The use of service-learning was successful and worth repeating. I liked giving students the option of doing service-learning, and I was pleased that half of the class chose to do it. In my opinion, it makes the work more meaningful if students are allowed to decide whether or not to participate. I will use it in a new course that I will teach, “Women and Reform,” a 600-level seminar course in history that includes both graduates and undergraduates. This course differs primarily because of its size: it has 30 students and will be discussion based, compared to the 50-person lecture format of “Women’s History.”
I believe service-learning helped students to realize that different populations exist even in a small city like Lawrence, Kansas. I do not believe that all of my students had this understanding before they did their projects. They also made assumptions about gender equity that were then challenged by their service-learning experiences. For example, when this student population was growing up, males and females had relatively equal access to educational and athletic opportunities and they also expected to earn equal wages as adult workers. The reality is that inequality continues to exist, as does a gender wage gap. If we only talk about wage gap in class, the students do not get it—disparity does not seem real to them. The service-learning experiences helped them engage with people who are living with inequality in more pronounced ways than students are. For example, students who volunteered at agencies that offered childcare developed a deeper understanding of the intersections among race, class, and gender. They saw parents drop off their children, and they began to note such particulars as the gender of the parents (most are single moms), and the length of day for the child. These observations helped them understand that inequality is not just about money alone. Rather, compounding issues create barriers to equality, such as control of one’s money and time, access to modes of transportation, and kinds of flexibility one has with his or her job.
I want to change the course calendar so that students have an opportunity to talk about their service-learning projects earlier in the semester instead of waiting until the end. I also think it will be helpful in class discussions to ask students to discuss more about service when we are discussing readings.
I put the students in groups according to their topic, and the groups included students doing both research and service-learning. I like that combination; however, I think it will be helpful in the future to add an outline for the final presentation that will encourage the research students to present background history, the service-learning students to discuss present-day issues, and a third segment of the class that explicitly links the two areas.
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