Making Service-Learning Work, as a VISTA Volunteer by Rebecca Morrow As a participant at Community Works’ Summer Institute for Service-Learning I was still struggling a lot with my role as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Peoples Academy—which I had only started a few weeks earlier. At that point I still wasn’t sure what my role was going to be once the school year officially began, and therefore I had a lot of trouble relating what I was learning in the Institute, to what I would be doing in my role as a VISTA. As many of the other participants of the Institute noticed and witnessed, and as I believe I expressed a number of times, I was extremely frustrated. Now, nearly four months later, although I haven’t actually implemented my Service-Learning plan yet, I feel a much better understanding for the material that was presented to me in July and I feel very at ease in my role as a VISTA, and as a service-learning support person at the high school. Placed at Peoples Academy in Morrisville, Vermont, my primary role as a Harmony VISTA is to support the service-learning initiatives happening within the school and out in the community. The purpose of the Harmony VISTA Project is to help develop connections between schools and communities, across Vermont, through service learning in which teachers, students, and community members take action against poverty. This work involves aiding teachers with the implementation of service-learning projects in their classrooms and also helping students with both individual and group service-learning projects. Other tasks that I perform include putting together and editing a local service-learning publication, the Making A Difference Newsletter, collecting material for a Community Based Learning Resource Center, collecting materials to document service-learning that is happening throughout the school, among many other things. Especially after talking with my VISTA counterparts, I feel very fortunate to have had such a comprehensive training in service-learning and its implementation, as others have yet had none. I think that the most important piece for me has been understanding what a pure, 100% service-learning project would look like, and then being able to look at what is happening at the school already, realizing that great and meaningful things are happening, they just need a tweak here and a tweak there to make them true service-learning. Having this experience has also given me important and useful insight into the issue of whether or not all projects need to be service-learning. For one reason or another, it isn’t always possible to do all of what should be done to make a project true s-l. I think in having this knowledge I’m able to look at the continuum of projects and activities happening within the school and I can evaluate what is s-l, what isn’t, what could be, and from there can help determine what further training and materials are need to assist teachers with implementation of service-learning. Coming out of the week long Institute in July, I think that I was a bit skeptical of some projects and programs- looking at them only as if they weren’t service-learning if they did not possess all the components. Now, I feel as though my attitude is that it’s great if people are even just trying to do some different things in the classroom. It may not be pure service-learning, but at least they’re attempting to offer different pathways of learning to their students. This Institute and the last four months of my job have highlighted the fact that it really is the process that is more important than the outcome. Especially with the types of situations I’ve been exposed to recently, I’ve realized that simply trying is truly more beneficial than not trying at all. It can always be done again, and things can be changed to make the process go more smoothly the second time around. A few weeks after our summer institute I attended another training in which we also discussed service-learning in great depth. We had a number of conversations surrounding the question, “how can it be true service learning if it isn’t purely student generated?” It’s so easy to be critical in that way, to say it isn’t really service-learning if a teacher creates the project and then implements it in the classroom, but I think it’s really the fact that doing something different than traditional classroom teaching engages different students in different ways. In reading over my pre, post, and daily reflections from the summer, I think I did accomplish my goals at the beginning of the Institute. I do have a better understanding of service-learning and I see its direct connection to my role as a VISTA Volunteer. Not only have those things been accomplished, but having attended the Institute I was able to connect with teachers from Peoples Academy that I have been able to continue a working relationship with, allowing me to carry out my role as a service-learning support staff. I’ve been very lucky to be a part of Liz and Richard’s nature trail project, and have been fortunate to witness the wonderful things that have happened between students in the two classes. As you have now also seen a snippet of it in the power-point presentation that Liz created. I feel this experience with these classes has opened my eyes to the potential of service-learning projects in that it can really open doors to other opportunities and experiences, and it has also given me inspiration in my role at Peoples as a reminder of why I’m there and why this work is important. Seeing what’s happened with a few students in those classes has really sparked my excitement to get the project I’m working on off the ground. The first planning meeting for the Peoples Academy/Johnson State College Break Away Weekend took place today. I’ll be excited to let everyone know next spring/summer how it turns out.