How can I include community projects into my classroom?

How can I include community projects into my classroom?

If a person seeks to earn their driver's license, that person could not just learn all the necessary skills to drive a car from just reading a textbook on driving. To learn how to drive in the real world, one must practice and have hands-on experiences in the real world. Being ready to face the complexities of the real-world requires more than just textbook knowledge; it requires real-world practice. This analogy reflects a massive opportunity for teachers and for the entire system of education.

Let’s face it. The world we live in today is full of problems, including inequality, conflict, and climate change to name a few. What this world desperately needs are changemakers. Simply put, we need more people doing good for people and planet. As teachers, we like to tell our students to ‘be the change they wish to see in the world’, but do we really teach them how to do this? How can we expect our students to graduate from our schools and go out into the world to solve the problems afflicting their communities if all we do is read about the problems in a textbook. Awareness is not enough. Meaningful education comes from building empathy and agency among students. Experiential learning and community projects are the answer, and these will forever change the way you impact your learners.

As teachers, we know that assessments are important in monitoring whether the students are meeting certain learning outcomes. Use projects as assessment tools that provide a much richer and more valuable experience for your students. When designing your community project, ensure that this act of community service is not just an extracurricular activity, but also a maximized opportunity to assess your students on the learning outcomes of your curriculum. Believe it or not, academics and community service can coexist.

The good news is that this pedagogy is tried and tested by many educators, including my own faculty of teachers from preschool, elementary and high school. For example, in our school, we’ve had teachers collaborate on an interdisciplinary project for Grade 2 students, or 7-8 year old students, wherein students produced a cooking demonstration video and class cookbook to campaign in their community about the impact of the meat industry on climate change. These student outputs led to community events, during which the Grade 2 students would orally present their works and their advocacy to the students and parents of other school communities, convincing them to eat less meat. Accordingly, students were assessed based on essential learning outcomes prescribed in the curriculum, including writing competencies, speaking skills, understanding of human health, understanding of weather patterns and more. Simultaneously, these young students created a shift in the way of thinking of hundreds of community members by encouraging people to adopt more meatless diets to promote better health and to combat the effects of climate change.

In high school, research projects are a common example of incorporating community engagement into academics. Using another example from our school, students are informed from the very beginning of the project that they will present their research project output to real local government officials and city stakeholders. Since students are given the freedom to choose the topic of their research, they are motivated to focus on a community-wide issue that they feel most passionate about. As a result, eye-opening problems were brought to the table during the presentations to community leaders and innovative recommendations were thoughtfully produced by the students. These included recommendations on using certain organic fertilizers to upgrade the agricultural yield of local farmers, on scheduling workshops for pet-owners in municipalities to elevate the local standards of animal welfare, investing in better mental health programs in schools, and others.

This idea of ‘learning by doing’ can be applied to so many essential skills needed by youth to grow into active global citizens who are champions for equity and environment preservation. As teachers, we can use these community projects to build our students’ strategic leadership skills and persuasive communication skills by spearheading their own advocacies; we can develop their media literacy and critical thinking skills to combat misinformation; we can train our students in regulating their internal biases to promote more inclusivity, in skills in disaster preparedness & mental health to strengthen youth’s resilience in impending crises, and many more.

Through these projects, we have found that students feel more motivated to excel in their academic work because they know that the effort they put in will not only result in a grade, but will also have the potential to positively impact their community. Because the stakes are higher, these young people feel empowered to step out of their comfort zones as they feel a greater sense of civic responsibility, an important value we can do a better job of instilling at schools.

Be encouraged to bring community projects into your lesson plans regardless of the age of your students. In actuality, the sooner you bridge your classroom to your community, the better it is for your students’ development. This is because so much of our mental models and our views of the world around us are materialized when we are young. That's really why education and foundational learning are so crucial to a sustainable future. As educators, let us maximize these developmental years by normalizing empathy and acts of kindness through as many concrete experiences as we can give them.

In my K-12 school, this style of teaching is the pedagogy that has completely changed the way teachers teach and the way students learn. Teaching has become more than just guiding students to reach their full potential, and has also made teachers laser-focused on a clearer goal as educators, which is to empower students to regularly make positive change in their community. For so long, schools were used simply as machines to churn out factory workers, and this goal reflected in the education system, which is a system in great need of an update. It’s time to transform education today by changing our North Star towards meaningfully preparing students to deal with the world that they will inherit. 

Since we started this article with an analogy, let’s end it with one as well. Visualize this: A kid sees a fire in the house. Is it really enough to say here, read this textbook about the reasons why fires start, all while the fire is spreading. No, it’s not enough. This is where current educational systems are lacking and this is why the skills we impart onto young people need to be intentionally chosen towards solving problems. In short, when there’s a fire, education needs to teach youth how to put out the fire. The community projects that you introduce into your classes will demonstrate the true power of education to empower students to be changemakers. Imagine the kind of person your student will develop into after 13 years of meaningfully interacting with their community and building solutions to address their problems. The future of our world is in the hands of teachers. Change begins with us. 

Ilan Enverga is a K-12 educator & SDG advocate from the Philippines. As a high school teacher and school administrator at ISBB, he leads teacher training, curriculum development and student empowerment initiatives towards realizing an academic program that infuses real-world civic engagement across preschool, elementary school & high school. As part of the UNESCO SDG4Youth Network, Ilan champions the voices and solutions of youth in transforming education all over the world, especially towards achieving the TES Youth Declaration. He continues his childhood passion for community service in both his personal and professional life.