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The Auburn School Department was honored recently by USM/L-A with a Community Partner Service-Learning Award, in recognition of it’s collaborative efforts over the past decade with the campus in the area of service-learning. Dr. Bumper White, center, coordinator of the CLASS Teacher Education Program at USM/L-A, is pictured here presenting the award to Auburn Middle School Principal Kathi Cutler, left, and Superintendent Barbara Eretzian, right |
August 2006
The University of Southern Maine/Lewiston-Auburn (USM/L-A) has presented the Auburn School Department with a “Community Partner Service-Learning Award,” in recognition and appreciation of it’s collaborative partnership efforts over the past decade with USM/L-A in the area of service-learning.
One of the largest areas of collaboration between the two institutions has been through CLASS, the professional teacher education program at USM/L-A. As this partnership has matured, the CLASS program’s community outreach module has evolved from community service with a school component to a more significant service-learning model based on the KIDS Consortium “Kids as Planners” model. “The ongoing success of this collaboration in regards to service-learning is due to the leadership, support and positive learning environment of the Auburn School Department,” noted Dr. Bumper White, associate professor of education and coordinator of the CLASS Program.
This joint service-learning model encompasses the following elements:
• a venue for future teachers to learn the important elements necessary in creating educational experiences beyond the traditional
classroom
• potential service learning experiences in response to various needs
• a means to allow USM/L-A students to further enhance their interactive skills by working with community leaders and people in
need as they are developing into teacher-leaders.
Some examples of the USM/L-A and Auburn District collaborative service learning projects include:
• Some university students coordinated their service-learning project with a local abused women’s shelter by adopting a family in need for the holidays. The students then worked with a grade six teacher and her students to gather Christmas presents for the family. As part of the curriculum connection, the students formulated a budget, read the book, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, and discussed the social responsibilities entailed with the project with the elementary students.
• To improve the writing and reading skills of students at Sherwood Heights, USM/L-A students have worked in classrooms to help children with the skills necessary to broadcast the daily news at the school through a local closed circuit network. A similar project was undertaken with a newspaper written and produced by children at the school.
• The university has also worked with the school department to provide funds and resources to partner schoolteachers and students to enhance their individual service learning projects. These projects have included assembling backpacks for homeless teenagers living at a local shelter; tutoring Auburn elementary students; a digital presentation educating people about the local Somali culture; and a digital slide show and video showing the harmful effects of smoking.
Dr. White also noted that over the past several years this learning partnership has not been limited to the CLASS Program, but has included other USM/L-A programs such as the Masters in Occupational Therapy Program and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Program’s Healthy Learners Project. For example, faculty and students in the MOT Program collaborated with the staff at Sherwood Heights to build kits to use in working with families of young children in the development of fine motor and perceptual motor skills. Students in the Healthy Learners Project received training from school-based mental health professionals and then provided intervention for elementary children by assisting them in expression of thoughts and feelings through play and discussion. The Healthy Learners Project, developed and implemented by USM/L-A faculty member and current Auburn school committee member, Dr. Robert Baskett, is an early intervention program that has identified children in Kindergarten and first grade considered at-risk through teacher screenings.
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