An ‘open heart’ opens the mind: Students find value in giving and receiving through service learning

Kindness, bravery and leadership—at Spring Valley Elementary School in Kalamazoo, students are on the lookout for ways to show they are good citizens. You might ask what’s motivating this good behavior? Pride—and a trip to the school store stocked with all the goodies you can imagine.

Before the pandemic, you could walk the halls of the school during lunchtime and find culture in every crevice. You’d hear students practicing Spanish in one room, a group of kids learning new dance moves in another and a group giving life to color through art. Kids were also receiving tutoring and mentoring as well as participating in after-school clubs. All of these extracurricular projects were designed and taught by service-learning students from Western.

“All of these things were so awesome—and then COVID hit and we couldn’t have students in the schools,” says Shawn Tenney, director of Service Learning.

Wasting no time, Broncos got to work to find ways to keep their projects afloat. They partnered with the nonprofit Communities in Schools to help with the store at Spring Valley Elementary to begin enlisting donations from across Western’s campus. Students also reached out to businesses in the Kalamazoo community, many of which they hoped to work for after graduation. The items they collected ranged from typical school supplies like notebooks, backpacks, fuzzy pencils, colored pencils and books to board games, water coolers and even a T-shirt signed by Western’s tennis team.

The only way for elementary students to cash in: Do good deeds.

“It’s been such a wonderful thing,” Tenney says, describing it as a project with mutual benefits. “Our students learned about networking. … The little kids got to practice budgeting and math skills while having fun shopping. They get to get things that they need and want that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

“Not only did it encourage them but it also brought them back to school and gave them a reason to come back to school—when a lot of kids after COVID weren’t very motivated to come back,” she adds.

This is just one of dozens of examples of service learning underway at Western. Students are also providing tech support to older adults at Heritage Community senior living residence, crafting the stories of veteran volunteers and firefighters at the Air Zoo and Oshtemo Township Fire Department, writing grant proposals for farmers and community organizations, installing doorbell cameras for residents in urban neighborhoods alongside Building Blocks of Kalamazoo and digging through history at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project.

“We are out there to meet with people, see what the needs are that we might be able to fill, but we’re also learning from them,” Tenney says, noting that service learning isn’t synonymous with community volunteering.

“It’s very much a collaborative effort; mutual benefit is the key to service learning,” she says. “The students are very much involved in finding out what the problems are as well as partnering with community members and organizations to create solutions. … They practice the actual skills for their careers.”

“The value of experiential education is really second to none,” says Evan Heiser, senior director of career and experiential education. He says service-learning projects and the WMU Signature program can really enhance career skill development early on. “It’s taking everything students are doing inside the classroom and the learning that they’ve done outside the classroom and putting it into real-world action and solving real problems. The best ones are those that are working with community.”

“(Service learning) is the best opportunity I took advantage of while at WMU. Never before have I been in a class where I truly had to apply everything I had learned in all my courses to problem-solve,” says one alumnus in her reflection. “I learned about leadership in the real world and became aware of skills I didn’t realize I had.”

Service learning at Western requires a minimum of 15 hours of service each semester, but Tenney says it can involve much more time depending on the project. She estimates students are spending nearly 90,000 hours on service learning in a year. They can participate through registering for academic courses or by joining the Community Engagement Scholars Program, which encourages Broncos to partner with community organizations to expand community-engaged learning opportunities for all Western students.

Tenney says instruction that students receive before the project paired with a reflection after the work creates a more dynamic experience and allows for more personal and professional growth.

“Through service learning, I’ve become aware of the potential impact and influence I have on those around me, and how much of an impact community members have on me just by being ‘in the moment’ and engaging with them. This idea has become a large part of career development for me,” says another alumnus in their reflection.

“They often leave feeling like they did a good thing, but they didn’t do it to or for others; they did it with them,” Tenney says. “They’re learning about themselves. They’re learning about their own values. They oftentimes come face to face with biases they didn’t realize they had and confront stereotypes.”

While students are benefiting from the experiential-learning opportunity, Tenney says the community will see the benefits of their work for generations to come. She emphasizes student involvement in these programs benefits the whole city by increasing job-ready candidates, improving adult and child literacy, increasing safety and improving mental health for all ages.

“There’s no way that we don’t help,” she says. “We support the community, and the community supports our students.”