Course Description
Serving and Learning in Community is designed to promote experiential learning for Rivier students while advancing the College’s mission of social justice through service-learning. Students enrolled in SL 100 will be oriented to the concept of service-learning through participation in a semester -long service project and bi-weekly seminar. Students will conduct a community needs assessment, plan and implement a service project to meet a community need, and will critically reflect on these experiences through in-class discussion and journaling. A final portfolio will showcase their learning over the course of the semester.

Required Texts and Readings
Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
Muscott, Smith, Trainor, “‘What, Then, Must We Do? Service-Learning and the
Liberal Arts Academy.” (handout)

Course Obiectives
The student will exhibit the ability to:

*identify and analyze a socially significant need in the local community
*develop and present a plan/proposal for addressing such a need
*organize time and resources to implement an action plan
*collaborate with fellow students, elementary students, and instructors in the context of Project SUPPORTS
*assume a leader/mentor role within her or his triad
*reflect on, abstract, and articulate what he or she has learned from the service experience
*share this knowledge with others in both written and oral form relate course experiences to concepts of service and social justice

Course Requirements
Students will attend class sessions on a bi-weekly basis and work at their field sites (Dr. Crisp School or Presentation of Mary Academy) on alternate weeks. Students will, complete readings as assigned, develop an action plan for their site work, keep a journal of reflections on their readings and site work, participate in class discussio hs, and present a portfolio at the end of the semester.

Grading
Class Participation 20%
Site Work 30%
Action Plan 10%
Journal 20%
Portfolio 20%

Portfolio Guide: SL 100

What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is a collection of one’s work. This may cover the work done in a course, a project, or over the span of a career. A portfolio provides documentation of work and.serves as a basis for evaluating a work in progress over . time. Portfolios are unique in that individuals have the opportunity, in many cases, to select the work to be included in the portfolio. In the case of SL 100, you will be asked to contribute certain items, but you have the freedom to include additional items you feel will enhance your presentation.

There is no one model for portfolios. Because each person has a unique learning style, the resentation of that learning will be unique as well.

All the portfolios for SL 100 will be similar in terms of required content, yet each of you may choose to approach the content in your own way.

Portfolios are more than simply “papers”. Portfolios offer you the opportunity to showcase multiple catecories of learnina: knowledge/ content, skills, attitudes, and feelings. For this class, the portfolio will be, in effect, a portrait of yourself in terms of service-learning.

So, What is Required?

As mentioned above, there are required items for the portfolio. These recuired items will help us, the instructors, to evaluate vour learning from this course. They will also, hopefully, help you to frame your resentation. The required items are as follows:

Your Journal:

You have been keeping a journal over the course of the semester. All entries, those with and those without comments, should be included. The journals will help to show your growth/changes over the course of the semester. There is no need to re-type or re-format your previous entries.

An assessment of the SL100 course objectives:

The syllabus lists a number of course objectives that we reviewed early in the semester. Your portfolio should include a personal assessment of these objectives:

-did I meet these objectives?

-what., if anything, did I gain from meeting these objectives? did the course provide opportunities to meet these objectives? were these valid objectives?

An assessment of personal learning objectives:

At the beginning of the semester, you were asked to think about personal learning objectives for the course. Examples might include: to become more confident when dealing with conflict or to improve communication skills with young people. Ask yourself:

-What kind of progress have I made towards these objectives? – what kind of evidence can I show? – how will this learning impact me in the future?

A statement of what service-learning means to you

You have been learning about service-learning first-hand for many weeks now. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of what service-learning is in general for you, personally. The challenae to you is to define service-learnino, for yourself. Don’t simply sav that service or service- learning, feels good. Take it a step further and ask yourself it feels good. Answering this question will most likely frame your statement on service- learning.

A description of your struggles and satisfactions:

Most service and service-learning experiences produce both laughter and tears. In this section, you should try to examine your struggles and satisfactions with SUPPORTS and SL 100. Please refer to Coles’ chapters: Motivations, Satisfactions, and/or Hazards.

Suggestions for SUPPORTS and SL100 for the future:

You will be asked to fill out a course evaluation at the end of the semester, but this section will allow you to give input into where you would like to see SUPPORTS/SL 100 go in the future. It will also allow you to examine organizational structure.

Additional Materials

Some of you might choose to include additional materials in your portfolio. This is neither required nor expected of you. If you do have additional items to include in your portfolio which you think will help to paint a more complete picture of your work in SL 100, feel free to do so. Examples of additional materials might include:

* “lesson plans” you drew up for triad sessions
* photographs
* items from the children artwork / poetry – related articles or news clippings that you connected with

Format

There is no strict format for your portfolio. As long as all of the required items are included, you have completed the assignment. Writing is the most typical format for his type of portfolio, although there are other options. If you plan to present your portfolio in a form other than written, please speak with one of the instructors before beainning. We want to make sure you are on the right track.

There is no page minimum or maximum. Like the journals, take the space that you need. With this in mind, you should note that a novel is probably inappropriate, as is a sheet of paper stating, “This was fun. Servicelearning is good. I like service-learning”. If you like page rano’es, a rough estimate might be 10-15 paoes (excluding, the journals), typed, with reasonable margins. Please collect all of you portfolio items in a small 3-ring, binder or a paper portfolio so that everything is kept together.

While you are constructing the portfolio, try to keep the ‘what’ model of reflection in mind. If, throughout the portfolio, you can answer “what?, so what?, and now what?” (please refer to the attached ‘what’ model handout), you will have constructed a solid evaluation of your work in this course.

The ‘What’ Model of Reflection

All reflection activities can be broken down into one, simple, model, the ‘what’ model of reflection. The ‘what’ model is a cycle that can be sustained over a participant’s service “lifetime”.

what?
now what?
so what?

The ‘what’ model asks three basic questions: what, so what, and now what?

?What?: what did I just do? this is simply the facts of the experience; feelincs are not included at this point

?so what?: how do I feel about what I have just done? how, if at all, have I been impacted by this experience? what did I learn from this experience? this is the stage where feelings come into play–these feelinas don’t always have to be positive (it’s OK if vou don’t love this experience)

now what?: now that I have done this and I feel this way aboutit, what’s next?
do I want to do this again? do I make changes? do I trysomething new?
this is the staae where participants decide how they wantto proceed now that the activity is over

The ‘what’ model can be incorporated in to discussion, writing, journaling., painting, dancing–basically every reflection activity. It does not have to be specifically stated that the ‘what’ model is being used. As long as you recognize that all three ‘what’ questions are being touched upon, it is almost certain that quality reflection is happening.