CLASSROOM ACTIVISTS: How Service-Learning
Challenges Prejudice

http://www.tolerance.org/teach/activiti ... jsp?ar=743


Oct. 23, 2006 -- Veteran middle-school teacher Lisa Weinbaum uses service-learning to challenge students' stereotypes and teach them to be global citizens. Here, she talks with Teaching Tolerance about the power of activism to transform students' lives.
interview by Carrie Kilman


What's exceptional about middle-schoolers and activism?
Middle-schoolers can see injustice more readily than adults. They're more willing to speak out and do something about it, if the opportunity presents itself. Much like a first-year teacher who is filled with hope and hasn't yet been jaded, middle-schoolers are risk-takers.

Activism is an underutilized teaching tool, and because of that, it's fresh to students. It's also a natural motivator, because students would rather write, for example, for real audiences instead of for just their teacher, completing a contrived assignment that no one will appreciate, much less even see. I've had students who wouldn't write a word, but if I show them they can truly affect change, they'll write an ethnography! Activism -- planning, strategizing, organizing -- is also very social, as education should be. Silence does not equate to education. Middle-school students love to talk, and activism fits right in.


Can you share an example of how service-learning helped your students reduce prejudice and develop cultural competency?
We completed a unit about violence against women in the nearby community of Juarez, Mexico. Much of the violence is caused by poverty, which, in turn, is caused by American-owned maquiladoras (factories) moving into the area and paying their mostly female workers only a few dollars a day. The students learned that because the poverty is so widespread, there is really no way for women to escape, legally or otherwise. For example, there is only one women's shelter on the entire 2,000-mile Mexican border. That, of course, is a reflection of the value (or lack thereof) the government places on women in society.

All of this information was new, to both students and the teachers, including myself. At the inception of the project, there was a common belief that it was the victims' faults, that they deserved the violence because they didn't leave their partners. Or that it's easy to leave. Or that it was Mexico's problem, not ours.

Not only did we do extensive research, we invited a Juarez mother whose daughter had been murdered (and whose murder was never solved) to speak to our students. By describing her interactions with the Mexican authorities, and her efforts to organize with other women to stop the violence, she dispelled the myth that women are helpless victims, just waiting for the next crime to be committed against them.

Hearing her saga fostered empathy for her plight. Students were able to put a face on the violence. We weren't talking about her, but with her. This led to other discussions about globalization, immigration and misogyny. The unit broadened our understanding of the United States' role in Juarez violence (economic and otherwise), and our responsibility to others.


Sometimes we think about community service as an act by people with privilege and power, performed to help people without privilege and power. Can you deconstruct this?
If I'm being painfully honest with myself and with you, I'm not the one who can refute the stereotype of people with power and privilege serving others. The fact remains that I'm white and middleclass. Yes, I'm "just" a teacher, but I live in relative comfort. I don't worry about where the next meal is coming from. I can buy books whenever I want. I can take more classes at the university whenever I want.

The service-learning units are things I devised so my students are more empowered -- to use your words, "people without power and privilege," i.e., my students and their families. The reality is, in many cases my students are the same as the groups we are serving. I teach homeless children whose mothers are/were abused. I teach migrant children. I teach immigrant children. Yes, my students are fully engaged and enthusiastic (probably because they can identify so easily with the people they are serving), but ultimately I'm the one initiating the projects.


How do you ensure that your students learn from the people/community they're serving?
We have to know the people we are serving, not just know about them. We have to talk with them and then listen because we really care. It isn't enough to research on the web or read about homelessness, for example, from Jonathan Kozol. But, like Kozol, we have to break bread with them.


How can teachers help their students avoid a "savior" mentality, where charity and "helping" are emphasized over empowerment and "service"?
I've struggled with this. Sometimes I feel like I'm exploiting or using the people we're serving, like I'm reducing them to a "teachable moment". But to avoid the "savior" mentality, I think it goes back to really knowing the community. If you develop relationships with those you're serving, there will be less likelihood of that occurring. You'll see "the other" on an equal basis, rather than beneath you.
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Service-Learning and Prejudice Reduction




October 2006 -- Four steps every educator should take to help ensure service projects reduce stereotyping, rather than reinforce it.

by Jennifer Holladay


Research shows that service-learning can increase students' awareness of diversity and their commitment to values like justice, yet studies also have indicated that some projects actually reinforce, rather than reduce, stereotypes that students may hold about those being "served."

So, what should the equity- and civic-minded educator do to help ensure an anti-bias outcome? Current research suggests four emphases:

1. Incorporate reflection about student attitudes.
Conduct student reflection exercises that delve into assumptions or stereotypes about the population being served. If students will be working with a population with whom they have had little prior contact (or little meaningful contact), students should reflect on their assumptions and perceptions at the start of the project. If English-speaking students will be tutoring ESL students, for example, what do they currently "know" about ESL students and their willingness and ability to learn English? Reflection exercises about students' viewpoints should continue throughout the project.

Reflection exercises also can alert educators to students' own experiences with the issue at the heart of the project -- homelessness, hunger or domestic violence, for example.

2. Work "with," not "for."
Create opportunities for students to collaborate with and learn from the population being served.

* Include direct service activities that allow students to work side-by-side with recipients -- volunteering in a soup kitchen, for example. Indirect services, such as food and clothing drives, address real human needs, but rarely afford students the opportunity to understand the humans who have them.
* Position the recipient as teacher. Incorporate a focus on what students can learn from recipients. A cross-generational service project in which students provide companionship to elders, for example, also provides an opportunity for students to collect oral histories.

3. Address real needs.
The project's outputs should respond to needs expressed by service agencies and the constituents that they serve. For example, while your local Department of Social Services might be open to a donation of student artwork to help liven up its offices (assuming the agency can afford to frame the art), what it might need more -- and what its constituents might value more -- are volunteers to help people fill out forms or to entertain children who come to the office with parents or guardians.

4. Include study of the social policies/problems that contribute to "need."
It's important for students to understand that people don't find themselves "in need" simply because of personal choices or "bad luck." Encourage students to research social policies or problems that contribute to need. Hunger and homelessness, for example, are connected to issues like the living/minimum wage. Working in collaboration with service agencies and their constituents, students can create advocacy campaigns to raise awareness about specific social problems and steps local and state governments should take to remedy them.

Use the Multicultural Service-Learning Planner to help ensure projects promote anti-bias aims.

Contact us for permission to reprint this article. Please include the name of the article in your request.
Drawn from Community Service Learning: A Guide to Including Service in the Public School Curriculum (ISBN # 0-7914-3184-3), Integrating Service Learning and Multicultural Education in Colleges and Universities (ISBN# 0-8058-3345-5), "Multicultural Service-Learning and Community-Based Research as a Model Approach to Promote Social Justice," Theresa Ann Rosner-Salazar, Social Justice (Volume: 30. Issue: 4.); "Research on K-12 School-Based Service-Learning - The Evidence Builds," Shelley H. Billig, Phi Delta Kappan (Volume: 81. Issue: 9); Northwest Regional Education Laboratory; DiversityWeb Digest.




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Model Project
Benjamin Dow's Hunger at Home project reflects the promising practices of anti-bias service-learning. Students collaborated, acted and advocated, improving their own and others' lives. Go




Grant Funding
The Teaching Tolerance Grants Program supports service-learning projects that advance anti-bias aims. Go




Additional Resources
Return to The ABCs of Service-Learning.

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