Blog Archives: February 2012
Photos from Project Ignition's Day with the DOT
A photo essay on Project Ignition participants who spent a day shadowing employees at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
As Mike VanKeulen reflected in this earlier post, NYLC organized a day of job shadowing with the U.S. Department of Transportation for some participants in the Project Ignition program. Twenty-two youth and advisors traveled from 10 different schools, getting an insider’s look at the hard work DOT employees do and how it relates to their own teen driver safety initiatives. Here is a photo essay with highlights from the trip.
Sunday, January 8, Project Ignition students and mentors arrived at the hotel to get to know each other and plan for Monday.
After spending time sharing what was happening at their school, the group took a bus trip around Washington, D.C. to see the monuments at night.
A highlight of the monuments was the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. It gave time to be reflective about service and the impact you want to make on your community.
The next morning, while the youth were shadowing at DOT, the mentors were shared ideas and best practices that they were using in their teen driver safety projects.
On Monday, in between shadowing the DOT and the Project Ignition reception, students, mentors, and NYLC staff took a tour of the capitol building.
Joy Downey of U.S. Representative Stiver’s office was very excited to connect with Hope Miller of London H.S. in London, Ohio and her mentor Dana Snyder.
Our ten youth representatives from ten of our 22 Project Ignition National Leader Schools
L-R: Marc Martinez (Springlake Earth, TX), Stephanie Howard (Shelton, WA), Jason Weinzierl, (Belton, MO), Hope Miller (London, OH), Katie Neill (Oneida, IL), U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Nicole St. Onge (Hoosick Falls, NY), Luke Rogers (Minonk, IL), Amanda Logan (Plymouth Meeting, PA), Navea Frazier (Bethlehem, PA), Chassy Barrett (Idabel, OK).
Serve and Celebrate projects to include photographer Wing Young Huie
During this year’s National Service-Learning Conference and youthrive PeaceJam Leadership Conference, participants will have the opportunity to work side-by-side with community members on peace-building projects. The planning committee is scheduling more than 15 projects that will take place in the Frogtown neighborhood of Saint Paul on April 14th. Projects range from health and safety awareness fairs, to positive lawn signs and "free library" installations, to an interesting community art project under the direction of local photographer Wing Young Huie. Wing Young Huie has received international acclaim for his projects that document the changing cultural landscape of his home state Minnesota, including photography projects focusing on the people who work, live, and travel along Lake Street in Minneapolis and University Avenue in Saint Paul.
Wing will be training youth from across the county on his chalkboard technique – a short list of provoking questions and specific photography method – and guiding youth in to the community to capture the thoughts of the community and the growing diversity of Frogtown. Examples of this work can be seen below and on Wing’s website, http://www.wingyounghuie.com.
The Gaming of Professional Development
Last month's Techknowledge Conference had great ideas on incorporating social media and gaming into professional development
Last month I had the pleasure of attending the American Society for Training and Development’s (ASTD) Techknowledge Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. While my background in education helps me deliver quality professional development related to service-learning the world of online learning is somewhat new to me. In college, I took a few online courses and some professors would use online spaces to support the in-person lessons but it is still different than what we offer through the Generator School Network (www.gsn.nylc.org). The conference had lots of fascinating workshops that will help me improve our webinar’s appearance, function, participation, and cognitive load. The plenary speakers were fantastic, such as Stuart Crabb talking about how Facebook functions with its Y-generation workers, but my favorite was from Jane McGonigal.
Jane’s plenary session was based on gaming and at first I thought it would be hard to relate to but I was quickly proven wrong. One of her first startling facts was that there are 8 billion gamers around the world and our stereotypes of “gamers” are quickly dissolving. The next stat that changed my perspective was that in the U.S., 99% of boys under eighteen and 94% of girls play video games regularly, on average 13-8 hours a week. These are the students we are working with; no wonder they do not feel engaged by text books and worksheets. In the virtual they can use their imagination and creativity, they can fail, they can forecast the future, and they can be change makers. As a teacher, I need to utilize technology as an engagement strategy just as I use service-learning.
In some ways Jane McGonigal has already started down that path. Jane directed and helped create Urgent Evoke with the World Bank Group as a way for young people all over the world with a focus on Africa to use creative solutions to solve urgent social problems. Participants solved missions in a game that looked like a comic book (sounds like a video game) while solving these missions participants create a business plan without knowing it. At the end of the game the World Bank Group helped fund some of the business plans creating entrepreneurs all over Africa. For more information about Jane McGonigal or her book “Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” go to http://janemcgonigal.com/.
The conference had great implications for my practice in my role here at NYLC and future roles I will hold in the classroom. My next steps are to implement best practices in our webinars by making them more interactive, search our more youth who are using technology to make social change, and get reading on Jane’s book.
Attending this conference inspired Lana to get started using Twitter, you can find her there as @LanaRPeterson.
Connecting Civic Learning and Service-Learning for Education Reform
On January 10, I had the opportunity to attend the U.S. Department of Education and the White House summit on civic learning, “For Democracy’s Future: Education Reclaims our Civic Mission;” a call to action to reverse long-term deficits in civic participation. The summit featured comprehensive reports and presentations by education leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. They made a compelling case of the need for education reform.
These sources cited national statistics on declines in public understanding of basic government structures, a narrowing of curriculum that excludes both standard civic education coursework and ultimately looming dangers of a “citizenless democracy” unable to address the challenges of the times. The summit also addressed the need to expand access to civic learning opportunities beyond a privileged cohort of schools and students.
As a long-time advocate for improving outcomes for youth and education through service-learning, I was thrilled to have a spotlight on the need to redefine the public purpose of education and to build “both-and” solutions rather than maintain divisions within the education field. Service-learning was explicitly referenced as a “proven practice” and several specific service-learning programs were highlighted as outstanding models.
During his address, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan referenced his own experience with hands-on lessons in civics and service-learning:
This work is personal for me. My first job when I went to work for the Chicago Public Schools was to implement a service-learning requirement… I can’t tell you how many young people came to me who said ‘I hated this, I didn’t want to do it.’ They ended up doing 500, 700, 1000 hours of service because they had the opportunity, they had never had that exposure. We have this tremendous imbalance. All young people have an appetite. They are committed; they want to be engaged. Somehow systemically at the elementary level, the middle school level, the high school level, and the university level we’ve walked away from providing those opportunities.
More broadly, it is clear that the language and motivation behind civic learning is largely shared by service-learning. For example, a call for developing civic action closely parallels the “learning-and-action” process of service-learning. The outcomes sought for young people from civic learning are comprehensive, and service-learning has been documented to improve the very same areas, including specific knowledge and skills, feelings of efficacy and belonging, development of moral character, and the ability to effectively interact and problem-solve in increasingly diverse communities.
When the Department of Education described its plan of action to make civic learning a priority, I saw several opportunities to incorporate expertise from the service-learning field into this effort.
- First, the Department is open to including broader indicators of student civic learning in annual assessments like the NAEP. Assessing quality service-learning is not straight-forward, but the NAEP could include indicators from the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice to better capture and assess the use of such pedagogies.
- Second, the Department is encouraging further rigorous research in civic learning and democratic engagement. While the K-12 service-learning field has many strong program evaluations and promising research results, further resources are needed for the most rigorous and longitudinal research that could articulate the links between service-learning, school achievement, and success, especially with the recent and premature end to Learn and Serve America’s longitudinal study.
- Third, the Department supports a new competitive program in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that takes advantage of engaged teaching and learning linked to real-world issues. Should this be included in a Congressional reauthorization of ESEA, this could be another opportunity to fund quality service-learning in schools.
While K-12 education was addressed, several of the reports and presentations focused much more exclusively on higher education as the place to prepare students for participation in democracy, due in part because the summit and the Crucible Moment report stemmed from the higher education offices within the Department. Higher education is a valuable setting for civic learning, but there is a huge opportunity to recognize the valuable contributions of our nation’s youngest students. A serious concern, especially when addressing the need to engage all youth in civic learning, is that reforms limited to higher education will not provide opportunities to those students least often identified as active contributors. Unfortunately, post-secondary education is simply not yet a reality for far too many young people.
Overall, the concept and definition of civic learning, the outcomes it seeks to achieve, and noted strategies as described at the summit are strongly aligned with service-learning. Ultimately, both envision major change in how students learn, how and why educators teach, and the important connection between school and community.
Today we have more than 20 years of research, compelling stories, standards, and program development in the service-learning field. Service-learning is a strategy that works across P-20 education and can help bridge barriers between K-12 and higher education. It’s time to focus on expanding what works, especially when the strategy can improve outcomes for youth, schools, communities, and our democracy. As we advance service-learning as a strategy for civic learning, we can achieve academic outcomes, engage all young people as problem solvers, and improve the civic fabric of our society. As Secretary Duncan said, we can’t continue to “walk away” from providing opportunities for young people to engage in service-learning at every level of their education.
Reflections from a Visit to the Department of Transportation
In reflection is where we do much of our learning — a truism in service-learning and a central tenant in most any formal learning environment. With that in mind I must have wanted to learn a lot about the Project Ignition trip to Washington, D.C. to hold a day of job shadowing with the Department of Transportation (DOT). For the past month I have been reveling in extended, useful reflection.
What have I learned about this experience (through reflection)?
- It takes a team to pull such an event off successfully. Every person involved, from those in State Farm who initiated the idea, those at the DOT who went so far out of their way to prepare and amazing life memory for everyone involved, and especially the 10 youth who benefitted from this trip. All of the NYLC staff were needed to coordinate the events, find the funds within already tight budgets to pay 27 people to go on this adventure, including 10 youth and 12 advisors. And those in Washington took time out on a very snowy evening to honor these youth and schools for their leadership in teen driver safety and service-learning.
- Even with short notice our Project Ignition teachers and advisors are up for anything as long as they believe this will make a difference in student’s lives. This absolutely was an event of putting youth first, removing any barriers on their behalf, and then fully enjoying the opportunity for youth to shine. I cannot say enough of how wonderfully the advisors responded when we asked so much of them, having left all their other work, advocated within their district that this student deserves this chance, and, with such short notice, they made their systems move.
- Washington, D.C. leadership has a genuine appreciation for youth leaders. We clearly saw that the people at the DOT lead very serious and busy lives. These professionals take our youth leaders seriously, held thoughtful and open conversations about their shared work, and fully listened when our youth spoke. These federal government employees — a term at times ignorantly used with derision — represent out best and brightest. They in fact reminded me of our Project Ignition youth. When we talked to them, “integrity,” “engaged,” “knowledgeable,” “leader,” and “working in the public interest” were the thoughts that came to my mind. We all felt honored to be given their time and attention.
Twenty-two youth and advisors traveled from 10 different schools, representing seven different states with the hope to learn more about how our federal government shapes policy around transportation and, more specifically, teen driver safety. Additionally, they hoped to make it clear that the federal government has a powerful ally among youth leaders across the nation. Upon reflection, I would say that our goals for this trip were well met.
