Service-Learning Helps Create Safe &Drug-Free Schools & Communities

Introduction:  Service-Learning and Prevention

The connections between service-learning and prevention are deep and basic.  Perhaps the deepest and most basic is this:  Young people who are engaged in defining, solving and evaluating solutions to problems are less likely to be overcome by those problems.  And service-learning provides many opportunities for young people to define, solve and evaluate solutions to problems.

What are the other connections between service-learning and prevention?
     Consider some other components of prevention:

• norms and laws that promote health and safety
• family participation
• clearly state and enforced rules
• access to resources
• ability to learn and use skills

For example, The Giraffe Project is a service-learning program that provides students with stories of people who have "stuck their necks out" for their community and then gives students the opportunity to do similar things for their own community.  All the while it is teaching them skills to be successful.  Depending on what students choose to do, they can be supporting norms and laws that promote health an safety, involving their families in their projects, working within clear and enforced political guidelines, gaining access to school and community resources, and learning and using skills in ways that relate to their world.  In a program like The Giraffe Project, the line between service-learning and prevention is so blurry as to be indistinct.

David Hawkins and Richard Catalano, at Development Research and Programs, Inc. are the foremost authorities on risk behavior and prevention.  They point out in numerous articles, and in their book Parents Who Care: A Guide for Families with Teens (1996), the importance of bonding with families and communities.  Young people who bond with a pro-social institution, e.g. family, school, church, community, are less likely to violate the standards of that institution.  And one of the most effective ways for bonding to occur is to engage young people in helping make their school, community, church and family a better place.  This kind of prevention goes beyond risk reduction; this help young people build resiliency, so they can more ably ward off the threats that inevitably come with adolescence.

The key to effective prevention as well as effective service-learning is that students are actively engaged in defining, solving, and evaluating the solutions to problems.  They're not merely listening to someone else's opinion.  They're not just watching a video about yet another situation they should avoid.  They're not sponging up information; they're causing something to happen in their environment and growing as a result.

Students learn in these programs how to negotiate, organize, set a goal and work toward it.  These are "life skills." They stay with the individual.  They transfer over to a variety of significant situations, outside any curriculum or school boundary.

Bonnie Bernard conclude in "Youth Service:  From Youth as Problems to Youth as Resources", that youth participation in socially valued tasks is perhaps the most critical protective factor in preventing social problems like substance abuse.  Prevention is more than avoiding trouble.  And service-learning is more than doing good deeds.  The issue could be drugs, AIDS, violence or something yet to be defined.  When students are defining, solving, and evaluating the solutions to problems, through structured activities with adult mentors, they benefit.  And so does everyone else.

This chart describes elements found in effective school based Prevention/Intervention programs and gives examples of ways service-learning enhances these elements.
 

Elements of Effective Substance Abuse Prevention Program	How Service-Learning Can Enhance Programs
K-12 Instructional Programs   Programs are most effective if they are experiential.	As students engage in activities where they serve and teach others, skills are reinforced.
Student Engagement  Programs are most effective if they involve students in developing the program.	Service-Learning, by its very nature, involves students in the design and implementation of service activities.
School Policies and Procedures   Clear school and community policies which apply to all are essential for there to be clear, and significant consequences.	If students are involved in designing and implementing policies, the policies are most likely to be effective.
Intervention, Transition and Support   Effective programs have a comprehensive program to assist youth in the transition back into their school and family lives.	Students who transition successfully often make the best mentors and can provide invaluable support and insights.
Parent Engagement/Parent Education and Family Support   Parent Involvement and Education is critical for prevention and intervention depend on family support.	Students can provide child care to make parent education programs possible and they can help develop education materials and presentations.
Community Norms Support Drug-Free Behaviors  Families, peers and the community at large need to model in and encourage drug-free life styles and make adulthood attractive.	Peer support for drug-free lifestyles is critical.  If young people help provide a rich variety of drug-free, fun activities, they can help adolescents make positive choices.

While the emphasis in the 1980's was on teaching young people about the dangers, and physical and mental consequences of drug use, and teaching them how to resist involvement by learning some specific strategies to say "no", educators are realizing that communities and schools need to create meaningful activities that make positive choices more attractive than negative choices.  Therefore, a lot of schools with drug-free school programs are beginning to focus on programs that encourage youths to say "yes" to positive activities.

In addition, research on at-risk youth is beginning to identify those factors that enable people (even in the worst conditions) to make positive choices as a young person and later as an adult.  Among those factors is the involvement in meaningful activities and assuming roles of responsibility and real consequence, such as service-learning.  Service-learning engages young people in problem-solving activities; in structured and guided environments that have real consequences.  Preventionalists support the notion of youth participation in socially valued tasks as perhaps the most critical protective factor in preventing social problems like substance abuse. (Bernard, 1990)

Others believe that educators, prevention professionals, parents, and communities in general must provide the opportunities for youth to be the resources they truly are and not the problems we think them to be. (Levine, 1983) Emmy E. Werner, a professor and child psychologist at the University of California at Davis, conducted a study of children who have overcome great odds.  She found that more competent adults had in their teenage years taken on responsible, needed positions, including paid and part-time work, caring for siblings, or managing a household for an incapacitate parent.  Such acts of required helpfulness are key elements of effective intervention programs

Aberdeen Service-Learning Project    Connecting students, classrooms and community Northern State University                                                                           Aberdeen, SD 57401  servlc@northern.edu