Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/2866
Lydia Lambert, Erica Best, Lisa Bolton and Mandeed Chahal discuss the One Dollar for Life project at Los Altos High School. Below: History teacher Robert Freeman, a Mountain View Los Altos Union High School Teachers Association member, talks about the ODFL project. ing people together.” “It’s a quilt, but it’s also a melting pot of everybody coming together,” says student Brooke Brewer, who created one of the squares. “It’s symbolic of how we want things to be.” Education in public policy At Foulks Ranch Elementary School in and then decided their service learning project should focus on increasing toler- ance among the school’s own student body, which is about 60 percent black and 40 percent Latino. “They saw an electronic quilt at the mu- seum that r epresented di verse back- Tips to start a service learning project in your school > Meet a real community need. > Integrate into and enhance curriculum. > Coordinate with a community agency, another school or the community at large. > Help foster civic responsibility. > Provide structured time for refl ection. grounds. And when we got back, we dis- cussed what the school really needed,” says Huynh, a member of United Teachers Los Angeles. “Many students said they felt they were not well represented — and that their community was not represented well — so they created a quilt here to represent ev- eryone at the school.” That included the school’s peer educa- tion club devoted to HIV a wareness; cheerleaders; the volleyball t eam; the choir; the Junior State of America, a non- partisan group that promotes student ac- tivism on elections and other issues; and the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Those attending the urban campus have responded positively to the work of art created by her students, says Huynh. “It has improved both school and community awareness,” she says. “There is often ten- sion going on here, and this is a way of putting things out in the open and bring- Elk Grove near Sacramento, fifth-graders understand concepts like justice, equality and fairness through participation in Proj- ect Citizen (www.civiced.org), a program that promotes engagement in local and state government. The goal is to help them learn how to monitor and influence public policy. “This definitely promotes thinking beyond one’s self,” says teacher Jim Bentley, a member of the Elk Grove Education Association. “We