Service+Learning+Ideas+and+Resources

A resource for "green" projects Debra Smith compiled after attending the Idaho Green Expo, lots of ideas for local partnerships!

Also check out the PBS Newshour segment on K-12 students learning about refugees at @http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june11/refugees_06-20.html

"Do 1 Thing " is a web resource that might be of interest to BSWP Institute participants, especially if they are interested in multiculturalism. The "Do 1 Thing" offers tools to help people learn (and do something) about refugee issues. Resources include teacher kits, interactive "games" (puts you in refugees shoes), articles, etc. **Do 1 Thing** World Refugee Day might be over, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still Do 1 Thing this year! To learn more about the **UN Refugee Agency’s “Do 1 Thing” campaign**, visit http://www.unhcr.org/do1thing/index.php. You can learn more about refugees, listen to stories, and find out how you can help spread the word about the plights refugees face.

The Service-Learning Program and Albertson's library are collecting teaching resources that focus on refugee issues; if you are interested please see the SLP refugee resources webpage and/or the library's refugee guide. These are works in progress and we welcome any suggestions. United Way Treasure Valley: use this site to browse local opportunities for service!

[|EPals]: partner with #|schools from around the world! Already set up within an inquiry framework! Here is a direct link to some existing project ideas... Here is a link to [|one culminating project from an EPal project on world peace]...

[|The ANSER Change Project website!]

STEP UP Education Center... provides one-on-one educational assistance to all #|homeless adults and children who desire to improve their #|education, they need volunteers!

BUGS and community gardens: see attached information about summer class and the Year of Food in Idaho!

[|Student chefs create healthy food for school menus]

I was looking around for some potential readings for my class - here's a great website of teen writing on community service

From the NCTE newsletter:


 * Show a Little Kindness **
 * While some schools this year are celebrating Valentine's Day in the traditional way, others are taking this opportunity to focus on acts of kindness. The following resources from [|NCTE] and [|ReadWriteThink.org] share ways that students can show their kindness as well as acceptance of others. **
 * Karen Magro discusses how language arts can be a powerful tool for fostering emotional and social literacy in the classroom in the Talking Points article " [|Integrating Emotional and Social Intelligence in Language Arts Education: Encouraging Holistic Learning in a New Era] " (G). **
 * The lesson plan [|Living the Dream: 100 Acts of Kindness] (E) challenges students to complete 100 acts of kindness. They brainstorm examples of kind acts they could perform and discuss how to report acts of kindness they witness. They also select a service project to plan and complete together as a class. **
 * Connecting literature to students' lived experiences in the school and classroom, the lesson [|Moving toward Acceptance through Picture Books and Two-Voice Texts] (E) provides an opportunity for students to learn about situations of intolerance and discuss ways to move toward a more ideal world in which acceptance is the norm. **
 * The Voices from the Middle article " [|Lost and Found: Lessons Learned from a Teacher's Life to Be Shared with Students] " (M) describes how the experience of losing a heavily annotated and much-treasured address book, later returned through an anonymous act of kindness, has inspired the author to work with students to weave a tapestry of caring deeds that will support future acts of outreach, civility, and deliberate citizenship. **
 * A themed issue of English Journal on " [|A Curriculum of Peace] " includes the article " [|The Value of Voice: Promoting Peace through Teaching and Writing] " (M-S). The article describes how and why a high school English teacher changed her classroom to allot more time for creative writing, to teach a research paper from a personal perspective, and to extend student appreciation of voice and conflict beyond the literature studied in class. She shares how this change fostered opportunities for individual growth and transformed her classroom. **
 * NCTE's [|A Curriculum of Peace: Selected Essays from English Journal] (M-S) attempts to answer the question, "What can I do as a teacher?" by providing a collection of eminently practical articles on teaching for peace that have appeared in past issues of English Journal. **
 * Empathy is a much-discussed term in the humanities these days. While some critics value it and argue that literature does and should promote it, other critics worry that appeals to this emotion will neglect important matters of social context. In the literature classroom, as described in " [|Empathy and the Critic] " (C), the best approach is to take time to consider how texts complicate the impulse to empathize. **