First principles:

• Service learning must truly balance “service” with “learning.” The effort to link service learning with academic standards shouldn’t be allowed to overwhelm the premise that service, and the active citizenship it promotes, are important goals in their own right.

• Service learning programs should include effective “street smart” guidance for planning and carrying out projects—so that communities are in fact served and kids get the personal impact and satisfaction of visible success as involved citizens of their communities.

• Service learning and character education should be linked. Service-action without moral reflection is of limited use. And moral reflection that is not deepened by action in the real world risks becoming only theory.

Important tips to teachers from the Giraffe Heroes Project’s 25 years of experience in the field

Service learning should be student-centered, that is, it almost certainly means giving students more responsibility than you may be comfortable with.Your role is as a coach and not a decision-maker. Challenge the kids to find out what they care about, and to decide amongst themselves what problems they feel are most important to solve in their community. Their next task is to create a service project that helps solve that problem, using their talents, their experience, and their resources. Don’t dictate what that project should be, but support the kids as they plan and carry it out.

As part of training kids to be good citizens, let them “rock a few boats.”If, in the course of an environmental lesson, for example, they discover that a local company is polluting the river, or that the town’s laws on pollution are lax, they may logically demand to challenge what they see as the first cause. Support them in doing that. This type of civic engagement is at the core of training them to be responsible citizens. Yes, they will make some mistakes—they’re young and inexperienced. Yes, you will want to check their letter to the CEO or the mayor and make sure the language is respectful and the grammar is OK, but don’t try to shut the students down or they will get exactly the wrong lesson—that they should never challenge authority, even if those authorities really need to make some changes.

Giving students the major responsibility for choosing, creating, planning and carrying out their project makes them stakeholders in solving the problem. That means that they’ll put more energy and enthusiasm into the work, and that the lessons they learn and the sense of satisfaction they gain are greater than if they’re simply told to show up at the soup kitchen at 6:00. When kids work on a project that they choose, their experience is that much more impactful on their spirits, their self-esteem and their likelihood of continuing in a life of active service.

Mandatory vs. voluntary service learning. It's always better if service learning is voluntary but sometimes it's mandated, by state or district requirements. This creates special problems because some kids will always resent being "forced" into a service project and may regard it as a punishment.

If you're in this situation, be prepared to spend extra time discussing with your students why service is important, which problems in the school or community concern them most, and what projects they might most enjoy doing. Give them as free a hand as you can in designing and carrying out the project, with your role being mentor and coach. And don't pass up opportunities to help them connect with the positive feelings gained from helping others.

Reflection is important to the success of any service project. Kids can resist or get cynical about doing projects, especially if they see them as mandated work, or just as a means of satisfying a graduation requirement. They need to reflect on what they are doing and why, and on the results and on how they feel. Specifically—

a) When students reflect on what works and what doesn’t work in how they’ve tried to solve a problem, they can better decide how to improve their performance in the future.

b) When students reflect on the causes of the problems they are helping solve, they become more aware of their complexity—and more savvy about solving them. They also learn in much more detail how their community really works.

c) When students reflect on how they feelabout getting involved in service work, and about what they might be learning about themselves in the process—they gain lessons that will serve them—and their future families, communities and workplaces.

Emphasize “community” in community service. When students design and implement a service project outside the class, especially one they’ve chosen themselves, they learn to care what’s happening in their larger community. They become part of the civic core who care about the common good. This is the essence of good citizenship.

It’s also important to involve the community that’s being served. Any service project should be reciprocal. There should be meaningful roles for the recipients of the service in both planning and carrying out the project—it shouldn’t just “doing for” people but “doing with.”

Start with the big kids. If you're introducing service learning in an entire school, start with the older grades. Younger kids will look up to what older kids are doing, but the reverse is not often true.