NYLC Guest Edits PDK

February 9, 2010

Read about service-learning in the February 2010 issue of Kappan magazine. Edited by the National Youth Leadership Council, this special section explores why service-learning matters in schools today. PDK is an international association for education professionals ranging from classroom teachers and K-12 administrators to researchers and university professors.

For the next three months, until February 25, Kappan is offering a free, no-commitment membership to PDK for 90 days. Sign up for the free trial and you’ll receive access to Kappan magazine; EDge magazine for educators; access to the publications archives and PDKConnect (a private online community); and more. Sign up online at www.pdktrial.org and enter the promotional code: CHAP110.

Explore service-learning in depth in the following Kappan articles:

  • James Kielsmeier, Ph.D., NYLC’s founder, president, and CEO, provides a philosophical frame for how service-learning functions as a bridge between schools and communities.
  • Andy Furco, associate vice president of public engagement at the University of Minnesota, and Susan Root, NYLC’s research director, review the research supporting service-learning showing improved academic achievement, improved engagement in school and learning, enhanced civic responsibility, and enhanced personal and social skills.
  • Jonathan Zaff of America’s Promise and Richard M. Lerner, director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University, offer insights on how service-learning at the high school level promotes positive youth development.
  • Teddy Gross, executive director of Common Cents, explores how service-learning helps children build early and enduring connections with schools and communities, which may help stem the growth of the dropout epidemic.
  • Kathy Payne, the senior director-education leadership at State Farm Insurance Companies, and Betty Edwards, former executive director of the National Middle School Association, discuss how service-learning aligns with the needs of young adolescents and how this teaching strategy often engages young people by helping them see the relevance of what they are learning.
  • Two articles offer international perspectives on service-learning, Maria Nieves Tapia, of CLAYSS in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with Caryn Pernu of NYLC, explores the longstanding and widespread nature of service-learning in Latin America, while Anna Maria Baltes and Anne Seifert of Freudenberg Stiftung in Weinheim, Germany, present a case study of a country where service-learning is in its infancy but growing quickly.
  • Eraj Din, a student at Benedictine University in Illinois and State Farm Youth Advisory Board member, provides a young person’s perspective on how service-learning changed both her education and her life.