Messiah College: Into the Streets

Faculty Resources

"Teach me, and I will forget. Show me, and I will remember. Involve me, and I will undertstand" - Chinese Proverb

Dear Messiah College Professors,

Thank-you for visiting the Into the Streets website. We are deeply grateful for your support of the ITS program. As professors of First Year Seminars, you are uniquely positioned to help us in our mission of encouraging students to become involved in the community. There are many ways that you can help:

You can participate in ITS yourself. Professors who have done this in the past report that ITS is a good time to get to know your students before classes begin.
You can take time during your first class to discuss and reflect with the students.
You can use Into the Streets as a starting place for incorporating service-learning into your curriculum.

Although ITS is primarily aimed at involving students in community service, we think that it also represents a great opportunity to get faculty excited about service-learning.

Service-learning is a form of public engagement and experiential learning. It is a pedagogical model which intentionally integrates academic learning with authentic community service in a credit bearing academic course. Students participate in a service activity which meets needs identified by the community and critically reflect on that activity. Thus students gain a deep understanding of course content, a commitment to socially responsible citizenship, and develop skills and understandings needed to contribute to civic well-being.*

To the right are some preliminary resources for service-learning, including articles and materials for designing a service-learning component into your class. If you would like to know more about how to integrate service-learning into your curriculum, please contact John Eby, Director of Service Learning, at ext. 7142.

We welcome your comments and suggestions and hope that you will contact us at x7255 or e-mail us at IntoTheStreets@messiah.edu . Thank you and have a great day!

Sincerely,

Vikki Kieffer, Into the Streets Coordinator

* taken from a note by John Eby

Into the Streets 2007

Articles:

Service-Learning as Scholarship - an introduction to the idea and merits of service learning (John W. Eby)
Why Service-Learning is Bad - a self-conscious critique by a proponent of service learning (John W. Eby)
Why Servanthood is Bad - an examination of some of the pitfalls of the service movement (John L. McKnight)

Materials:

Into the Streets Student Reflection Questions - Before and After
101 Ideas of Combining Service and Learning from FIU

Links: