Share this story.

Helping The Community

Students Dive into Service Learning

By Jessica Allen (Class of 2003)

---

Click Photo to Enlarge Aimee Raile (center), shown here with Dr. Bill Collier and fellow honors student Jared Buswell, is spearheading an effort to develop a world civilizations curriculum for third-through fifth-graders.

Following Chancellor Oral Roberts' mandate to "Go into every person's world," students from the ORU honors program and the English Department's honors classes and national honor society, Sigma Tau Delta, are initiating a unique service learning project this spring. The students will conduct a variety of workshops at one of Oklahoma's "endangered" schools, Marshall Elementary. In addition, they will participate in educational activities with the students each afternoon during a two-week period.

The project was designed by ORU students, and is being led by Dr. Kay Meyers. It was financed by grants that ORU received last spring from the Bank of Oklahoma and the Temple Foundation--grants designed to fund service learning projects in lower-income areas of Tulsa. Often located in distressed neighborhoods, and characterized by poor test scores and low parent participation, endangered schools like Marshall are at risk of state intervention.

"Service learning is becoming more a part of the educational process all over the country--primarily in secular schools," Dr. Meyers explained. "We want to see that grow at ORU."

The program will incorporate a variety of different subject areas. Junior English education major Alicia Wilkins, president of Sigma Tau Delta, will work with students in Honors English 101 and Honors English 305 to organize writing workshops for students in kindergarten through second grade. Students will write and illustrate stories and poems, and their finished work will be collected and bound into books.

Sophomore honors fellow Kayla Cargile is producing a "Character Counts" curriculum for the third- through fifth-graders with the sophomore honors fellows. Aimee Raile, also a sophomore honors fellow, is working with the freshman honors fellows on a world civilizations curriculum for the same age group.

"My main purpose is to just impart the idea that learning can be fun," said Raile of the curriculum she is designing. "Maybe [Marshall students] haven't had the experience that learning is fun."

Raile also sees this service learning project as a community outreach opportunity.

"I think [service learning] is important for us as honors students," she added. "We get wrapped up in our own little world and we're not usually involved with kids younger than us. I think it's really healthy to be able to interact with them."

Meyers says that although the students will not be able to openly share about Christ at Marshall, she believes that they can show His love in practical ways.

"The whole point is we're going into a school where we have to lead by example," she said. "This is not like a lot of outreaches where you go in preaching. We have to go in showing them who Christians are."