New Profs Plant Service Seeds

George Moore and Jane Haggard plant the seeds of service learning to community college leaders and other educators through their presentation of a class project conducted by a group of Haggard's students.

A class project that unexpectedly turned into a service-learning project for one SHSU educational leadership and counseling professor while teaching at Blinn College is now being used as an example of such for other educators across the state.

Assistant professors Jane Haggard and George Moore, both new to the university’s educational leadership and counseling department, will present on the project for the second time this year this weekend (Feb. 22-23) during Texas A&M University’s 7th Annual Assessment Conference.

Their hope of inspiring educators to incorporate the idea of service learning into their curriculums through their presentations is February’s American Democracy Project Service Spotlight.

While teaching at Blinn, Haggard gave her six groups of public speaking students a project for which they were to pretend they were giving a speech at a national conference.

One of those groups went to Haggard with an idea to use their speech for something beneficial to the child advocate organization CASA: honoring members of the group’s volunteer base.

“They went in, determined what the need was and determined that the volunteers needed more recognition, so they set up this process of getting people they wanted to honor,” Haggard said.

The five students then set up a ceremony, sent out invitations and paid tribute to three volunteers in front of an audience that included judges and other dignitaries.

“It emerged into a service-learning project,” she said.

After coming to SHSU, Haggard and Moore, both of whom have an interest in service-learning and civic engagement, discussed the project one day and found they “both embraced the same ideals about teaching,” Moore said.

They then decided to make a case-study presentation over the project.

The two presented at the National Conference on Civic Engagement in Austin earlier in the month, and Haggard’s project was even mentioned in the textbook “Ethics and the Foundations of Education: Teaching Convictions In A Postmodern World” by Patrick Slattery and Dana Rapp.

During the presentations, the two “kindred spirits” discuss experiential learning, the methodology of service learning and its five steps, which include preparation, action, reflection, recognition and evaluation, Haggard said.

Haggard generally presents on service-learning itself, while Moore discusses collaboration in learning; authentic learning, which is making the learning fit into the real-world situations students will have to face one day; and constructivism.

The two also discuss the case study in their classes at SHSU, “planting the seed” for future community college leaders, school curriculum coordinators and even principals “to champion initiatives that will forward civic engagement as a social responsibility,” Haggard said.

“I highlighted this particular exemplar in my class because I’m hoping that they are inspired by it, and whenever they get in those positions, they will have the possibility of having it forwarded under their leadership,” she said, adding that the project was inspiring even for her.

The students involved in the project also responded well to their work.

“I began this semester just wanting to make an ‘A’ in the course but learned my true goal for this project was to make a lasting impression,” one student wrote in reflection of the project.

“This project was definitely a learning experience and made an enormous impression on my life,” another wrote. “Although it required many hours and much planning, the end result was incredibly rewarding.”

One of her students in the group at Blinn was so inspired that she became an advocate for the organization after the project, Moore said.

Haggard and Moore stress the intrinsic motivation and giving students a lesson with a “real context” not only to support the use of service-based learning in their presentation but also encourage the audience to find their own niches for the concept.

“This (Haggard’s project) is a good example of how service learning can be used but it’s in one isolated public speaking class,” Moore said. “One of the things we do at the end of our presentation is that we get the participants in the audience to talking about how in their discipline they might be able to incorporate something like this.”

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SHSU Media Contact: Jennifer Gauntt
Feb. 22, 2007
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