Learning from Disaster
Assessments are opportunities for students to creatively reflect on their experiences and link them to the academic content. The assessments for CHCH101 were both structured and open-ended invitations for students to connect their experiences and content through four modules: caring, helping, connecting, and healing.36 Intentionality was paramount in our approach and learning goals for this course. We continually stayed true to service-learning’s goal of engaging students with the community to help meet the needs of that community. Extending this, students brought what they were learning in class to their experiences in a relevant way. One student, Waata, clearly captured this intentionality with the following observation: I could see connections between what I was learning in my classes and the relevance of what I was witnessing first hand in my community. It is strange to think that creativity like this could be fostered in the midst of such destruction. I think that learning takes place when your ego is in a state of submission or servitude. I believe this because being able to let go of a currently held belief requires humility in order to accept the possibility of another truth…I was outside of my comfort zone…[and] the motivation and determination I felt when faced with the aftermath of the disaster that befell Christchurch spilled into all areas of my life.37 Waata’s critical reflection on his service experience demonstrates the connection he made, the observation of creativity’s birth in destruction, and the permeative effect of powerful service. Another student, Andrew, recognized the value in critical reflection and the acceptance of that reflection in creative, individual ways with the following perspective: It is the process of taking time to reflect on the understanding that has been gained, and reassessing the habitual action that has been quietly churning away in the background… this was one of the first times I had to formally reflect upon the greater meaning my experiences had on my life’s purpose.38 From pre- and post-course surveys of the CHCH101 course, it has become apparent that the most robust learning outcome and source of greatest improvement for students is not the actual service they performed or the academic content knowledge obtained, but rather their understanding of critical thinking and the process associated with it. This obser48
vation has been substantiated by the evident shifts in students’ critical thinking about their experiences through their assessments, and significant increases in critical thinking according to pre- and post-course surveys.39 Course-based service-learning served as the vehicle for student engagement in conjunction with disaster response to be formalized and intentionally associated with UC. While CHCH101 was only a small component to the overall community-engagement portrait of UC (i.e., a single course) it served as the bridge between the students’ call to service and the university’s acceptance of it. In conclusion, our approach—i.e., building a course around prior service experience —was rare and appropriate to our situation. Alternatively, co-authors of this article have used responsive service-learning courses to engage students in group-based and individual service concurrent to the implementation of the academic course. Likewise, others have made different choices in the academic content which served as the foundation for the course; while we focused on the study of civic engagement and reflective practice, faculty and staff at the University of Vermont, for example, framed their courses around the disastermanagement cycle, using disaster management as the primary academic content of the course. Despite these differences, we shared a common commitment to the roots of servicelearning practice—a focus on academic learning goals and a desire to meet genuine needs of our community after a disaster. Case Study #2: Service-Learning as Alternative Break As noted earlier, educational philosopher John Dewey provided a theoretical framework for community-based experiential learning, laying the foundation for a number of high impact educational practices. His emphasis on action-oriented, collaborative, real-world problem solving is seen as a key component of teaching and learning. The context for this type of problem solving in higher education often takes place in the curriculum, but it can also be highly effective in the co-curricular setting. Alfred State, one of five technology colleges within the State University of New York (SUNY) system, enrolls approximately 3,700 students. The seventy associate and bachelor degrees include a wide diversity of majors such as architecture, forensic science, culinary arts, network administration, and welding technology. The pre-professional majors that dominate Alfred State’s curriculum have led toward the natural inclusion of courses that include hands-on application. Project-based learning is a fundamental component to teaching and learning, and is a common theme of the Alfred State student experience.