For my Genius Hour Project I would like to investigate Service Learning and its relationship with student achievement in a high school setting. I want to research:

• What is service learning?
• What high schools have already implemented service learning as part of their curriculum?
• Have schools that utilize service learning seen an improvement in student achievement?
• What other benefits besides student achievement does service learning offer?
• In what types of classes is service learning more or less practical?
• What types of service learning are being used?

 

I first became interested in Service Learning after looking at Education Commission of the States website. Service learning sparked my attention because of my previous experience with it. My high school did not implement Service Learning into their curriculum but each year of my college experience I have had classes in which service learning was a requirement. Since I’ve had a wonderful experience tutoring, teaching ESL, and volunteering in the Athens community I began to wonder why this is not a thing widely used in Georgia high schools. According to the Education Commission of the States website, 33 states include service learning in their high school state academic standards, Georgia of which is not one. This especially made me more interested in the topic. If like the website says, ” that students engaged in high-quality service-learning learn to collaborate, think critically and problem solve”, then why is Georgia not taking advantage of this? Through this Genius Hour project I want to learn how service learning programs function and most definitely how I can implement this in my classroom and help fellow teachers create service learning programs as wel. As a future Spanish teacher I hope that service learning can be integrated into my curriculum.