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Keeping the "learning" in service-learning.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Summer camps for young learners fulfill a recurring community need and provide higher education students with the opportunity to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate their discipline as they collaborate to plan engaging activities for the youngsters. This article describes the individual and institutional impacts of a service-learning project in foreign languages that can be reproduced in other disciplines.

Introduction

An exemplary service-learning project retains a balance between service and learning. However, in attempting to provide a needed service to the community, service-learning practitioners sometimes insufficiently stress the learning part of the equation. This article 1) describes a project that fulfills a recurring community need while providing university students with a successful learning experience that is not available in the traditional classroom; and 2) presents an easily replicable model for other disciplines. Parents of 4th and 5th graders, especially those who work outside the home, need worthwhile activities for their children during the summer when school is out. Institutions of higher education are well placed to provide summer camps for this age group through their undergraduate programs. During a two-week summer camp, university students satisfy the requirements of an advanced class in their major or minor by teaching their discipline to younger learners. In order to plan the summer camp, the students must collaborate to evaluate and select content and design a program of activities. Thus they must review what they have learned and analyze its significance and, just as importantly, link theory to practice in an authentic setting. As they teach the youngsters, they are made aware of what they know and what they only thought they knew; and they are asked questions that make them think. In the case of a foreign language, they enhance their own language learning and meet goals that cannot be met within the walls of the classroom.

Course goals

In Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century, published by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (National Standards, 1999), one goal specifies that "Students use the target language both within and beyond the school setting" (p. 64). Specifically, foreign language learners are expected to participate in...

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