Teaching songs from a wide variety of cultures is commonplace in music classrooms around the United States. Students gain understanding of and insight into a wide range of cultures by singing their songs and listening to their music. The Afghan Children's Songbook Project is a project focused on preserving and returning traditional songs,…

Many international schools embrace social studies education, and service learning embedded within the social studies curriculum is often the norm rather than the exception. Helping students help others in any setting is powerful. In a richly diverse venue there are added benefits. The "third-culture kids" attending international schools…

One of my first experiences with teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) was during my years as an undergraduate, working with the Somali-Bantu Community Organization (SBCO) in Syracuse, NY. My fellow undergraduate tutors and I worked specifically with 4th-6th grade students, developing lesson plans and implementing project-based learning…

Identifying a community problem or need and helping to solve it via student-led initiatives is at the heart of service learning. Elson Nash, associate director for program management at Learn and Serve America, a grant program of the Corporation for National and Community Service and USA Freedom Corps, calls service learning "the glue that…

For nine semesters approximately 100 third through fifth graders have come by bus from their urban impact schools (Anyon, 2005) only a few city blocks away, to the campus of an historic Black university for tutoring. Pairs of university student tutors--typically freshmen, sophomores and juniors from multiple disciplines across campus--accept…

Last year, 15 students in the Montpelier (Vermont) High School's Advanced Placement Spanish class paid class-time visits every week to a nearby dairy farm. They interacted with the Mexican laborers by conversing with them in Spanish, having picnics together, and playing cards and soccer. As the students advanced their Spanish verbal skills, they…

The Health, Exercise, and Sport Science (HESS) faculty at Texas Tech University, along with many of its graduate and undergraduate students, have been working with overweight youth since the Fun & Fit program launched in 2004. The collaborative effort between Tech and the Lubbock Independent School District, funded by a Carol M. White Physical…

This article describes a unit of study about Colonial America given in Lubbock, Texas, in which fifth grade students learn about the crafts system by becoming apprentices for a time. The students apply to apprentice with a master crafts person, a mentor, and learn some basic methods of a craft. Mentors are typically students' relatives, friends of…

Many school library media specialists, especially in elementary schools, establish library clubs and library monitor programs. In most cases, these clubs and programs are limited to students assisting with clerical duties in the library such as shelving books and manning the circulation desk under supervision. The library media specialist assigns…

This article briefly describes how a fifth-grade class collaborated with a downtown diner for several months and then actually ran the restaurant for four hours. Through the Chatters Cafe, a local high school cafe that serves as a culinary arts training ground for high school students, fifth graders had the opportunity to prepare and serve dinner…

Policymakers sometimes view arts education and experiential learning as distractions from the goal of enabling all students to master rigorous content standards. The three school programs described in this article, however, demonstrate that content standards can be integrated into engaging, motivating curriculums based on the arts and authentic…

Recommends using children's literature as a means for introducing social problems and their possible solutions to elementary students. Offers different trade books on homelessness and the elderly along with descriptions of each book. Provides guidelines and teaching resources for creating a service project where students interact with their…

Describes the content of an undergraduate course called "Field Work in Applied Psychology: Teaching Mathematics." Assigns students to gain field work experience by teaching fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-grade students mathematics. Reviews the goals for the teacher, college students, and elementary schools. (CMK)

Notes the increasingly popular pedagogy of service learning. Describes an intergenerational service learning project that brought together preschoolers, elderly, and at-risk elementary school students, included both direct service and indirect service, and made valuable contributions to young children's developing literacy, social-emotional,…

Discusses the service projects at Hoover Elementary School in Iowa City, Iowa that link economic education, service learning, and global education. Describes one project where the students involved the community in sending educational materials and financial aid to a school in Brazil. (CMK)