Service Learning

Service Learning >> Global Issues Network Project

In recent years, the education of girls and women has received a lot of attention as a way forward for many problems in our world. At the American International School of Guangzhou in southern China, this awareness has resulted in the creation of a scholarship program to support young women in our local area that is not only wildly successful but largely student-driven.

Three years ago, soon after I joined the faculty of AISG, I was invited to help support a project that sponsors sixty local Chinese students to complete their high school education in a highly ranked boarding school in the Shao Guan area of Southern China. My role as a faculty chaperone, as it was explained to me, was to travel to the school with a group of about a dozen students from our Global Issues Network (GIN), and help support the weekend of relationship building between our students and the young women being sponsored. Actually, I did pretty much nothing.

As the other faculty chaperones and I stood back and watched, the GIN members facilitated a program that included games, English learning, visits to senior care homes, singing, and friendship. The students had also organized guest speakers, including young women who had been through the scholarship program and were now studying at university. In the end, the adults on the trip just enjoyed watching this incredibly dynamic group of local and international students and did the curfew calls back at the hotel in the evening. The local students I met that weekend would have completed their formal schooling at the end of middle school were it not for the financial and moral support provided by our school community.

Through the support of GIN, all sixty students have been successfully staying in school, with the majority exceling in their studies. Asked about why so many students have shown such a high level of commitment to this project, former GIN coordinator So Yun Chang pointed to the fact that it is student driven: “I firmly believe that

everyone in the group is there because they want to dedicate their time and passion to serving these Shao Guan girls. Members at GIN aren’t spending one and a half hours every Friday afternoon in Mr Little’s room just so they have something to put on their college application. Everyone understands the effect our program has had on the Shao Guan girls, and everyone has a clear, respectable incentive to be part of GIN.”

The club’s faculty sponsor, Eric Little, says he agrees that this is an exceptionally student-driven project and attributes this to a number of factors. Little believes that students in past years were motivated by attendance at GIN conferences that highlighted the issues of girl’s education and child labor. Little also noted that the older students in the group make a concerted effort to mentor the freshmen students in the group.

Last year, one of the students even received the prestigious EARCOS award as a result of the commitment she had poured into this project. In September, 2017, our coordinators and Eric Little traveled to Shao Guan to receive an award for their work from the local Department of Education.

While watching these students, both local and international, in the classrooms and on the fields of the Shao Guan campus, I can only agree with Eric Little as he gazes at these students in action and declares: “You can’t believe what students can do if you just let them!”

Julie Lindsay High School Counselor American International School of Guangzhou

Service Learning >> Maximizing the Ripple Impact of Service Learning By Nicky Bourgeois and Dianne Gamage

It happens spontaneously, he stands and makes an impassioned plea to his classmates: “You should say ‘Oh no, that’s terrible. I have to do something about that.’ You have to actually take action on that. ‘To do’ is different than thinking that someone else should do something.” These words of wisdom draw the entire class in, and his audience is avid. “Whatever the problem is, think about what way there is to help, or you don’t have to help by yourself - get other people to help alongside you. Be more than one person - lead a group into action.” It is in this moment that the time spent fostering a service mindset is at the tipping point of student ownership.

Each year Year 6 students partake in the NIST Service Learning Expo. Representatives from the many secondary school service groups present to the students. They prepare slideshows that support as they explain the development of their service group. The beginnings of the project, the results of the needs analysis in collaboration with the group being supported, the way they fund the work, and the goals of the project.

This year the groups to visit and share were: • Mushie Mushie promotes global sustainability through environmental conservation and the improvement of livelihoods amongst individuals and communities within Thailand. • Free To Be aims to raise awareness and educate about equal treatment of LGBTQI+ members within, and outside, the NIST community. • Cats @ NIST works to keep the cats at our school healthy so that both the students and the cats don’t get hurt. • PlasticFreeNIST’s main focus is to reduce the consumption of unsustainable, one-time use plastic. • Support the Girls aims to collects new/used bras and new sealed packages of maxi pads for women and girls in need. • Dreams We Believe In - to create an ongoing bond of friendship between the NIST community and Thai children living with HIV/AIDS through empathy and love, in order to fulfill their dreams and give them a sense of belonging.

The purpose of hosting this expo is multifaceted. There are curriculum links - our Sharing the planet inquiry is focused on ‘understanding and acknowledging inequity can inspire people to act’. There has been a foundation of learning around the Sustainable Development Goals as well. However, in line with our mission, vision and values, we aim to provoke our students’ desire to effect positive change in the world as a part of who they are as human beings. This is beyond a school task. Our desire is that they not only act, but that they see, they empathise, they connect with those in need. The power of learning from their older peers is evident.

Along the corridors the power of this is immediate. “You’re so gay,” says one student. “Hey,” says another, “you shouldn’t use those words as an insult, because they are really hurtful to those who actually identify as gay.” Effecting positive change. Right there.

Upstanding. An example of how one service group was developed at NIST: Service Learning has evolved to hinge heavily on reciprocal partnerships. Action taken is based on what the community being served tells you their needs are. A willingness to be involved in participatory mapping validates what the community see as their current needs and opens relationships that support long term development. The Service Learning groups facilitate this mapping through guiding questions that empower the community. This work is conducted in the language of the community. Ultimately, the map reflects the thinking of the community. This forms the basis for the dialogue upon which partnership and action is developed. Winter 2017 Issue 13

Service Learning >> The Art of the Deal: Service Learning with a Business Mindset in HCMC

By Brian Benck, Teacher - MS Language Arts/ Social Studies, Saigon South International School

Traffic, distances, time, and other logistics can often make Ho Chi Minh City a difficult place to engage students in meaningful service learning. As with all service learning, the true challenge is in combining a meaningful experience, both in terms of curriculum and in helping others, while doing it in a way that goes beyond “throwing money at the problem” through bake sales or clothing drives. By incorporating community connections, “real world” business writing, and the unloading of lots of trucks, eighth graders at Saigon South International School help a local orphanage collect food for the summer months, and beyond.

The primary goal of our service learning is for students to develop a personal relationship with Anh Linh Love School, a full time, Catholicrun orphanage. Anh Linh takes in children of families that can not afford basic necessities and provides education, food and clothing during the school year. Students are sent home for the summer to places where these basics are lacking.Even daily nutrition can be difficult, if not impossible, for the families of these students to provide. To help, SSIS students set a goal to provide each Anh Linh student with a canvas bag of groceries for the summer. Last year, we were able to deliver far beyond that goal with three, two-ton trucks of food. Over 2000 kilograms or rice was gathered for ALLS in one month’s time.

Orang utan with baby At SSIS, Principal Molly Burger begins the unit with a workshop on proper business place etiquette, including how to properly shake hands, compose a professional email, and continue correspondence with a business partner on a professional level. Students also create professional CVs and are tasked with writing professional business letters, emails, and making personal phone calls to businesses around HCMC. Businesses contacted range from large corporations such as Samsung and various import/export companies, down to local, privately owned corner stores. Over the past three years, the project has seen over 50 businesses and corporations jump on board, with over one-third of our partners being national or multinational corporations.

Academically, the goal of our project is for students to experience applicable, real world writing, the likes of which we as adults are called upon to display in our daily professional lives. Beyond the classroom, our unit takes on a “boots on the ground approach,” where the typical student will, during a class period, answer an email from a corporate PR

department, make a return call to a delivery driver, and help unload 800 kilograms of rice from the back of a truck. The culmination of our unit involves the loading of trucks, transportation to the orphanage to unload once again, and time to meet the students of Anh Linh Love School. As a special privilege, a select group of SSIS students are invited back to Anh Linh Love School for their end of the year ceremonies, which include cultural performances by the students as well as lunch.

One poignant example of our, “boots on the ground” approach to service learning comes from an experience with a business council here in HCMC. Two students, having connections through the company of a parent, spent three weeks coordinating and petitioning for the delivery of a large foodstuff. While the students started out speaking to a PR rep for one of the companies making up the council, they later found themselves speaking with heads of council itself and even meeting with a representative from the council as they persuaded several heads of business that their cause was just and valid. Suffice to say, this was not an experience most adults encounter, let alone expat children in grade 8.

Given that many of our students come from privileged backgrounds and foreign countries, it is easy for school and student alike to fall into the trap of using money as a meaningful service learning experience. Our students are often, due to language and lifestyle, unintentionally separated from the day to day lifestyles of those in our host countries to such an extent that they may not even have a real understanding of the problems faced by SE Asian countries. It is the hope of SSIS that our service learning project exposes students to both a problem and solution, while also empowering them by placing success or failure directly in their hands.

Service Learning >> Caring For The Community at Chiang Mai International School By Rob Johnson and Tyler Stinchcomb

Chiang Mai International School’s (CMIS) Vision Statement is “Educational excellence in a caring Christian community that values and respects diversity” and the caring is what stands out when students are involved in service projects throughout the school year. While high school students are involved in earning credit for service projects and often work alone or in small groups, Middle School provides a way for students to explore service projects and work together as a class. This model also helps create cohesion among peers and a sense that they can make positive contributions to their community.

One example of this is that for the last three years, CMIS Middle School students (Grade 6 - Grade 8) have been intentional about building relationships with those in our wider community by going to a local children’s home, Hope House, each year. Hope House seeks to be a safe place where children from tribal villages living in poverty can be educated and nurtured in a family environment. Most of the 70 plus kids who live there have been orphaned, abandoned or neglected and would not have access to the emotional and social support along with the educational opportunities that Hope House provides. As a school, CMIS is excited about the opportunities we have had to come alongside this organization and partner with them so that they can better accomplish this vision.

Before we go each time, our Middle School students take part in a planning process where they gather in small groups during class time to prepare different activities for the students at Hope House. Each group is in charge of one station and there are a range of activities from Arts and Crafts to Outdoor Field games to Relay Races and more. The main focus is on building relationships, so we encourage students to plan purposeful activities that will make the time spent together more meaningful. While CMIS students are physically only at Hope House a few days out of the year, we have partnered with them in various other ways to show that we care. Some of the highlights include selling t-shirts at our yearly Harvest Festival as well as selling “Cake-pops” during the week of the “Great Kindness Challenge” to raise money for their continued operation. Also, each semester, our Drama department puts on a play production, and we invite their students to come to a free, special viewing of the performance. Another noteworthy event that our Grade 6 class was able to attend last year was the Hope House annual “Sports Day”. Our students enjoyed the opportunity to play with and compete against their students in this fun-filled one day event.

Through it all, our desire is that CMIS students will become more caring individuals that are passionate about building relationships with and participating in the global community that is around them. It is only through intentional, proactive, and meaningful interactions that change will happen for the betterment of our community. As we continue to develop and deepen our partnership with Hope House as well as with others in our community, our hope is that all of us would grow to be lifelong learners who care for and value those who are around us.

Hope House students enjoying “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”.