Transitioning to a Culture of Service Learning

Over all the years I have been at Sidwell Friends School, we have engaged in activities that support those community organizations that respond to those in need in the Washington, DC area. Over thirty years ago we developed a relationship with Martha's Table, which at the time primarily focused on feeding children and families in need both on location in Northwest DC and via McKenna's Wagon, which distributes food throughout the city. They have since grown to include a school and after school program and other services. Our Lower School community developed the discipline of bringing a vegetable every week, with children chopping all our contributions on Wednesdays and sending them to Martha's Table, a tradition that continues to this day.

We later developed a connection with Bethesda Cares, with a focus on ending homelessness, and A Wider Circle,  with a focus on ending poverty, and various other organizations. Our students who are aged 4-10, were exposed to these organizations either through things we did on our campus and sent to them, or through field trips organized by our parent volunteers, usually during parent-teacher conference day. The service experiences our students were getting were real, but they were periodic and clearly out of context, with little connection to their daily lives in the classroom.

So how to make a change? With a renewed focus on the Quaker Testimonies, we began examining how we could infuse our daily classroom experience, and enrich our curriculum by building a culture of service learning in our everyday lives at school. A common acronym for the Quaker Testimonies is "SPICES", illustrated here in a child-friendly poster designed by one of our teachers:

Image credit: Denise Coffin

We began to imagine how we could integrate meaningful work that benefitted the community and responded to the Quaker Testimonies in an age appropriate way through our classroom culture and curriculum. We started small in our first year, some grade levels moving forward, some still searching for the logical connections. By the fall of this, our second year, the intentionality and enthusiasm among our faculty and students was evident. 

This blog is intended to follow the progress of our work and our reflections on how we grow, adapt, and change as the culture of service learning grows in our school. All of our teachers are invited to contribute their experiences.