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Alternative breaks are a form of co-curricular service-learning. The information (readings, links, etc.) on this page is being provided to help you better understand the underlying concepts of service-learning. If you would like further guidance on finding resources or would like to discuss any service-learning concepts described here, please contact the Gallagher Center at engage@usd.edu.
As with any concept, there are many definitions that have been adopted to explain service-learning. Here are two:
“Any carefully monitored service experience in which a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what he or she is learning throughout the experience”. (The National Society for Experiential Education)
“A teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities”. (The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse)
To discover the full power of service-learning, an experience needs to move through phases of planning, implementation, and reflection. You cannot jump directly into a project for the service and learning to be effective and beneficial to you and the community.
This is true whether your service-learning is curricular (connected to a class) or co-curricular (such as an alternative break).
3 phases of the service-learning cycle:
3 phases of the service-learning cycle:
Pre-Service
For alternative breaks, the academic environment is established with pre-departure meetings, and the community that you will be learning about and working with over the break.
Through education and talking with community partners you will identify genuine needs in that community.
Over the course of your pre-departure meetings, you will establish learning objectives that are unique to your group and as member of AWOL.
Each group will be responsible for developing ownership through the commitments they make to learning and serving with the community partners, as well as planning and preparing for that experience.
Service
During your break you will conduct between 25-35 hours of meaningful service. This may be direct service, indirect service, research, advocacy--whatever your community partners have helped identified as a need.
During this time you will also observe the impact and discuss this with your group through daily reflections.
Post-Service
At the end of your break you will be asked to evaluate the experience, and discuss this learning to demonstrate new understanding through a guided re-orientation activity.
Reflective Learning Cycle (National Youth Leadership Council, 2005).
At the end of the AWOL experience you will be encouraged to use your knowledge to embrace the next phase in your active citizen journey: To go deeper in understanding yourself and your role as citizens in prioritizing community and social justice through your life choices and values.
At the end of the AWOL experience you will be encouraged to use your knowledge to embrace the next phase in your active citizen journey: To go deeper in understanding yourself and your role as citizens in prioritizing community and social justice through your life choices and values.
Types of service
Indirect: The activity/impact broadly helps the community organization to address a community issue or need though indirect actions that support objectives and doesn’t involve the presence of the person or thing you are impacting. This is the most common form of service in alternative breaks. Examples: Revitalizing buildings by cleaning and painting structures, weeding a community garden, handing out promotional materials for local organizations
Indirect: The activity/impact broadly helps the community organization to address a community issue or need though indirect actions that support objectives and doesn’t involve the presence of the person or thing you are impacting. This is the most common form of service in alternative breaks. Examples: Revitalizing buildings by cleaning and painting structures, weeding a community garden, handing out promotional materials for local organizations
Direct: The activity has a direct interaction with people, environment, or animals as you address a community issue or need. This is the second most common form of service in alternative breaks. Examples: Tutoring others, serving meals to the homeless, hosting a pet adoption event with a local shelter
Direct: The activity has a direct interaction with people, environment, or animals as you address a community issue or need. This is the second most common form of service in alternative breaks. Examples: Tutoring others, serving meals to the homeless, hosting a pet adoption event with a local shelter
Advocacy: Planning, conducting, and/or creating awareness initiatives and promoting action through activities or events to address a community issue or need. Examples: Bringing in a guest speaker for discussion on a topic of community concern, educating and promoting native gardens in the community, creating a student-centered program that discusses anti-bullying
Advocacy: Planning, conducting, and/or creating awareness initiatives and promoting action through activities or events to address a community issue or need. Examples: Bringing in a guest speaker for discussion on a topic of community concern, educating and promoting native gardens in the community, creating a student-centered program that discusses anti-bullying
Research-Based:Collecting, analyzing, and/or implementing qualitative and quantitative data to address a community issue or need. Examples: Collecting and analyzing survey results to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization's program; gathering information and creating a brochure for a non-profit agency, compiling oral histories for a local history museum
Research-Based:Collecting, analyzing, and/or implementing qualitative and quantitative data to address a community issue or need. Examples: Collecting and analyzing survey results to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization's program; gathering information and creating a brochure for a non-profit agency, compiling oral histories for a local history museum
What We All Gain
What We All Gain
Excerpt from Chapter 1 in Learning Through Serving
Excerpt from Chapter 1 in Learning Through Serving
Christine M. Cress
Christine M. Cress
Colleges and universities would be educationally remiss if they did not teach students how to connect themselves to their communities. A central premise of the U.S. Constitution is that, in order to form a more perfect union (of communities), we must work actively to establish justice and ensure liberty. Service-learning courses are an important tool for learning how to take a thoughtfully informed and rational approach to living and working in community that is tempered by active empathy, respect, and care.
Before I came to the United States from Chengdu, China, I thought that everyone here would be treated equally. Supposedly, everyone is born equal but that is not the case. Some people are treated badly because of their race, age, sexual orientation, physical situation, and gender. I did not expect this discrimination. We must learn about social problems, use the knowledge to solve social issues, help others, and strengthen social responsibility.
While individuals may choose to volunteer for a variety of reasons, and learning from that experience naturally takes place, service-learning allows for deeper individual and collaborative reflection on how to create positive societal transformation. We have the capacity, individually and collectively, to transform our communities to include those who have been disenfranchised due to race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, disability, religion, or political view. As such, service-learning courses teach us how to address the issues of today and tomorrow.
In the beginning, you may find it a struggle to define the concept of civic responsibility and civic engagement in articulating the connections between your service-learning and broader community involvement. At times, even faculty are uncertain about how to differentiate between service, “doing good,” and the enrichment of their own civic capacities through encounters with community organizations, community issues, and community members. By being patient and practicing reflection throughout the process, you will “learn through serving.”
As Benjamin Barber (1992) states:
[t]he fundamental task of education in a democracy is the apprenticeship of liberty—learning to be free . . . [T]he literacy required to live in a civil society, the competence to participate in democratic communities, the ability to act deliberately in a pluralistic world, the empathy that permits us to hear and thus accommodate others, all involve skills that must be acquired. (p. 4)
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