SL Training for Secondary School Teachers

Our work on service-learning has, so far, focused on university students and professors.  Starting with out own university, then other universities in Hong Kong, and overseas in foreign countries.  Along the way, we have also worked with primary and secondary schools, but mainly as recipients of the service.  Increasingly, however, we are seeing more and more secondary, and even primary, schools becoming active in community service, and moving into service-learning (with more emphasis on the learning).  We have been providing some of these schools with some advice and practical assistance.  But with limited resources, we could not do that in a more systematic manner, and larger scale. 

We have recently applied for, and received, some funding so that we can now design a more systematic program for secondary schools.  On the past Saturday, we started a teacher training workshop for teachers.  We have a lot of material originally designed for university teachers.  We then spent quite a bit of time to adapt the material for secondary schools.  One of the challenges is to write up a set of case studies in the secondary school context.  

We are excited to receive an enthusiastic response.  One of the reasons, we have since discovered, is that recent changes in the secondary school curriculum has released some curriculum space for additional teaching.  And some schools have decided to use that curriculum space to implement service-learning.   A practice among some of these schools is to require all students in form 4 to undertake some service-learning project.  Now these schools, and many others, have to scramble to find and train their teachers to create the curriculum and associated projects.  This development sounds quite familiar, also an echo of what happened 10 years ago, when university education in Hong Kong changed from 3-year programs to 4-year programs.  

We are also encouraged by some of the projects that some of the schools are contemplating.  One is a project based on performing arts.  It plans to train vision-impaired persons to perform in a play - through the use of audio description.  There exist projects in which university students use audio description to help the visually impaired to enjoy art and performances.  But this proposal by the secondary school goes one giant step further - it enables the visually impaired to perform, to create art, in addition to enjoying it.  It is, mightily challenging.  But it will be hugely impactful and satisfying when it succeeds.  

Another project is easier to imagine but no less impactful.  They plan to take the elderly from a nursing home to their school, and entertain them with purposely-designed programs.  There may be many logistical issues, planning, organisation, etc., involved.  Much depends on what activities are provided at the school, and the scale of the project.  For the pilot, they are planning for a single event.  We are encouraging them to learn from the pilot and take the next logical step, to extend the project in time, scale and variety.  

For many schools, they are just starting to take service-learning seriously.  There is, however, an enthusiasm in the way they engage in the class activities, in the questions they ask, and the projects they are proposing.  We are looking forward to a much more active community developing in the secondary schools.