“Key reasons for Community Works Journal's survival are the consistently high quality of the articles and their immediate usefulness to teachers. The Journal is a resource that truly speaks to teachers with excellent, provocative ideas.”
Steve Seidel, Ed.D,
Chair, Arts in Education
Harvard Graduate School
of Education
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Community Works Institute
on Service-Learning
July 19-23, 2010
at Shelburne Farms, Vermont
A Premier International Event
Limited Openings
Learn More
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Created by teachers for teachers and now in use by thousands of teachers in more than 40 U.S. States and abroad, the Workbook contains a solid overview of service-learning, planning guides, and more. more
Patchwork is "an inspired collection of vignettes that explore the reasons why people choose to garden together in community." more
Submission Guidelines
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REGISTER NOW
Community Works Institute on Service-Learning
July 19-23, 2010
A Premier International Event • Limited Openings
Learn More • View Video Trailer
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CURRENT JOURNAL ISSUE
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Quail Ridge Schoolhouse: A Window on What Kids Need
By NANCY HUMPHREY CASE
A once-in-a-lifetime experience may hold clues for every educator. The setting had a lot to do with the magic, along with the calm atmosphere, closeness to nature, and the interaction with living creatures that depended on them. The small size of the school was a huge factor, too. Everyone was integral. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Saving Daniel’s Farm
By AMY E. STEIN
On a sunny day in late September just as the leaves revealed faint hints of amber and crimson red, I drove over to the farm after school. I swapped my clogs for a pair of worn hiking boots and walked over to the sunken front porch. A thin, elderly man with a long, gray beard and sunken cheeks sat in a rickety wooden chair. I extended my hand and introduced myself. more
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ESSAY—OF PLACE AND EDUCATION
Childtime
By CHRISTIAN McEWEN
Adults tend to think of nature in terms of “the great outdoors.” They crave distant, glittering vistas, snow-capped mountains, broad, far-reaching valleys. Children are less particular. A hedge, a ditch, a tiny knoll, will give them all the countryside they need. Audre Lorde spoke in passionate terms about a pocket park in Harlem, close to where she lived as a young girl, “That place, the green, the trees, and the water, formed my forest of Arden.” It was the only green place she ever saw. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
A Place You Can Walk To
By KRISTINA KENEGOS SULLIVAN
I’ve learned there is a great importance in finding nature close to home. A creek has patterns of light and variation in its course as the water makes its way over the rocks. There are deep pools that barely move where water spiders skate across the surface just above a branch of braided stones that tumble down and curve this way and that. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
The Purpose of Inclusion: Setting or Vision?
By SARA BAKER
I still believe in the concept of inclusion. Not because I want to prepare students for the world as it is, but because I want to influence the kind of world that it will be—for all of us. Inclusion is about honoring diversity, not ignoring it. It is about responding to the needs of individual children within the context of their families, their classrooms and their schools. more
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ESSAY—OF PLACE AND EDUCATION
Return of the Redwings
By DAVID SOBEL
We rambled around campus. It was early March, the snows were slowly receding and, lo and behold, down there on the road from the freshman dorms to the soccer fields there was a small pond, surrounded by a marshy meadow, with a border of eight to ten foot shrubs around it. I’d passed it a hundred times and never given it a second glance. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Connecting, Listening, and Learning to Teach
By ROBIN GRIFFITH, NANCY ZELLER, and GUILI ZHANG
The preservice teachers were also very interested in getting to know their students as individuals. Linda noted that the little boy she worked with, Adam, “didn’t have any books” and “had never been to a bookstore.” She said, “He basically watches the dogs and horror movies with his dad,” and added “I think that we have a lot in common [because we both struggled with reading]!” more
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ESSAY—COMMUNITY WORKS
Gathering For Purpose
By JOE BROOKS
The experiences of our colleagues in the classroom strongly suggest that we are not living in a world where scatterings of educators in different buildings with shared teaching values can easily survive intact on their own—not to mention thrive. Teachers need experiences that gather and share collective wisdom—evolving models of success. The professional experience that inspires or rekindles the personal must somehow be at the core of what we do. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Family History Writing: A Prototype for Local Service Learning
By SUZANNE KELSER RUMSEY
The themes of collaboration, reflection, and reciprocity, while certainly familiar to service learning researchers, are themes which I have found also articulate the correlation between service learning and family history writing as well as shed light on what family history is and how service learning can be used in other historical, family based, and localized research projects. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Building Community Through Teen Led Public Forums
By SHELLEY MURDOCK and CAROLE PATERSON
Those working in the youth development field have known for many years that young people have the talent and energy to understand, analyze and create positive change in their communities. The authors share the exciting results from a University of California 4-H affiliated program where youth reported that they acquired confidence and skills that they were able to use in other facets of their lives. Adults increased their awareness of and appreciation for youth’s capabilities. Youth connected with their communities. more
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EVENTS—PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In partnership with Shelburne Farms, Community Works Institute is pleased to announce a series of unique professional development events for 2010. Included among the events offered is the Education for Sustainability Institute. All events are appropriate for K-16 educators and community organization staff members. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
City Hearts: Reaching Inner City Youth through the Arts
By SUSAN BONTHRON
An in depth profile of the acclaimed Arts enrichment program in the Los Angeles County area where teachers from LA Arts community teach dance, acting, circus arts, musical theatre, Shakespeare, singing, crafts, and photography free to the community's most impoverished children. City Hearts connects thousands of underprivileged students with professionals to inspire learning and integrate disaffected youth back into the community through the Arts. more
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Dispelling the Myths of Reflection
By CARRIE WILLIAMS HOWE
Body language changes; instead of leaning in eager and excited, colleagues, or students in my class, lean back and squirm. We’ve hit uncharted territory; preconceptions that surround the word “reflection” are tainting the conversation. Reflection is perhaps one of the most examined and written about aspects of service-learning pedagogy. And yet, it is also one of the most misunderstood. more
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Submission Guidelines
PUBLICATION & DISTRIBUTION
of Community Works Journal has been made possible, in part, through grants from The Corporation for National Service, The Bay and Paul Foundations, and with support from Shelburne Farms, along with generous donations by individuals. Limited quantities of the print edition of previous issues are available for $6 per copy, or $3.50 per copy for 20 or more.
Review and download PDFs of our back issues: Journal Archives.
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