The Time is Now! for the National Service-Learning Conference in Atlanta

The words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rang through the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Ga., Wed. night as student Justice Walker of Bishop McNamara High School referenced the “Drum Major Instinct speech -- “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” Echoing King’s cadences, Walker told the gathering of more than 2,000 service-learning practitioners that “Greatness should not be measured by the number of dollars one makes, or the number of baskets one takes, but by the number of lives one touches.”

State Farm® Senior Director of Education Leadership Kathy Payne built on that sentiment spurring on those gathered that the “time is now” for the service-learning field to “step it up.”

“Service-learning needs to become more visible,” she said.

To that end NYLC CEO Kelita Svoboda Bak celebrated those young people who are already tackling aspects of the achievement gap, using service-learning strategies. “We have an engagement crisis, not a dropout crisis,” she said. “We cannot leave the nation’s young people out of this discussion.”

She mentioned service-learning programs in Oregon and Minnesota that have been instigated by those who attended the National Youth Leadership Training summer camp. Youth Advisory Council member Kelsey West is getting teachers and students together to have direct conversations about effective teaching and learning. NYLT graduate Annie Wood is helping edit a youth-led publication that students in Minneapolis public schools produce, “ShineOn!” which most recently focused on the achievement gap.

The plenary session culminated with local students from Benjamin Mays High School performing a live version of the Bill Withers song “Lean on Me,” introduced by a video montage of students from Armenia to St. Paul, singing the same.