the project was achieved on the very first visit for the students, "When they left (the Community Center) they felt this sense of happiness over the fact that they had connected with someone else and made someone else happy just by sharing a few moments...The students are most excited about showing the community they can be responsible."
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"As a teacher when you see kids that are disengaged, you know they are not learning. Seeing 100 percent engagement by all students in an activity really sparks curiosity, wonderment and inquiry that we know provides for good learning." - Seewan Eng, Seventh Grade Teacher, San Francisco Community School. |
While the service part of the project comes easily, Eng says the true success of the project can not be determined until later, "I'll know the project is successful when kids are really questioning and making connections, and by that I mean really curious about interviewing and coming up with great questions and pursuing those answers. And also connecting to what they are learning."
Marianne Chatfield-Taylor is the Director of LSF and has had a role in supporting service-learning projects at schools like Horace Mann Middle School, San Francisco Community School and many others throughout the district, "I look at the benefits to the students. This (service-learning) motivates students to stay in school, it shows them the relevance of what they are learning, it gets them into the world. It's the real world context for what their learning....We're all on learning curves all our lives and one of the things service-learning teaches students is that learning is a life long experience."
For more information, contact:
Liz Bamburg
Linking San Francisco
San Francisco Unified School District
c/o Aptos Middle School
105 Aptos Avenue, Room 341
San Francisco, CA 94127
Phone: (415) 452-4646
Fax: (415) 452-4651