Service-Learning for the History Student

Anna Lindner

November 18, 2015

The Relevance of History in Service-Learning

This semester, I am taking Spanish Capstone and four history classes. It’s a good thing I’m a history major, because that’s a lot of history, and it’s sometimes overwhelming. I will admit, I tend to be a person stuck in the past. Rather than the future, I think about how the past has impacted our current realities. For me, history isn’t some abstract discipline. It’s strikingly relevant to my life, and every day in class, I get to connect historical events to our world today, which I find inspiring. As an ABSL coordinator, I engage with the academic aspect of service-learning. I try to have an interdisciplinary approach to my job and my academics, which, of course, means relating service-learning to history. I have been the liaison for African history this past semester, so I wrote the following description of service-learning as it pertains to history.

Service-Learning in the History Department:

The history department, by virtue of its nature, could and, I believe, should have a close relationship with the Service-Learning Center. History is not merely the study of the past; it is also an investigation of humans, the way they perceive and then try to interpret the world around them. In order to learn about history, we as students engage with readings, listen to lectures, and write papers. I personally find these processes to be, when I’m not too stressed out, life-giving.

But is there a way to render the study of people in their cultural contexts more fully, more creatively, more humanly? Perhaps we can learn not only from written texts, but active, living texts as well. Meeting people in both our local and global communities could connect the knowledge saturating our heads with what is currently happening in the world.

I study history because I care about classism, racism, and sexism; I care about justice because I study history. For me, the two are inextricably intertwined: interdisciplinary, and mutually giving. Studying history reminds me of the world surrounding me, but engaging in the surrounding world reminds me why I care about history. The problems of classism, racism, and sexism are not some abstract topics detailed in thick books and locked away in a vault of dusty tomes. No; they actively shape the world in which I live. They intimately affect my neighborhood, my classmates; they affect me.

Service-learning has been essential in my growth as a student and as a person. It allows me to step out of myself, to (literally) step out of the world that has been carved out for me, simply by virtue of my wealth, privilege, and caring family. During those ventures out of comfort, I’m forcibly reminded that this is the real world, full of pain, sorrow, and desperation. But at the same time, there exists remarkable wisdom, hope, and amazing resilience. As I get older, I hope to learn more deeply and fully how to service-learn not to assert my own superiority, but affirm the worth of others. If at all possible, we struggle to put ourselves out there purely because we have discovered invaluable lessons to be learned from those whom we originally assumed we were trying to serve. After many awkward and even painful interactions during service-learning, I receive something invaluable: not the feeling that I helped someone, but that I connected to someone as a fellow human, and thereby gain a genuine friendship and the wisdom they share with me.

For me, Service-Learning has become merely code for another idea: human connection. We purposefully enter an uncomfortable space and inadvertently learn way too much about ourselves. As history students, we are privy to the wisdom of centuries of philosophers, theologians, rulers, scholars, and revolutionaries. But it’s not only the greats who make history. It’s also the common people who contributed to the history we have today. And so we, as common people privileged with the opportunity to learn, should crave the opportunity to connect with other common people who may just one day form the history that future history students will one day study. 

"Voluntary Simplicity"

I love Grand Rapids. I've become quite comfortable here. The hot summers filled with fireflies and beach visits make up for the spiteful, stinging winters. There's something about comfort, though, that allows me to start thinking, "Yeah, I'm pretty awesome." In places of comfort, I often fool myself into a kind of blissful complacency when it comes to evaluating my own character. However, I've found I'm never allowed to remain happily ignorant for long...

More than one person has told me that I don't deal with change very well. In all fairness, I've experienced more than my fair share of "big life changes" moving back and forth from Colorado to Japan to South Korea. I would say I adapt pretty well, but those people are right; change in my life is usually met by great resistance and a shocking volume of tears. I'm moving into my senior year at Calvin, and as though I weren't facing enough change, my nineteen-year-old sister has moved in with me. Suffice it to say we have never gotten along.

At the Service-Learning Center, we have a summer reader filled with insightful articles that introduce old and new staff to service-learning as pedagogy and life philosophy. This week's article was titled "Preparing the Way for Justice." Lofty, right? "Here we go..." I thought as I dove into the reading. After skimming my way through a discussion of Kant's Metaphysics and Morals, my eyes and mind slowed down to read about the application of these metaphysics and morals through the lens of Thomas Merton's Life and Holiness. The spiritual discipline of "voluntary simplicity" especially caught my eye. Bradford Hadaway, the author, was presenting spiritual disciplines like voluntary simplicity as a teaching method for introducing students to a deeper understanding of service-learning. As always, such practices just as useful outside the classroom as inside. The author writes that, "simplicity expressed as a spiritual discipline is first and foremost an attempt to clear away things that clutter both our inner and outer lives." My mother, ever-ready with her piercing insights of my character flaws, told me yesterday the reason I don't get along with my sister is because we have inherently different value systems. Over 20+ years, she noticed that I value materials, while my sister values relationships. Both have their benefits and pitfalls, she told me. I take good care of my possessions but cling to tightly to them sometimes. My sister takes good care of her friends but sometimes can't see when helping them is hurting them. Needless to say, the fullness of both our personalities clash when my stuff is scratched, broken, or otherwise carelessly strewn around. I'm person that likes explanations more than coincidences, so as much as it makes me cringe to admit it, sometimes articles, conversations, rainbows, or what-have-you catch me at just the right moment and make me think hard about the space between who I am and who I'm called to be.

With all this change happening, I've had plenty of opportunities to be reminded that I'm not nearly as good, patient, understanding, and generous as I sometimes think I am. Hadaway writes, "The practice of the spiritual disciplines in their thick sense can develop the moral imagination necessary to break out of our narrow and limited perspectives about how the world operates and what people are like." Service-learning is all about discomfort. It's about the life-value-changing, world-rocking, headache-generating activity of making ourselves vulnerable enough for our flaws to be exposed and to be reminded that things aren't always as they seem. I honestly may never get along swimmingly with my sister, but her presence reminds me that I'm called to "lay up treasures in heaven" and not cling to desperately to my "stuff." As for being a senior, I still dislike the prospect of leaving the comfort I've found in Grand Rapids in less than one year, but maybe I can welcome the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of God's work in other cities.

Peace,

Anna
StreetFest Coordinator

Blessed to Be a Blessing

‘Blessed to be a blessing’ is a quote that I love. I heard it at church over the summer and continue to find it more and more true in my life. And even though StreetFest 2011 wrap-up is officially complete as of October, 1, I will not soon forget this summer and how amazingly blessed I am to have had the opportunity to be a blessing to others in just a small way. For a short time following StreetFest, it was hard to see the positive outcomes. The evaluations that
flooded in were encouraging at times, but also discouraging at others- seeing what went bad, what didn’t run smoothly, what could have gone better, and so on.


BUT, Just a few days ago, a transfer student stopped in the office and asked me how he could get involved with StreetFest next year!! A transfer student! Who liked StreetFest! Who now wants to get involved! Ahh!!! This just about made my day. Ok not even just about, it DID make my day. Some days, the awesomeness of what was StreetFest 2011 still catches me off guard.

Anyways… this run-in was just one more reminder for me of how the work we do isn’t really about us and what we get from it, but rather it’s about inspiring other people to get involved – and that THAT is the best outcome. In the big picture things won't always go perfectly, and there will always be people who don’t enjoy StreetFest, but what’s more important and trumps all of that is that some people actually DO like it, or maybe even love it! Those stories are the ones that make all the work worth it, because in the long run it’s about helping people find the ‘on-ramp’ to the highway of living as a lifelong service-learner. That's what we do here at the Service-Learning Center and I will forever be glad to do so.

Now and always I am be blessed to be a blessing.

What about you?

Emily

Institute on College Student Values

I had the privilege of attending a small conference last weekend - the John C. Dalton Institute on College Student Values at Florida State University in Tallahassee. There were about 200 other conferees in attendance, from as far away as Alaska and Maine and California. Keynote speakers included Parker Palmer and Marcia Baxter Magolda, both of whom were excellent in their own ways. Workshops touched on topics ranging from Reflective Practices, to a better understanding of the Strengths Inventory, to an explanation of Aristotle's ideas about Eudaimonia. Two other workshops were offered by Calvin folks, in addition to mine, which was on Covenant-Making as Orienting Practice.

Ashley Pace, Calvin senior and Service-Learning Center student staff member, gave what may have been the only presentation by an undergraduate student at the conference - she talked about her summer research on findings from the CIRP and NSSE national surveys - trends that relate to how students are affected by service-learning practice on college campuses. And a group of three Resident Directors - Aaron Einfeld, Kyle Heys, and Annie Mas-Smith - presented on 4 practices in Calvin's Residence Life experience that foster benevolent purpose in Calvin students. I learned a lot, met new people, and came away with a deeper appreciation for the work that is done by way of the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College.

So many of the ideas that were presented were ideas that are essentially already underway, if not well established, in our office and among our students. For this we can be grateful. Do we have much to learn from others in different institutions? Absolutely. I made contacts and took notes, and have plans for sharing information and strategies with our group over the next several weeks. For now though, I am grateful for the opportunity to attend the Institute, yes; but more importantly, to return to work. 

Adelante.

Service-Learning Conference at Messiah College

Last week Thursday, Friday and Saturday found seven of us (four summer student staff and three of us from the professional staff) on the road to Grantham, Pennsylvania for the bi-annual national conference the folks at Messiah College host on Faith-Based Service-Learning.

http://www.messiah.edu/external_programs/agape/national_conference/about.html

On top of being a great road trip, we were able to meet some wonderful colleagues and learn about what is happening in the world of service-learning and civic engagement all around the country, and in same cases, the world. The conference theme was "Sustaining Our Call to Service," and there were excellent discussions about the many aspects of the theme over the three days of the conference. Dr. Richard Hughes gave the opening plenary address, and he went over a rationale for service as a central Christian practice, as well as a key practice found in religious traditions ranging from Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. He pointed out the need to see service as foundational to our faith-based practice, even if and when it becomes passe' among college students. Other plenaries included Gretchen VanderVeer, the Director of Leadership Development and Training for the Corporation for National and Community Service, and two panel discussions - one with local community partners from the Harrisburg area, and another with practitioners involved in international service-learning from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions within Christianity. Peppered in between the plenaries were a wide range of paper presentations and workshops. Meal times and breaks were full of deeper engagement with topics and practices, as well as institutional and geographic limitations, and wider discussions about the role of particular faith traditions in how service-learning looks 'on the ground' in various contexts.

I was able to visit the Harrisburg Institute on Friday afternoon, thanks to the hospitality of Dr. Susan Hasseler, the Dean of Messiah College's Dean of the School of Business, Education, the Social Sciences and Community Engagement, and Craig Dalen, the manager of the Harrisburg Institute. Situated in the heart of downtown Harrisburg, it houses 25 students committed to living and learning in the heart of urban Harrisburg, even while they take classes at the suburban campus 20 minutes away in Grantham.

We were energized by the conference. Lots of good conversation about ways to deepen partnerships, better assess learning, extend the conversation and the practice on our campuses, and collaborate one with another.

Reflections on Three Years at the Service-Learning Center

Reciprocity. The hyphen. Shalom. Community. Embrace your place. Discernment. Journey. Reflection.

These are all words I have heard frequently throughout my time at Calvin, and particularly in the three years I worked as a student in the Service-Learning Center.

Often, at least in ‘Calvin circles’, these words can become cliché losing their depth and significance.

There was a time during my career at Calvin that these words did lose significance for me, at least in a Christian sense. I clung strongly to the ideas of reciprocity, reflection and tolerance, but I had grown weary of the church and its institutionalism of Christ. I stopped attending church regularly and my prayer life was sparse.

Yet, every week we still gathered as a staff to share in community together, to talk about our work and at every meeting we would incorporate some Christian practices, such as reading or prayer. Although I would not choose to implement these practices into my life, the fact that I knew they meant a lot to my coworkers and supervisors ensured that I respected them and reflected upon them.

This year, my senior year at Calvin, has been a tough and yet beautiful year for me. I came into the year quite burned out from a hectic summer, yet determined to be involved in a variety of activities since the ability to multitask and do many things well was something that I used to define myself.

During this time I began attending a church that observed traditional Christian practices, and also maintained strong themes of justice, peace and gender equity – themes which I had felt were missing at other churches I had attended. I found a sense of assurance whenever I attended.

In November I fell mysteriously quite ill and with low energy and a high heart rate, I was forced to drop all the activities that I had used to define myself. I needed to learn to be okay with failure. I was propelled to admit my weaknesses and ask for help from other people.

And most of all I had to learn to place my concerns, my health, and the people I cared for in God’s hands. I had to discover that who I am is not defined by the things that I do, but by the Being who created me. These were hard lessons, but it was through embracing my community and taking time to reflect that I was able to fully embrace being in God’s loving arms.

A pinnacle of my journey this year took place on a Thursday night in the fall. I had missed about a month’s staff meetings due to my illness. The week I returned the theme of the meeting was faithfulness. I knew that in recognition of God’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of the love and care I had received from my co-workers I needed to be honest with how I was truly doing, both emotionally and physically. So, with a shaky voice, I shared with the group how I was honestly doing. To be that weak and vulnerable was incredibly difficult, but I felt compelled to be a witness of the journey God had been leading me on.

It was then that I realized what a gift it is to work in this office. The deep care that we share, the emphasis on community and the continual Christian practices have truly and deeply shaped me.

So what I have learned in my three years working in the Service-Learning Center? Well, my professional skills like event-planning and administration have definitely been honed. I have learned how to work both independently and within a team. I have also seen the importance of relationship building and been reminded of the fact that community is not limited by time or place. Yet, as I reflect I realize that all the phrases I started this post with have been worked more fully into my life. For me they are no longer cliché nor insignificant, they are instead phrases that shape the hope that I have and the way in which I live my life. Of course, I am broken and live within a broken world, so I often fall short of serving God’s purpose, but through ideas like reflection and journey I can learn and grow through my misgivings.

And in the end it comes back to hope. Hope of a God’s kingdom on earth. Hope for complete health in mind and body. Hope for a time when there is no brokenness. Hope in a God who deeply loves and cherishes all people.

How will what I have learned and experienced at the Service-Learning Center be demonstrated in my future? How will concepts like community, reciprocity and discernment be played out? Only God knows, and that gives me enough hope to continue on this journey.

Kelly DeVries
Graduate Summer Intern at the Service-Learning Center

Top Ten Reading List for Service-Learning

A friend wrote to ask me last week if I could come up with ten key resources that have most shaped my thinking on my work in service-learning. Below is what I came up with - I'm sure there are many more:

1. Nick Wolterstorff's 1982 commencement address at Wheaton College:
http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/mission.pdf on the mission of the Christian college at the end of the 20th century - all the theological/philosophical groundwork is here.

2. Deb Rienstra's wonderful book, So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality has a nice little chapter called, "The Work of our Hands: Serving God and Others" that provides great insight into the Christian virtue of service.

3. Richard Mouw's books When the Kings Come Marching In, and He Shines in all that's Fair provide great theological grounding for the idea that the now connects to the not-yet, and for common grace.

4. Gail Gunst Heffner and Claudia Beversluis edited a collection of essays in 2002 called Commitment and Connection: Service-Learning and Christian Higher Education. Both of their introductory essays lay out important frameworks for the conversation about service-learning for Christians and Christian colleges.

5. I reviewed a book a few years ago called The Spirit of Service: Exploring Faith, Service and Social Justice in Higher Education written primarily by faculty at Gustavus Adolphus College in MN. It was in important book for me to read because a few of the chapters were excellent ("Faith, Social Justice, and Service-Learning in Environmental Studies: The Struggle for Integration," by Mark Bjelland, and "Ora et Labora: Prayer and Service in an International Study Abroad Program," by Jenifer Ward) and most were not, at least to someone with Calvinist/Kuyperian sensibilities. It helped me figure out some of the differences between Lutherans and Calvinists in this area.

6. Charles Marsh's book, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today has been tremendously helpful with some theological accounts that connect social justice movements with the church over the past 50 years or so.

7. A short article called "Educating for Citizenship," by Caryn McTighe Musil that appeared in the journal Peer Review in 2003:
http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/educating_for_citizenship.pdf - it has a nice taxonomy that shows one way of thinking regarding how students develop through community engagement.

8. Kurt Verbeek and Jo-Ann VanEngen have each written important pieces that have helped me think more broadly about service in the international context. Jo-Ann's article on The Cost of Short-Term Missions, http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/short-term-missions.pdf, has been broadly read in Calvin and CRC circles, to good effect I think. And Kurt's chapter in Heffner and Beversluis's book, International Service-Learning: A Call to Caution has gotten less attention ( http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/pdf/verbeek_intl_s-.pdf ) but is worth pondering, particularly for its caution regarding power and reciprocity in international contexts.

9. The best source for helpful thinking from the mainstream academic world is the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, based at UM in Ann Arbor. And both Campus Compact ( www.compact.org ) and the National Youth Leadership Council ( http://nylc.org/ ) have excellent general resources.

10. I have also recently dabbled in the literature on Christian Practices and Christian Teaching and Learning, and have a number of very valuable resources in this vein - including the work of Craig Dykstra and Dorothy Bass (Practicing our Faith, Growing in the Life of Faith etc) and the Journal of Education and Christian Belief ( www.jecb.org ).

Surprised by Hope - Book Review

I was drawn to this book when I saw it on a table at a lecture a year or two back. The image of a lone tree on the side of a dirt road is captivating, but so is the title. What do I think about the resurrection, heaven and the mission of the church? These are all somewhat vague ideas to me; all somewhat distant and ethereal. And where do those ideas come from? I guess there were always some Biblical scenes that spoke into my understanding of these: Easter, the rich man and Lazarus, the great commission. Things that I've learned and experienced in my lifespan have wanted for something more tangible related to these ideas.

Since seeing the book on that table, I've heard it referred to by many folks who I respect a great deal. A sermon by a Calvin Chaplain Nathaniel Bradford just after the new year referred to the book when speaking of hope, something of which our church is in short supply. So, as a member of the worship planning team, it was decided to transform our evening service into a book discussion group with this book as the focal point.

It probably would have been a good idea to read the book in whole before suggesting it, but having finished the book now, I don't think I would have chosen against it. I did realize early on that I was in a bit over my head, with a deeply theological book that I had to summarize for the gathered congregation. It ended up being a rather enjoyable if time-consuming task.

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect as it relates to Wright's theology compared with the Reformed theology I've been raised in. It turned out to be pretty spot on in my read of the book. There was a nice strong emphasis on the good old Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation rubric, though not necessarily such a focus on the heavy-handed T.U.L.I.P. framework that also courses throughout the Reformed perspective.

Fellow congregation members were concerned with Wright's lack of definition for hell, punishment, and sin; but I really resonate with his focus on the joy of God's kingdom building as the motivation for discipleship and evangelism. Some balked at his insistence at the goodness of creation and its persistence at the time of Christ's return, but I'm happy to step clear of that border-line gnosticism and embrace the idea that "God so loved the cosmos."

I loved Wright's persistent encouragement to a fuller celebration of Easter and resurrection, the central tenant of our faith. The idea of "taking something up" in the forty days after Easter leading up to ascension to counter balance the "giving something up" of Lent was a refreshing challenge. I'm not sure what exactly that will be for me, but it may be connected to the image Wright used to explain this concept: that of uprooting and weeding in Lent not with a purpose of blank soil, but a garden to be sown with seeds that will one day blossom and bear fruit.

How exciting, yea surprising, to be invited into the work of justice, beauty and evangelism as kingdom building; God's work done through the Spirit's power in our lives and communities; reclaiming our geographic space, God's gift of time, and the matter of our lives for his glory. I can see how one might declare this as slipping towards a social gospel, but if that's so, it is one that is firmly supported by a Biblical reading of the New Testament that centers on Christ resurrected, allowing for a retelling of the Old Testament in light of God's story of restoration made reality through the people of Israel.

If the dense theology scares you, I'd recommend starting with the last chapter and working your way backwards. I think that if I'd done that, knowing the climax of the book, the earlier chapters would have held more meaning. I may have to go back and read them after letting the final chapter settle in my heart for a while.

I'm re-energized by reading this book. Excited for kingdom work. Surprised by hope.

Another Exercise in Walking Humbly

This semester I have the opportunity to do a Comenius Internship at United Church Outreach Ministry (UCOM), the organization mentioned in Tu’s post about 2010 Transitions StreetFest. This is an exciting position for me personally as it increases my experience in the non-profit world, but it is also an interesting experience as a Service-Learning Center employee because the Service-Learning Center sends many students to UCOM as Homework House tutors. My short experience at UCOM so far has reminded me of the importance of acting with grace and humility towards these service-learners and towards other service-learners that we send from our office.

When we send students to UCOM I expect them to do good work. I think that they should be on time, be polite and do an excellent job tutoring the elementary students with whom they work. I want them to reflect when they return and make a long-term commitment to the program.

These goals are easy for me to make as I sit in the Service-Learning Center, a place I am very comfortable in after three years of working there. However, my perspective has changed slightly after beginning my own “service-learning” experience at UCOM. At UCOM I have to ask, even about the smallest detail—“How do you use the printer?”, “What’s the name of that volunteer again?”, “How many pounds of cheese go into the bag?” It’s frustrating sometimes not knowing what to do and feeling as though I’m not doing a very good job or being helpful to the agency. I’m tired after a day of communicating in Spanish and I don’t particularly want to reflect on my experience. And, I probably can’t make a long-term commitment to UCOM because I most likely will be leaving Grand Rapids after this semester.

How, then, do I reconcile my experiences feeling not-so helpful and not-so reflective with my goals for the service-learners sent from our office? Well, to begin with, it’s important to remember that service-learning is a process for everyone involved. Service-learners won’t be terribly helpful at the beginning of their time and may not be very reflective. Hopefully, though, after spending time at their agencies students will learn the ins and outs of the agency and start to be an asset instead of a burden. Hopefully, too, as students have more experiences they will begin to reflect naturally on how what they see and the lives they live are connected.

Also, it is important for us at the Service-Learning Center to treat the service-learners with grace and humility. We don’t know their life experiences or even their experiences at their sites, so we must be careful not to judge their involvement without a little more investigation. Our expectations for them shouldn’t necessarily lower, but our way of interacting with them must be careful.

In fact, the whole process of service-learning is a game of grace and humility. The agencies we work with must treat the Service-Learning Center staff with grace as we try to be responsible to them and to be full-time students. The students must have grace and humility with us and with the agencies as we work out organizational kinks, and we must have grace and humility with the students and with the organizations as we try to communicate and work together.

Once again, the StreetFest theme of this Fall “Walk Humbly” comes back to challenge and encourage us to walk humbly with our service-learners and agencies.

The other side. . .

As a Calvin student, I worked at the Service-Learning Center during my sophomore and junior years (2001-2003), coordinating service-learning placements for education students in local schools. The job was fantastic--it was "real" and complex--giving me opportunities to meet the needs of both education students and classrooms around the city of Grand Rapids. I was able to visit many of the schools and agencies where Calvin students were placed, giving me a unique picture of the disparities that exist among schools and putting me into contact with many dedicated teachers and administrators. These folks were willing to put forth the extra effort to include Calvin students in their organizations; I think they recognized the mutual benefit that is offered through service-learning.

Though my job at the SL-C ended, service-learning continued (and continues) to intersect with my life. From 2006-2008, my wife and I were mentors in the Harambee House, a Calvin College Project Neighborhood house partnered with First Christian Reformed Church. Each member of the community engaged in our Grand Rapids neighborhood through service-learning on a weekly basis. Having worked at the SL-C, I was keenly aware of how important it was to recognize the relationships that we formed with our neighbors as mutual-we had to fight our tendencies to be the givers, the helpers, the doers.

I currently teach in a special education classroom at Creston High School in the Grand Rapids Public Schools, and the partnership with the SL-C has continued in various ways. I've enjoyed hosting a Streetfest group at our school, and have had a variety of service-learners in my classroom: tutors from the Education Dept. at Calvin, nursing students presenting health information in my classroom from the Nursing Dept., and students from the local Project Neigborhood House on Travis Street have also been involved in our school and in my classroom. I am so thankful for these partnerships; I know that Calvin students learn much from being in an urban high school setting, but that isn't really my primary concern any longer. I'm simply thankful for what they bring to my classroom and how they enrich the lives of my students when they are in my classroom.

The Long Awaited CEAP Poster Session Post

IT"S FINALLY HERE!

The first blog post from Scott this year.

I wanted to debrief the happenings of the CEAP poster session that occurred last Dec. 3rd.

First of all, a little introduction to CEAP: CEAP (pronounced "seep") stands for the Calvin Environmental Assessment Program. Bi-yearly students and cooperating teachers collect data from environmental studies they've done around Calvin and the surrounding community. The studies are then published on posters and displayed in the Science Building for an event called the poster session.

This years poster session was kicked off with a lecture given by Prof. Keith Grasman. His speech, entitled, "Canaries in the Coal Mine: Lessons from Fish-Eating Birds about Pollution in the Great Lakes," described the many ways bird populations of the Great Lakes have been afflicted in the past decades. Chemical scares from DDT and PCB's have caused population depletion and reproductive problems in certain bird species. Although actions have been taken to reduce these chemicals and revive the bird populations, various other chemical pollutants still plague the Great Lakes. Prof. Grasman enumerated the problems bird populations face today and hypothesized several solutions. He also described some of the work he and his classes had personally done in this field of study. The speech was an hour long and very informative, accompanied by a detailed slideshow.

The poster session was next. A problem was suddenly presented for me though. The cookies and coffee the Catering Service had promised were not set up, and there were ten minutes remaining before people crowded into the Science Building Atrium for the poster session. I had to take drastic action. I ran up the stairs to the 2nd floor scanning up and down the hallways for any sign of the cookie and coffee cart. There was nothing in sight. So I briskly walked out the door and peered across Commons lawn for any movement. Nothing. It was over. There was no cart. There would be no cookies and coffee. Just when all hope seemed lost, I walked downstairs to find two nice students with gold Calvin College Catering name-tags setting up tables and refreshments. I was saved. With the refreshments set up, the poster session could go on.

At the poster session, over a dozen students presented on subjects ranging from the architectural development of the business districts on Wealthy and Cherry street to the energy consumption of Calvin College campus facilities. Spectators could wander around from poster to poster, asking questions, listening to the students talk, or just reading the posters. The posters were colorful and informative and the presenters were enthusiastic about their material.

Overall the poster session was great. I hope to advertise a bit better this coming semester to attract a larger audience. But I look forward to working on it again.

We Practice: Covenant Making

At the beginning of every year, the student staff of the Service-Learning Center honkers down in a room for a couple of hours with the intention of creating a covenant. It’s quite the involved process. We grapple with the task of somehow developing a collective description, a sort of mission statement, with the hopes that it might best reflect upon the work we do and the nuances involved with doing it.

After hours of producing, we then attach ourselves to this covenant. Through revisiting it, creating visual representation, reminding each other, and pushing one another to put these words to action, the goal is to produce a living covenant.

The Covenant of the 2009-2010 S-LC Staff reads as follows:

“Rooted in the hope of what can be, together with conviction and humility, we practice. *Clap*

Crying out

Asking for forgiveness

Engaging

Educating

Challenging

Hospitality

Building

Joy

Faithfulness

*Clap* Rooted in the hope of what can be, together with conviction and humility, we practice.”

Each person on staff has chosen one of these practices to focus on throughout the year. In order to better remind ourselves of these practices in our daily lives, we took some time during our staff retreat to create individual paintings of our practices. These will hang together in our office.

In order to work on these disciplines together, the group has decided to shape our staff weekly staff meetings around the covenant. Aside from beginning our meetings with it, we’ve been taking turns leading the meetings. Each week’s theme focuses on one of the practices, and the assigned staff member provides points of reflection, activities to bring to life some of its different aspects, and questions for discussion.

It’s been a challenging and humbling reminder of the different practices involved in a life of faith. It’s evident that some of us are more gifted in certain practices more than others, but that as we challenge one another to grow in new areas, these practices can come together to shape both us individually and as a whole community, in rather exciting ways.

Want to serve next Spring? How about going on Spring Break Trip?

If you asked me these questions two years ago, I would say why not spend it with your friends and family instead? Don’t you do enough service-learning during your semester for your classes? But surprisingly, going on a service-learning spring break trip was one of the most eye-opening experiences I had last year, which greatly motivated me to do what I’m doing now at the Service-Learning Center.

An attempt to get away from campus and my mundane life brought me to Boston last spring break. In that one short week, I met and learned about the lives of amazing but ordinary people, formed relationship with fellow Calvin students whom I either just met or knew casually through classes. I was surprised by how I enjoyed getting physically tired by the end of the day and yet still feeling excited about working the next day. We were so grateful to be working alongside Boston Project staff members, who shared with us how the ministry came about and what it has done over the years as a part of Boston urban neighborhoods. It was also in this week that I was faced with many questions as we shared in our devotions what it means to do service in such places as Christians. The question of injustice has challenged us to look deeper into the familiar Micah passage and to understand what we were doing there and what we could take out of our service. It was certainly not easy to be dealing with these questions and engaging in honest conversations about privileges, injustices and faith, but it was surely eye-opening dialogues about how God has worked through the brokenness of our world and our own lives. In the midst of the frustration and confusion we felt as we tried to do our short-term service, we realized that there is tremendous hope in God’s word when he called us to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with him. The work of Boston Project Ministries reminded us of this promise. We left energized but also challenged to be aware and involved with our world with humility and faith.

Fortunate to have such great experience with Spring Break Trip, I was also amazed to hear from my friends as they came back from theirs. Now as I work in the Service-Learning Center, I am so pumped to be one of the first people to learn about the new Spring Break Trips. This year our office will have nine different Spring Break Trips that will take place across the nation, from the local communities of Grand Rapids to the urban ministries in Boston, Chicago, Knoxville, and other organizations that are committed in community development through creative means, intentional faith, and disaster relief.

Furthermore, the more exciting news is applications are now out for all students who are interested in being either participant or leader. Feel free to come by the Service-Learning Center to pick up applications or to chat with us more about questions that you have about the specific Spring Break Trip or just the application itself. Visit the link below, which will take you right to our website that includes the applications and more information about Spring Break Trips: http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/opportunities/spring-break-trips.html

Kent County-Wide Food Drive is at the S-LC this coming Saturday, October 10

Like usual, we are so excited to be part of the annual ACCESS Food Drive that serves over 7000 households in Kent County each month . ACCESS is a twenty-five year old network of congregations and individuals that serves the greater needs of West Michigan neighborhoods in terms of hunger and poverty. One of their great programs is Hunger Initiative in which they have variety of food drives, pantry networks and food assistance programs that serve Kent County community.

Food Drives are designed to increase the supply of high needs items that sometimes are not always available at the food pantries such as soup, canned fruits and vegetable and personal care items. The County- Wide Food Drive is held on the second Saturday of October every year. It is ACCESS goal to collect close to 90 tons of food to help restock their food pantries which have been depleted after this summer.

Along with 1,700 volunteers, our office is hoping that we will see even a greater number of food items this year. Look for bright green boxes covered with Food Drive poster around campus or come into our office to drop off your donations. All nonperishable food items are collected on Friday, October 9th to be delivered to ACCESS on Saturday.

PARK(ing) Day 2009

This is the first year our S-LC office joined PARK(ing) Day, along with the Off-Campus Programs Office. Our transportation coordinator, Tina Bolt, who was one of the people in charge of making this happen, has put together a nice short blog to express what she has learned during this day. Check it out and learn more about what PARK(ing) Day is all about and what as Calvin College staffs and students did in this event. 

PARK(ing) Day originated in 2005 by Rebar, a San Francisco art and design collective. Rebar wanted to raise awareness on the lack of park space in the city. By putting change in the meter of a parking space allowed Rebar to lease this real estate for a temporary amount of time. Rebar chose to lease a single parking space for the day and instead of parking a car chose to creatively transform this space into a small park. PARK(ing) Day is now an annual global event where any citizen can participate. The event has taken place in more than 50 cities including Chicago, New York, Toronto, London, Barcelona, and Grand Rapids!

This is the second year Grand Rapids participated in the PARK(ing) Day event. Calvin has participated in the event for both years. In 2008 Calvin’s Social Justice Coalition took part in the event, and this year the Service-Learning Center and Off Campus programs partnered with the Creston Neighborhood Association to participate in the festivities of PARK(ing) Day 2009. Recently the Creston Neighborhood Association received a Kaboom grant. The intent of this grant is to use playgrounds as a rallying point to initiate more community development and crime prevention. There is a hope that the neighborhood would come together to fix up a playground and this would result in more communication with one another. For further information visit http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/07/sweet_place_for_a_park_will_ge.html

“Our park” was located on Louis, just east of Monroe right on Rosa Park Circle. The theme of “our park” this year was the importance of play in our lives. People were invited into “our park” to play a game, share a favorite play memory or to just hang out. The theme of the importance of play in our lives incorporated the Creston Neighborhood Association very well.

New Faces in the Service-Learning Center

June 2009 marks a new milestone in the life of the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College. We, Megan and Noah Kruis, are serving together as the new Associate Directors of the Service-Learning Center. Together we will assist Jeff in the operations of the office, focusing on the Student Based Service-Learning activities (like Streetfest, Residence Hall Community Partnerships, and Spring Break Trips), while Jeff focuses on Academic Based Service-Learning. We’ll also help the office to remain better connected to our community partners and to assess the success of the S-LC.

We are excited to begin this new endeavor serving and learning alongside Calvin students in the community of Grand Rapids. Story is an important part of each person’s life, and we’d like to share a bit of ours.

Since graduating from Calvin College in 2003 and 2004 respectively, Megan and I have sought justice and pursued civic engagement in particular ways. These passions drew us to the work of the Service-Learning Center to share in this unique work.

Megan’s college experience did not really involve Service-Learning beyond Streetfest, but soon after graduating, she became enrolled as an Americorps Vista serving as an education organizer in the Creston Neighborhood of Grand Rapids. Her work there cultivated a passion for community, engagement, and urban renewal. In the subsequent years she has worked with many local non-profit agencies, working towards parent involvement in education, home ownership for low-income households, and home foreclosure prevention.

My own Calvin experience was deeply rooted in the Service-Learning Center, where I worked as a part of the student staff for two years. My career path has kept me here at Calvin, working in the Admissions Office in a variety of roles. One theme that I pursued during my time there was developing institutional partnerships with schools and organizations that help to promote college access for under-represented minority students.

Together, as members of Creston Christian Reformed Church, we worked together with partners in the church, at Calvin, and at the Inner City Christian Federation, to found Calvin’s fourth Project Neighborhood House, Nizhoni. We’ve served for the past two years there as mentors, ushering Calvin students into the Creston neighborhood for new and exciting ways to serve and learn.

In the Service-Learning Center, we hope to combine our networking within the non-profit community in Grand Rapids and institutional knowledge of Calvin College with our shared passion for community development and engaging students in the life of the city.

Valentine's Day is Service-Learning Day, Too

Romantic love is a very weird thing. Come on, be honest, falling in love means giving up half of what you’ve got. Falling in love also creates this feeling that the world is a bed of roses—how much more unrealistic can it get? But no, we learn in epistemology that feelings may be sufficient evidence to prove the existence of love as a valid and logical concept.

Take for instance a hypothetical individual, Jane. Jane’s feelings for James (Jane's hypothetical boyfriend in her hypothetical world) influences the way she carries herself and her behavior toward James. Since the invisible cognitive concept of “feeling” manifests in her visible physical actions, such actions would be empirically sufficient as evidence to knowing Jane does indeed love James.

What has philosophy got to do with service-learning? Lots, since today’s Valentine’s Day (which creates mild cognitive dissonance for lonely souls like me). Besides, isn’t blogging an act of sufficient evidence to suggest that I am doing justice to my feelings for service-learning?

Why College? What is Service-Learning?

While Transitions, the orientation program, winds down, I thought it might be good to record some of my remarks from this morning's introduction service-learning and the Service-Learning Center for new students. I tried something new with this approach.

First, what is college for? Why would new students choose Calvin out of the many thousands of available college and university options? And then what is Calvin here for?

My contention, after 25 years of pondering these questions, is that it has something to do with learning to think, to love, and to do. And in so saying, I am defying conventional wisdom, which argues that college is to get people ready for work and citizenship. I say ok, but more. This college finds itself in a tradition that yearns for transformation - for that which is not, to be made right again. And it tries to prepare people to contribute to that "making right" by helping them to think about what they know, what they love, and what they should and can do. Calvin College has a vision for transformation.

Next I suggested that the path from that which is not right, to a transformed reality, one in which things are as they should be, includes three preparatory tracks, all necessary. Around here we often refer to them often in terms like knowledge, skills, and virtues. Our core curriculum is set up around these three core goals, and this is one of the things that sets Calvin apart.

To understand service-learning at Calvin, a little history helps. In 1964, just a few months after a young idealistic president was assassinated in Dallas, two young undergraduates at Calvin, with help from a key professor and a key administrator, formed a new student program called KIDS, Kindling Intellectual Desire in Students, a program aimed at providing tutoring support for children in Grand Rapids' core city schools, while also providing opportunities for Calvin students to experience life outside the often too-protective bubble that makes up college life. The program thrived, and soon became the largest and most successful student organization around the college, and by the 1980s had expanded widely into multiple areas of service-providing, including an emergency moving services, construction and technical support for homeowners, spring break service trips, poverty awareness retreats, big-brother, big-sister mentoring relationships and much more. In the early 1990s, the academic division joined the movement, and soon had incorporated dozens of course assignments designed to actively teach through the pedagogy of service-learning, in partnership with some of the by-now hundreds of local community partners. Which brings us to the present day efforts. We offer multiple opportunities for Calvin students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends to participate in thoughtful, reflective, creative service activity that fits into the reciprocal dynamic suggested by our motto - "Serving to Learn- Learning to Serve."

And to what end? Not simply a detached, triumphalistic, save-the-world end that fulfills a Christian duty but ignores our call to Biblical justice and relationship. But to the ends of a true Christian liberal arts education - Knowledge and learning, Skills and active doing, and Virtue and love. The end of our service-learning is God's shalom, when that which is not, is made right again, and things are as they once were and should be again.

Transitions in... 3 Days?

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 3-day orientation (called TRANSITIONS) for transfer and first-year students joining Calvin come spring semester. I don't know if Transitions would be as fun as Quest (the Fall semester edition of orientation) but I am pretty sure Saturday will be great. Why? Because the office is going to bring our new friends around the city to do service-learning!

A Better World

September is quickly wrapping up, with just a couple more days left. Many initiatives by the office are already happening, or completed. Some of these events include the successful completion of StreetFest, the first blood drive of the academic year that concluded last Thursday, the continued cultivation of community partnerships between residential dorms and their respective agencies, and students doing their Academically-Based Service-Learning at various neighborhoods in Grand Rapids. We sure have lots of real people doing real service.

I thought it would be a good idea to marry our two themes for this month, technology and communities, through this post. Announcing its latest program on the CNN last Wednesday, Google has put in place a $10 million program to fund ideas that have the potential to make this a better world. Check out this YouTube clip.



The “Community” category fits best with what we have been discussing this month. Maybe we should all sit down and proposal an idea?