Service Learning and Sustainability Institute

Aims:

To develop foundational knowledge about Service Learning and Sustainability and how to embed these within classrooms, schools, with community. Opportunities to engage in collaboration on service learning models, system thinking tools, partnerships, impacts, resources, service learning and sustainability units/assessments, and engaging teaching strategies to help educators successfully embed at their schools. Participants will gain a greater awareness of their own systems contexts, skill in using systems thinking tools and the ability to successfully incorporate and align sustainability with existing curriculum. Understanding the IBDP CAS Guidelines and the standards and benchmarks for service learning integration will be explored.

Enduring Understandings:

• Service learning provides meaningful opportunities to expand knowledge, apply concepts, develop skills and dispositions, and gain insight and understanding of community for agency and impact.
• Systems thinking enables educators to help their students develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to participate in a complex and interdependent world.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Understanding what service learning is, and why all schools need a service learning program based on research. 
2. Knowledge of how to implement the standards of service learning in a current unit through engaging instructional strategies for learner agency and impact. 
3. Know how to set up meaningful community partnerships for projects, sustainability and impact.
4. Discuss the imperative for sustainability education and Identify sustainability dispositions and examine their compatibility with personal educational philosophy and institutional values
5. Understand the Compass as a whole system thinking tool supporting sustainability habits of mind. Explore the educational uses of systems thinking tools (behavior over time graphs, closed loop diagrams and the Iceberg Model)
6. Examine how sustainability perspectives and systems thinking tools can be integrated into teaching and learning by adapting a unit/lesson plans to integrate sustainability perspectives and systems thinking tools

Participants will spend approximately 3 hours online and two hours of independent study and application of learning each day.

Instructor/Facilitator and Feedback:

To receive the Level 1 Serve Learn and Level 1 Compass certificate of participation participants need to complete all learning activities. Detailed feedback will be provided on the performance tasks that form the basis of the course summative assessments at the end of the workshop on Day 5. 

Note: Those wishing to receive the ‘Compass Practitioner’ (Level 1) certification will need to submit an application for certification including appropriate evidence.

Required Reading:

• Barton, T. (2019). Service Learning Vs Community Service: Why All Schools Need A Service Learning Program Now! 
• Barton, T. (2019). Building An Inquiry Based Learning Continuum: Checklist Included
• AtKisson, A. (2011) Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist’s World. Earthscan Publishing.
• Webster K, and Johnson, C. (2010) Sense and Sustainability: Educating for a Circular Economy. TerraPreta 2010 in association with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and InterfaceFLOR.