Motivating Students With Service Learning Projects
In the spring of 2012 I was trying to motivate my freshman and sophomore English classes to do a bit more work outside of the classroom. Homework was a constant struggle, projects up until that point had been less about quality and more about the “grade” attached, and the drive to be intrinsically motivated was scarce. As a first year teacher, I was attempting to juggle all of the first year woes along with opening a new school and using project based learning as my core curriculum. Needless to say I was often at a loss with how to have my students feel motivated to do much of anything unless it was attached to a grade. Enter - Kony 2012.
“Ms. DeGrano! Did you watch the video?”
“Ms. D can we play the video during class?”
“You should see my twitter right now - it’s blowing up”
Needless to say, I nixed what I had planned for the day and we focused our lesson on the current events surrounding Kony 2012, the Central African Lord’s Resistance Army, and the endangerment of child soldiers. I quickly researched the organization attached to the cause, and decided to make it into a bigger project. We started by watching the viral video, and when it finished, my students responded with one resounding idea: We would participate in helping the Invisible Children organization. My students spent the next 3 weeks creating posters, making phone calls, gathering donations, and participating in local events. From there on out, I had realized that the highest point of motivation that I had seen from my students was when they were providing a service to others. What I had learned was that service learning provided students with the opportunity to give back, think outside of themselves, and work for a cause that was important.
In a traditional classroom, students typically work to turn in assignments, tests, and projects to the teacher. It is fairly routine, and there is minimal deviation from this during the school year. This repetition creates monotony among students, and it creates an environment where they meet the expectation out of habit and routine rather than drive and motivation. As you can see in the figure below, motivation increases as the audience changes.
At Method, we are striving to keep students motivated by providing them with opportunities for service learning. As we continue to write projects for this year and next, we have begun to incorporate service learning aspects towards the end of each project to keep students motivated and experience the benefits of giving back. The audience changes depending on the project, however, the motivation does not. For example, a social justice project could have students working for a non-profit organization of their choice, dedicating a few hours a week for volunteering. For an urban art project, students could design a culminating art piece that represents our school’s core values and hang it in a place where everyone can see it. A fitness project could incorporate students designing pamphlets or diagrams for local gyms and trainers about teens’ health and wellness. In all three of these examples, the audience for service learning is different. However, the end products result in students having a true sense of working to create something that will benefit another person or groups of people.
The future hopes and goals with service learning at Method include field work (hands on experience, volunteer work, mission trips), human interest aspects (interviews, documentaries, connections), and creation/service to others (building, finding the need, presentation). The Method community is one that believes in motivating students to think outside themselves and participate in becoming well-rounded, globally aware learners.