Learn & Serve Grants Learn & Serve Leaders' Institute Courtyard by Marriott Savannah, Georgia Friday, May 14, 2004 Making Service Leaning an Integral Part of Your School's Curricular Choices and Instructional Practices Learn and Serve grants are as much about building schools' capacity to integrate service learning into their curricular choices and instructional practices as they are about carrying out service learning projects. We want to create an ongoing learning cycle that will result in demonstration schools. The goal of American schools is not to be first internationally in mathematics or science, or to teach basic skills or critical thinking, or to graduate students from high school. At best, these are sub goals of the larger, single goal of public education...[to] prepare students to become productive citizens of our democracy... Our country would be better served by schools that produce caring, intelligent, and wise citizens who willingly engage in the work of a democracy than by schools that produce graduates who do well on isolated sub goals. -- Carl D. Glickman Democratic Learning, which includes service learning, addresses this purpose. The purpose of democratic learning is to provide all students with strong academic and social skills, problem-solving abilities, and civic attitudes that will equip them to work for a better democratic life for all. Democratic Learning is: Students working actively with problems, ideas, materials, and people as they learn skills and content. Students having escalating degrees of choice within the parameters provided by the teachers. Students contributing to their community through their learning. Students demonstrating their learning in pubic settings and receiving public feedback. Students being assessed according to high academic standards. Democratic Learning is not just one more thing. It is meant to guide and inform what teachers are already doing and, in some cases, replace what teachers are doing. Before Democratic Learning can become an integral part of your school's curricular choices and instructional practices, your school must be a democratic learning community. Think of Democratic Learning as a seed and the democratic learning community as a well-tilled, fertile plot of land. Protocols are tools that promote democratic learning communities for teachers and students. Before Democratic Learning can become an integral part of your school's curricular choices and instructional practices, everyone must understand how it fits into your mission. By June 30, 2004, each school's Leadership Team will have an understanding of how it will support and facilitate the implementation of the Learn and Serve grant.