Service Learning at AES
Enter to Learn. Leave to Serve.
Our Mission The American Embassy School provides a balanced education defined by a joyful pursuit of excellence in academics, athletics, arts and service. We enable each student to be an inspired lifelong learner and a responsible, compassionate global citizen.
Our Vision AES is a destination school for families and educators seeking personalized learning to cultivate intellectual and creative leaders who will make the world a better place.
Our Beliefs We believe that that everyone: • has intrinsic value • needs safety, trust, and respect • is responsible for their choices • learns and grows through challenge • lives more meaningfully when pursuing their passions
• is enriched by diversity • is strengthened through service • flourishes in a community that is caring, collaborative, and nurturing • has the power to create a more peaceful world
AES Vision of Service
At AES, we aspire to use community service and service learning to develop reciprocal partnerships and to build deep, sustainable relationships with community partners. Consistently seeking to learn more about and to address authentic needs in our local and global communities—while developing our own knowledge, skills, and understandings—drives our commitment to both providing service and to the learning that results through the process. Through intentional cycles of investigation, action, and reflection, students will become responsible global citizens, work to make the world a better place, and develop the values necessary to create a more equitable and peaceful world. At AES, we provide opportunities for curriculum-integrated service learning throughout students’ educational journeys to develop the skills necessary to facilitate independent student-initiated service in school and in life after graduation.
Our Commitment to Creating a Culture of Service Learning —A Whole School Approach AES has a long history of serving our local and global communities, and we aspire to strengthen, deepen, and transform these efforts. As an institution, we believe that students will Enter to Learn. Leave to Serve. Our mission, vision, and beliefs guide our service learning processes (as outlined below). • We integrate these service learning processes into our best-practice approaches to teaching and learning. • We build capacity and sustainable long-term support amongst our students, faculty and staff, administrators, and community stakeholders. • We invest in supported implementation cycles based on evidence collection and reflection to ensure institutional success. By employing this whole-school approach to service learning, we commit to developing and nurturing a culture of service learning that is self-directed and a staple of our teaching and learning for decades to come.
Community Service at AES
Many of our co-curricular and community initiatives focus on serving our community through volunteering, fundraising, charity events, and participation in community engagement, as well as direct service opportunities. We hope that through connecting and developing long-term relationships with community partners, taking action to support community partners, and acting to positively contribute to authentic needs, that our students and community members will engage in investigation, action, and reflection leading to deeper empathy and development of problem-solving skills.
Service Learning at AES
Service Learning has many of the same aims as Community Service but additionally focuses on ensuring that knowledge, skills, understandings, and identified AES transfer goals are being deepened and enriched through applying a service learning cycle of investigation and engagement within our curriculum.
Definition & Attributes Definition Service-learning is an approach to teaching and learning guided by the principles of equity and justice. In service-learning, students address authentic needs, develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions, and take informed action to continue to grow as compassionate global citizens. Attributes • Cycles of inquiry, action, and reflection (through the entire process) • 5 stages • Partnerships • Two-way relationship • Student voice / agency • Tied to curricular objectives • Authentic and meaningful • Mutually beneficial • Change for the common good
Service as action: Elementary School
One example of a service learning unit could be when an elementary classroom is learning about climate and agriculture in their host country and the importance of buying local. Students would develop empathy by exploring UN Sustainable Development Goal #8: Decent work and economic growth and unpacking why it is important to “support local businesses at home and abroad”.
Students could interview local farmers, conduct observations and field visits of life at local farms, and identify authentic needs that exist in the community. Students could then develop their content standards related to climate, flora/fauna, ecosystems, food growth, and the social and environmental impacts of buying local products versus buying imported goods. Based on a relationship built with the local farmers and having co-created mutually beneficial action, the students could host a local organic food market at the school by which farmers could sell their local produce, and parents could gain access to local providers to purchase directly from local farmers sustainably over time. At the end of the project, students would reflect on how the land and climate create opportunities for environmental, economic, and social growth and would reflect on how their sharing of knowledge, skills, and understanding helped to sustainably impact a local and global issue.
Service as action: Middle School
In a middle school context, learning about UN Sustainable Development Goal #12: Responsible Production & Consumption could begin byquestioning and making observations relating to production and consumption, such as ‘planned obsolescence’ of products, fast fashion, trends in wasteful packaging, and the impacts on the environment due to improper disposal.
Through various forms of research into their questions, students access content standards in science, mathematics, and social studies while deepening their understanding of the complex factors involved in production and consumption of goods. Research could include interviews with campus facilities staff or waste management personnel, analysis of media effects on consumption patterns, or data collection from a local landfill site visit. Students connect and collaborate with a local NGO that trains marginalized communities in upcycling low-value waste into high-value products. While developing their skills and knowledge about the issue, students could design, prototype, market, and sell their own upcycled products at an “Upcycling & Sustainability Mela” hosted on campus. This event would allow students to share their learning, reflections, and upcycled prototypes right alongside their community partners, as well as provide opportunities for parents to learn how best to lend support.
Service as action: High School
In the high school setting, service learning experiences can have the potential for an even more complex investigation and deeper understanding of issues such as equity & justice. One example from visual arts would be a mixed-media unit using visual storytelling as a means to understand and represent the history of the community adjacent to the school campus.
The culmination of the unit could be an exhibition for parents and community members hosted at a neglected community space in the neighborhood. Guided by their art teacher and community liaisons, students would begin with personal investigations into the neighborhood and its residents. Over several site visits, students immerse themselves in the community to generate questions and observations that will inform the next phase of the process. Utilizing skills such as interviewing, photography, sketching, and AV recordings, students will begin to gain an understanding for the hopes of community residents on the future of this community space. Through subsequent feedback sessions with community members, students go through the design process to create an artistic representation that reflects the shared cultural identity and aspirations for the neighborhood and its community space. The culminating exhibition would see the community space transformed—even if briefly—into an outdoor
gallery where student artists and community residents present the works in tandem. Students reflect on the role art can play in civic engagement when connecting knowledge, skills, and personal experiences in an authentic context.
Curricular and Co-Curricular Service Learning
At AES, students Enter to Learn. Leave to Serve. by having guaranteed opportunities to engage in curricular and co-curricular service opportunities throughout their learning journeys.
Curricular In Grades PK–10, students will engage in at least one embedded service learning unit each year. This will help provide exposure to develop empathy, investigation skills, reflective capabilities, and learning habits to encourage students to participate in co-curricular service, especially as they progress towards graduation, and to become lifelong learners and responsible, compassionate global citizens.
Co-Curricular We aspire to employ the service learning cycle, employ intentional cycles of investigation, and promote reciprocity/relationship building and deep learning through reflection in the following student programs: Service Clubs Experiential Learning Parent/Community Service Initiatives CAS Projects Community-Focused Activities through AES Activities Office, and purposeful community interactions
AES Engagement Cycle
Through the consistent, schoolwide application of the AES service learning cycle, students identify and address authentic issues in their communities using a systematic, reflective approach to achieve positive impact.
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WONDER
AES Engagement Cycle
Educators and students will begin developing and provoking wonder & curiosity based on authentic needs or issues. When developing wonder, educators can guide students to explore:
Educators might facilitate wondering by:
• The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. • Learning For Justice: Social Justice Standards or other opportunities to learn for community building, equity, inclusion, and belonging. • Explore personal and interpersonal well-being.
• Engaging in a site visit. • Speaking to an expert or an involved community member. • Participating in a simulation or experiencing another’s perspective. • Engaging in a community needs assessment. • Conducting an individual talent inventory to identify skills and passions.
EXPLORE
AES Engagement Cycle
Educators and students will become more authentically aware of the identified challenges and will engage in learning experiences that develop their inquiry skills, deepen their understanding of the challenge, build authentic connection and understanding, and will employ a variety of methods to reach this deeper understanding.
Educators might facilitate exploration by having students::
PLAN Educators and students will ensure that their academic and real-world knowledge, skills, and understandings are being applied and transferred to positively contribute to the identified challenge.
• Conduct interviews, surveys, and observations. • Explore relevant media. • Conduct needs analyses and active listening protocols. • Gather data. • Collect stories and explore perspectives. • Engage in field visits. • Develop relationships with community partners. • Analyze systemic factors involved in a challenge.
AES Engagement Cycle
Educators will support student planning by: • Using their identified standards in performance or application tasks. • Scaffolding the development of AES Learning Habits. • Formatively assessing academic skills within the context of the service opportunity. • Helping students to employ supplementary problem-solving, interpersonal, or action-planning skills.
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CREATE
AES Engagement Cycle
Educators and students will transfer and apply their skills into meaningful, sustainable, and impactful action and create products, artifacts, or solutions that aim to address the identified challenge.
Educators will support student creation by: • Conducting a Community Assets Audit, during which potential resources internal, local, & global - are explored in order to help students understand the many facets of service as action, and how those pieces connect to the identified challenge. • Identifying a community partner(s), discussing with the partner, and together, developing solutions (Who). • Scaffolding students’ understanding of action and encouraging a diverse range of opportunities for action (What).
INTERNAL , LOCAL , GLOBAL
INDIVIDUALS
ORGANIZATIONS
SPACES & PLACES
INSTITUTIONS
Schools
Self
Service Clubs
Park
Family
Partner NGOs
Libraries
Media
Educators
PSA
Urban Forests
Government Agencies
Partnerships
Civic Groups
Community Gardens
Universities
Community Members
Social Entrepreneurs
Neighborhoods
School Board
& Liaisons
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Particpate in...
Advocate for...
Host an event for...
Design change for...
Publish for...
Adapt lifestyle for...
Build relationships for...
Creatively express for...
Run workshops for...
Make media for...
Teach in order to...
Social enterprise for...
• Supporting students to apply their knowledge, skills, and understandings in a way that positively contributes to the identified challenge (How).
• Helping students not only to do and give but also to learn, experience, and share when in the presence of others.
• Helping students collect evidence to evaluate whethertheir action/creation has had an impact or needs to be adapted to ensure future impact.
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REFLECT
AES Engagement Cycle
Educators and students will consistently and intentionally reflect on their academic and personal growth throughout the experience. Reflection is key to identifying opportunities for further growth, optimizing the impact of our actions and efforts, and helping AES to realize their mission.
Educators will support intentional reflection by: • Developing reflection activities for students. • Helping students to log their reflections in portfolios or learning journals. • Differentiating the types of reflections so that they are meaningful and personally relevant. • Collecting evidence on the growth of the AES Learning Habits as a means of reflecting on how we live our mission. • Reflecting on select questions from the Engage cycle and students’ answers to the Motto. For example, How did you Enter to Learn. Leave to Serve? How did you use your learning to better serve your local or global community?
Enter to Learn. Leave to Serve.