Craig Howley and John Eckman (1997, p. 48) observe that, as is true of any instruction, community-based activities such as service learning "can be done badly or well." They urge educators to keep in mind that "the real world doesn’t neatly divide itself into school subjects." Teachers must be able to help students make the links between their hands-on experiences and their academic subject matter. School staffs also must be prepared to help students cope with the unexpected, and with "things that are normally difficult for children to consider."

Those experienced with service learning also urge careful consideration of the community purposes for any given service learning activity. Kahne and Westheimer describe the differences between service learning projects that emphasize "charity" vs. those that emphasize "change," and note that conflicts can arise when participants disagree as to an activity’s basic purpose (p. 594).

As Kahne and Westheimer describe it, projects focused on charity cultivate altruism, emphasizing "the importance of civic duty and the need for responsive citizens." In contrast, those focused on change "call for a curriculum that emphasizes critical reflection about social policies and conditions, the acquisition of skills of political participation, and the formation of social bonds" (p. 595). In a charity-oriented project, for example, students may provide food for homeless people. In a change-oriented project, student activity also would include investigations into the causes of homelessness, and exploration of social policies that might help to reduce the problem. Both purposes have merit; in starting a service learning activity, the concern is to be sure that you–and everyone else involved–understand which purpose the project seeks to address.

Service learning’s benefits to the community seem self-evident. Benefits to students are perhaps even more far-reaching. Service learning can provide students with the kinds of authentic learning–hands-on, interdisciplinary, oriented to problem-solving and critical thinking, grounded in students’ prior experience, and relevant to daily life and work–for which educational reformers have been clamoring. In addition, as the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development points out,

Youth service can teach young people values for citizenship, including compassion, regard for human worth and dignity, tolerance and appreciation of human diversity, and a desire for social justice. Youth service also teaches students skills for work such as collaboration, problem solving, and conflict resolution. (quoted in Stephens, p. 9)

Evaluations of service learning projects, while sketchy, do point to tangible student gains. According to Stephens, evaluations "have almost uniformly pointed to improved critical thinking" (p. 208), as well as greater self-esteem. Academic gains also have been documented, especially in studies of mentoring and tutoring projects.

Service learning projects can be as varied as the imaginations of those who create them. In her guide to service learning, Stephens includes more than 400 examples. The following paragraphs illustrate some of this variety, and also introduce resource agencies that may be able to help you get started, by providing models and examples, resource information, training, or other kinds of assistance (see next page, Resource information).

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, which produces these issues papers, works with schools and communities to help plan and implement partnership projects. Among SEDL’s rural Collaborative Action Team sites are communities such as Marshall, Arkansas (see the Arkansas story on next page), and Balmorhea, Texas, where student work in the health clinic is tied to the school’s health sciences curriculum. Balmorhea students also help operate a weather station that provides data for area ranchers and farmers. In Los Lunas, New Mexico, another CAT site, elementary students have helped to carry out neighborhood cleanups. First-grade students in Los Lunas are involved in mentoring pre-kindergarten students, while in Fabens, Texas, high school students tutor kids in the lower grades. And in Clinton, Oklahoma, students are gathering information and making presentations to influence the town’s plans for designing park lands adjacent to a local brick factory.

Schools involved with the Center for School Change, based at the University of Minnesota, implement a school curriculum that helps students develop community pride and knowledge of local history, culture, and economy. In one high school, students publish a magazine about their home town’s history and also operate a community center, which includes both a meeting place for senior citizens and a drop-in center for students. In other rural communities, students work with a local adult volunteer on a prairie restoration program or participate in River Watch and the Midwestern River Project, two of the largest environmental networks gathering data on the Mississippi River.

The School at the Center project at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln provides assistance with service learning activities through which students explore community history and heritage. In addition, students in two school districts are studying various ways for rural residents to save energy, especially through the use of wind power and energy-efficient buildings. And several school districts have involved students in the study and care of a large Nebraska nature preserve.

Perhaps one of the best-known resources for community-based learning activities, the Foxfire Fund, Inc. supports active, learner-centered approaches to teaching that promote "continuous interaction between students and their communities." One fifth grade class "adopted" the local Humane Society’s animal shelter, conducting a letter-writing campaign to raise funds and designing and selling t-shirts. Students in Idaho helped to plant trees and to monitor their growth. A seventh grade classroom in New Jersey created an outdoor learning environment at the school, working with a local architect to plan the design. Students developed a budget, wrote fundraising letters, and kept track of donations and expenses.

The PACERS Small Schools Cooperative, operated by the Program for Rural Services and Research at the University of Alabama, helps participating schools to implement several interrelated community learning components. In one component, titled Genius of Place, students study their own communities and document local history and culture through songs, oral histories, and photographs. Through the Sustaining Communities component, students may build or repair houses, produce and preserve food, or administer health inventories to other students and community residents.

The future of rural schools is inextricably linked to the future of their surrounding communities, and service learning is a powerful tool for capitalizing on those links. In many ways, perhaps, rural areas are fortunate that their interdependence is so clearly visible. For in the larger scheme of things, all schools must look to the community to help students emerge as good citizens as well as scholars.

As the visionary educator Joseph K. Hart stated back in 1924,

The democratic problem in education is not primarily a problem of training children: It is a problem of making a community in which children cannot help growing up to be democratic, intelligent, disciplined to freedom, reverent of the goods of life and eager to share in the tasks of the age. A school cannot produce this result: nothing but a community can do so. (quoted in Nelson, 1995, p. 22)