SERVICE LEARNING

OVERVIEW

Community Service within the First Program has been broadened and redefined to encompass the more comprehensive term, “Service Learning,” a reciprocal teaching/ learning framework that enhances community building within the curriculum and provides students with authentic goals and purposes for helping others on a local, national, and global level. From the beginning, students are immersed in rich, ethics-related conversations and projects generated from literature, classroom interactions, and student experiences. Meaningful, actionable projects are integrated with the First Program House Curriculum, and children enter into caring, reciprocal relationships with others over long periods of time.

Children in grades K–3 also take part in school-wide servicelearning initiatives that help to encourage positive self-esteem, develop global understanding, and build school spirit. Interested second and third grade students are able to join the First Program Human Rights Club. Initially created by students, children learn firsthand about fundamental rights and responsibilities and develop and initiate fundraising projects on the local and global levels.

KINDERGARTEN

Beginning in Kindergarten, each House and Grade Level Team develops at least one service-based project or initiative each year. Such activities include studies in Kindergarten that relate to food, clothing, and shelter, becoming rich learning opportunities to extend the children’s understanding of individuals within their immediate environment who may lack these essentials. The children problem-solve possible solutions, and this, in turn, leads to the development of ongoing exchanges between Kindergarten classes at Dalton and city-based organizations that provide services to those in need, such as Homes for the Homeless and the Yorkville Common Pantry.

FIRST GRADE

The mission of the first-grade service-learning curriculum is to provide first graders with opportunities for responsible citizenship, where a passion for a just and equitable world is cultivated. Students engage in a variety of activities where they enjoy a spirit of cooperation and a sense of local and global citizenship. They participate in a walk-a-thon that raises funds to promote literacy in underserved communities and on Earth Day, donate reusable bags to a local grocery store.

SECOND GRADE

The second-grade service-learning goals include providing experiential opportunities that seek to broaden the children’s understanding of the world around them and their responsibility to the world. Emphasis has been placed on creating awareness about global issues related to sustainability. Students have taken actions within their own classrooms, homes, and communities to reduce pollution and overuse of resources and have pledged to encourage others to do the same. Students also focus on ways to help the earth in their everyday lives at home and school. As a grade, they work together to create informative oral and video presentations about the importance of the three “R”s (reducing, reusing, recycling) and also participate in organizing a school-wide battery drive.

THIRD GRADE

For third graders, service-learning experiences provide children opportunities to learn about communities outside their own, establish a connection with members of that community, develop an awareness of alternate perspectives, discuss similarities and differences, identify injustices, and take action to participate in efforts that support the needs of that community. Examples include leading a Coins for Change drive at First Program and organizing a student Roundtable for the distribution of funds that are collected. Third grade students take on a leadership role by helping their classmates to identify meaningful causes and to research specific institutions related to those causes. They organize a division-wide election that helps the whole community to participate in the decision-making process for distributing the funds, which are later donated to various charitable organizations.