A Strategic Plan to Involve School-Family-Community Partnerships via Service Learning - Essay Example

An example of this is when students in a math class volunteer to tutor younger students in a poor community, they are able to harness their mathematics skills and improve on it. If they impart the lessons that they have learned and teach it to younger kids who have no knowledge of the skill, they tend to repeat it and eventually master the skill. The mastery comes from practice rather than just having examinations or drills inside the classroom. Their retention rates also improve. Service-learning fosters social growth.

Students can contribute to their community by actively participating in community projects. This could be illustrated when a group of students who just studied about recycling wastes to protect the environment initiate a project in the community and collect wastes, segregate them and recycle those which are recyclable. This project will promote the students’ social growth because they are able to interact with the members of the community and at the same time help make their environment clean.

Students are not only the ones benefitted by service-learning. Even their parents can take part in the service-learning activities to show their support for their children. It then becomes a collaborative effort between students, school administrators, parents, community leaders and members. A specific activity where parents can show their support is by assisting their children collect old clothes, books or shoes among the affluent members of the neighborhood and distribute them to the underprivileged ones.

These types of projects will foster community involvement. For those who participate in the activity, it gives them a sense of self-fulfillment because they know that they are sharing their time and effort to the poor members of the community. Students use their skills in real-life situations rather than just learning about them in the classroom. They become critical thinkers and may even suggest solutions regarding problems in their communities. One important advantage of incorporating service-learning into the curricula of students is that it hones the leadership skills of students.

Students do not have to rely on their teachers to take the lead in partaking in community activities; they themselves can think of projects which they know can benefit the community. There are several service-learning activities that have been undertaken by students from different schools. One worthy project which may serve to supplement a middle-grade school class in biology is the setting up of vegetable gardens in vacant lots within the community near the school. Since the students learn how plants grew, they can try their hands at planting.

What better way to practice what they learn but through creating their own vegetable gardens. In that way, they are able to put into productive use the vacant lots that are just idle. The vegetables that will be produced will then be distributed among the poor people in the neighborhood for their own consumption. Truly, in this type of activity, students become involved in the community and at the same time they get to learn their biology in a more interesting approach. “From Coffee to Compost” is another worthwhile project implemented by students in Bozeman, Montana (United States Environmental Protection Agency,