Embedding service learning: One School's Journey
When leaders at the Colegio Jorge Washington (COJOWA) in Cartagena, Colombia were developing a new strategic plan four years ago, they found themselves asking “what’s next?”. After completing a previous strategic plan with a strong emphasis on values, the school community was ready to build on that foundation, and ideation sessions followed to figure out how to turn the values into action.
The REACHES values that were the foundation of COJOWA’s previous strategic plan.
“We came up with five new initiatives related to values in action,” explains School Director Dr. Nick Glab. “We want to develop a habit for service for our students, preschool to 12th grade. Whatever they end up studying and doing professionally, we want them to connect their skills and passions to a positive impact in the world. This has even been embedded into our vision statement of ‘learning together as reflective citizens and innovative thinkers to build a better tomorrow’.”
The new strategic plan featured five years with one new initiative taking center stage each year. In year one the focus was on social and emotional learning and the power of growth mindsets. In year two, the emphasis was on innovative thinking and the development of deep project-based learning approaches. This year, year 3, revolves around the “Build our Better Tomorrow” service learning plan.
“To prepare for this year, we came together as a leadership team to develop common agreements for our service learning program,” explains Nick. “We want our local teachers to be at the forefront of this, the educators who teach Spanish and Colombian social studies. When we met Inspire Citizens, we realized we could really use some help getting this off the ground and they have helped us develop the entire program.”
Jessica Benitez, the Community Engagement Coordinator at COJOWA, adds that the goal is to design one service learning experience per grade level connected to at least one United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal, and to cultivate meaningful community partnerships for service learning action.
“Working with Inspire Citizens, we engaged in visioning sessions and identified teachers who could be involved in designing pilot curricular experiences this year,” says Jessica. “We developed three pilot teams for three semesters, and the first team involves five grade levels at the school; these teams have been working on designing units this year.”
The Inspire Citizens team worked with each of the phase 1 grade-level teams to identify a unit that could be reshaped with a service learning foundation. Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten students will experience service learning in relation to a “Parts of the Body” unit that explores senses, actions and emotions. Grade 3 students will dive into service learning in a “Climate and Landscapes” unit with an emphasis on food security, agriculture and farming. Grade 8 students will learn about historic periods in social studies (with a focus on indigenous history and the discovery and conquest of the American continent) and grade 9 students will zoom in on the period of colonialism and Colombian independence. Both social studies experiences will revolve around a service learning experience.
“Partnering with government and non-government organizations like Escuela de Gobierno y Liderazgo de Cartagena and Fundación Santo Domingo will allow us to involve our students in processes of conserving our cultural heritage,” says Jessica. “In general, developing these service learning units with local partners will allow us to contribute to initiatives aligned with the SDGs that these organizations are leading in different communities of the city.”
Eugenia Diaz, the Curriculum and Assessment Coordinator at COJOWA, is excited about the student engagement and deep learning that will emerge from the service learning experiences.
“Teachers have engaged in planning the redesigned units this semester, and will begin teaching these units in the first semester of the next school year.” explains Eugenia, “We’ll assess how things are going as we have our second team of teachers planning and designing units for phase 2, and likewise for phase 3. Inspire Citizens is guiding the process, with the goal of helping each student care about what’s happening in the world, be aware, and then act for impact.”
School leaders and teachers have invested time in learning about service learning and the Inspire Citizens Empathy to Impact model, and in developing resources and tools to make this experience meaningful and enjoyable for the educators involved.
“Our teachers have been so open and eager; there are many people at COJOWA who have open hearts for service,” says Eugenia.
Inspire Citizens Co-founder Aaron Moniz and facilitator Scott Jamieson have been COJOWA’s lead partners with this initiative. As phase 2 and 3 begin, Jessica and Eugenia will take on more leadership with Spanish-speaking faculty members.
“I really want our students to develop a true sense of social responsibility, but in a different way than how we used to think about community service,” says Nick. “I have learned a lot myself as we’ve explored this, and I hope our community embraces a new way of thinking about service so we can all find ways to have an impact on the world whatever our skills and talents are. My dream is that our entire community has that mindset shift and believes that creating social impact is a responsibility for all of us.”
The graphics (below) show how the dynamic elements of the COJOWA strategic plan ensure a thorough and holistic approach to embedding service learning in all aspects of the school curriculum.
