At a national gathering of teachers engaged in service learning, my colleague and I described what makes Need in Deed's My Voice program different: "We begin by asking students what they care about. The service-learning plan that follows is based on what we hear them say."
Silence. "You ask the kids?" the facilitator responded, almost incredulous. "What an interesting idea!"
It sounds so obvious, doesn't it? That doesn't mean that our approach is easy. It takes time and patience to listen. If we ask hard questions, we are obliged to listen to the answers. But the payoff can be profound.
Feminist Nelle Morton (1985) uses the phrase "hearing into speech" to describe her approach to working with children with learning disabilities and with battered women—people who have been silenced to the point that they lose their ability to function. When we listen to students, affirm their concerns, and mirror back to them what we've heard, we are giving them back their own power and voice, hearing them into speech. If that's all we've accomplished, that's quite a lot.
Start at the Center
My Voice is a process of self-discovery. Who am I as a one-of-a-kind human being, endowed with unique gifts and sensibilities? What do I do well? What life experiences have shaped me and made me who I am? Answering these questions is the first step toward understanding and appreciating our gifts and talents.
Our hallmark exercise is the I.D. (identity) Plaque, an exercise in self-discovery that begins with the flash from a Polaroid camera. We staple each student's photo in the center of a piece of brightly colored card stock on which we have printed four questions: "What are your favorite TV shows and movies?" "What words describe you?" "What do you care about?" "What are you good at?" From the start, students know that we are there to find out more about them—to hear who they are and what they care about.
Often, students resist being photographed. At the same time, they like the attention. We take only one photo of each student, even though many complain that they "look funny." This is not a beauty pageant, we explain.
Each portrait captures a child's essence at a moment in time. When displayed together, they make a statement about the group—its diversity, energy, and spirit. Many teachers save students' I.D. plaques in portfolios that travel with the student from one year to the next.
Life Experience, a Rich Resource
We've all heard the expression "turning lemons into lemonade." This aphorism describes the powerful phenomenon of choosing to frame things positively and to view problems not as obstacles that confound but as challenges that transform.
The Reflection is an exercise for older children and adults that calls forth those life-transforming experiences. It is a guided conversation that focuses on the art of listening (Carini, 1979).
"Tell us about a time when you did something kind and caring for someone or when someone did something kind and caring for you," we say. As facilitators, we help the students articulate their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. We use the information from these stories to inform the direction for the service project. The activity also has less-expected outcomes.
We got to know Martin in a Reflection that we led in a 6th grade class. Martin was small for his age and wore thick glasses. He seemed to have no close friends in the class. He responded well to the Reflection, during which he mentioned that his brother was deaf. No one, not even his teacher, knew. Martin explained that he learned sign language to "talk" with his brother. Suddenly, the group froze in attention.
"You mean, you know sign language?" blurted one of the bigger, more popular boys. "Show me how to say, 'What's up?'"
"How do you say, 'Cool'?" asked another.
Martin is no longer invisible to his classmates. His generously shared experience of active compassion—helping interpret the world to his brother through sign language—gained him currency among his peers.
An alternative to the Reflection activity is "Tell me about a time. . . ." We invite children to interview someone in their family about a time when a parent or a grandparent was afraid, for example. Often, children hear stories that parents had never shared. Students can then apply their academic skills—listening, note taking, question posing—to the retelling of a rich story. Also, by involving a family member, we uncover resources that we can use later: a mother who is a judge, a grandfather who was involved in the Civil Rights movement, and so on.
Sad World, Happy World
Several My Voice exercises help students find a focus for their energies and gifts. Sad World, Happy World is one.
"What in the world makes you happy?" we ask. "What makes you sad?" When we ask children in kindergarten what makes them sad, we hear many concerns about personal safety. A host of fears, real and imagined, inhabit the minds of 5-year-olds: "snakes under the bed," "when someone punches me," "someone pulling my hair," "houses burning down," "kidnapping," "when someone pushes me down on the playground," "scary dogs," "when my dad drinks beer and acts crazy."
Older children have a greater awareness of the world around them and so will mention broader social issues, although occasionally personal concerns invade the list: guns in school, killing, fighting, diseases, drugs, child abuse, animal abuse, smoking, pollution, littering, rape, and failing in school. We catalog the responses, using the children's exact words.
To help students sharpen the point of their concerns and focus on a particular problem, we lead them in an exercise called "If I could change one thing in the world." We ask them to name an issue that's important to them, then tell us why it is important and what they might do to effect change by using their gifts and talents.
Hear how a 3rd grader described his concern about hurtful discrimination: If I could change one thing in the world, I would change all differences of color and skin, size, and age. I would put everybody into a different school—skin school, size school, age school. I would do that because people tease each other because they are different.
After leading students through several exercises, we present them with their group portrait. In TV-game-show fashion, we call out a question: "What do you think were the five most quoted responses to the category 'Things I am good at'?" We have the answers; they have to guess. The classroom explodes with energy over this simple, yet powerfully affirming game. In essence, we are holding up a mirror so that the students can see who they are. Invariably, they like what they see.
The last category in the game uses the top five social issues that concern the class. The service-learning project is derived from one of these student-identified issues.
Jumping directly to the project or issue, and avoiding the up-front preparation, tempts many well-meaning teachers. "There is a soup kitchen right down the street. Let's focus on hunger this year!" This direction becomes even more tempting once a group has experienced success. Lesson plans and assessment tools lie ready and waiting for next year's crop of students. Teachers breathe easily. "Whew! We've got that worked out."
The danger in short-circuiting the process is that we remove the students from the equation. Next year's students may, indeed, be moved to address the problem of hunger. But if we don't ask them, we have cut them out of the conversation. The simple act of asking students, engaging them in the issue-identification process, has power. The conversation itself ignites motivation.
Heroes, Celebrities, or Just Plain Folks?
The next step in the My Voice process is meeting and talking with positive adult role models who are actively addressing the social problems that the group has named.
Most of these adults are ordinary citizens who work for social service agencies—organizations that not only address problems but also advocate for change. Here are a few snapshots taken from our scrapbook of positive adult role models.
When members from Dignity Housing visited a 3rd grade classroom, they invited along a formerly homeless woman to share her story. After the students heard how the woman's children, who had experienced trouble in school, were now making As and Bs, they stood at their seats and applauded!
Sandra Simkins is a public defender who works with adjudicated youth. She spoke with 5th graders concerned about teenage crime. The students learned that these teens have one thing in common: truancy. Truancy then became the focus for their class research.
Brother Al, a member of a religious order, helps run a soup kitchen at a nearby church. He talked with students about the needs of the poor.
By introducing young people to these positive adult role models, we help them engage both head and heart. They develop empathy, find out more about real-world problems, and feel safer knowing that competent people are working hard to right the world's wrongs.
Advocacy in Academics
The My Voice process next moves from identifying the social issue to learning more about it. Teachers often find that classroom speakers bring a wealth of ideas for making the link with the community authentic and powerful. People working tirelessly for social change are refreshed and energized by the spirit of young people. Most are only too glad to offer ideas for meaningful connections between the curriculum and the community—particularly if the focus is advocacy.
After meeting the public defender and hearing her opinion about the causes of delinquency, the 5th grade class concerned about teenage crime became even more intrigued. We identified a program in the Philadelphia School District that works with kids who have dropped out of or have been suspended from school. After speaking with the director, we invited teens in the program to visit the class. The 5th graders used their interviewing and note-taking skills to listen to and record the teens' stories; the teens had the opportunity to tell how they had turned their lives around. The teacher then gave the 5th graders an unusual assignment, by way of reflection: Write a letter to yourself when you are 18 years old, which you can read on graduation day. What decisions do you hope you will make? Which of your accomplishments will make you the most proud?
A class of 3rd graders said that thinking about poor people made them sad. We invited Brother Al to talk with them about all the ways that his church was helping the poor. Later, the students walked to St. Vincent's Church, where Brother Al took them on a tour of the church's soup kitchen, emergency food cupboard, literacy program, and medical and legal counseling centers. The students wrote thank-you letters to Brother Al and designed placemats for the soup kitchen. Next, the children read "Stone Soup," a classic children's story. Their teacher led them in a reflection, focusing on the power that the villagers discover when they come together to solve a community problem. Contributing vegetables that they brought from home, the students made minestrone soup, which a volunteer later delivered to the soup kitchen.
An independent boy's school in Baltimore asked us to introduce the My Voice process into their middle school. A survey of the 5th graders revealed their concern about pollution and the environment and the war in Kosovo. Our research showed that the local Red Cross was supplying material aid to Kosovar refugees who were housed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Realizing the difificult logistics involved in running a clothing drive for the refugees, the school directed the boys toward an environmental project: cleaning up and planting trees at two nearby nature centers. Either project was likely to succeed because both addressed real concerns of the 5th grade boys.
Finding Your Voice
The culmination of the My Voice process is giving voice to our passions. It focuses on the Latin root of advocate—vocare, which means "to call."
A culminating event that lends itself to this expression is Kids Speak Out. Students address a forum of adults—parents, teachers, members of the community, and friends—to demonstrate what they have learned about the social issues they have researched. Students help plan the event by designing the printed program, and they serve as greeters at the door.
Here the My Voice process comes full circle. In the first step of the process, we ask participants what they are good at, what gifts and talents they possess. Now we invite students to draw on those gifts to express their concerns—through painting, poetry, composing raps, presenting dramatic performances, reading letters to the editor, and delivering persuasive speeches. Children who have experienced the power of such an event seldom forget it.
The most important value of service, service learning, and, in fact, education lies not in the facts we can recite, the beautifully crafted essays we can compose, or the projects that earn us top grades. The most enduring value comes with the connection to our own deepest selves—to the place where empathy and compassion live. Once we have tapped that core being, once we know what that feels like, we will want to go there again.
Knowing how to get there ourselves and then leading the way may be the most important gift we can give our children.
