A Practical Guide to Service Learning

by Jennifer Conlon, Regional Teacher Mentor, North Cook County

Jennifer Conlon teaches Government, ESL through AP, at Maine East High School. She serves as the Regional Mentor for North Cook County. A former attorney and Congressional staffer, she enjoys making democracy accessible to all her students and is delighted to help others do the same. Over the past several years, she has worked to include service learning in her classes and to make simulations increasingly authentic. Jennifer has created a booklet to guide her students through a service-learning project. Jennifer introduces this resource below.

Teachers repeatedly indicate that service learning is the requirement of the new state civics statute they find most difficult to implement. There is a lot of helpful literature about this, too, from a taxonomy of participants to suggestions for service. Teachers want to give students agency and an authentic, reflective experience without overwhelming them. Like everyone else, I have been on a service learning journey and here is the result to date. Thanks to conferences, colleagues in my department and my district, and students in my classes, this is the most recent iteration. It's very simple. Students are grouped by topics for which they have expressed a preference. They develop a team name. They consider their issue, make a root cause tree, ask questions and research, then they plan for observations, civic participation, and political action to help resolve the problem. They make connections to curriculum and reflect on the process. They record all this in a booklet. When they turn it in completed, it is worth a set number of points. They like what it does for their grade and the sense of satisfaction it gives them. We like that it gets them engaged. I hope this works well for you.

To access Jennifer’s booklet to scaffold service learning, please visit the Lesson Plan resource page at illinoiscivics.org. Please post comments about what you find useful in this resource and any other materials you use to support service learning in your classroom.