Summer WEST Featured Workshops and Special Events

Please Note: Additional workshops will continue to be added. Check back often for updates.

Service-Learning as a Teaching Strategy
DESCRIPTION: Service-Learning, Place Based Education, and Education for Sustainability (economic, environment and social) provide complimentary approaches to creating vital learning experiences that contribute to the well being of the larger community. This workshop will offer an introduction to a user-friendly framework for making service-learning an integral part of the academic school experience, through activities and projects of tangible and lasting effect. This framework will be extremely useful to participants in creating support for cohesive service-learning and sustainability efforts in their local context.


More than a Mural: Social and Public Art Field Trip
DESCRIPTION: Not just for art teachers! Community murals represent social history, culture, and the opportunity for participatory democracy and collective action. We will visit and explore The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). SPARC, one of the most important educational and cultural resources in Los Angeles and located in nearby Venice. An extremely unique public resource, SPARC was founded in 1976 by muralist Judith F. Baca, painter Christina Schlesinger, and filmmaker Donna Deitch. The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) is an arts center that produces, preserves and conducts educational programs about community based public art works. SPARC espouses public art, particularly community murals, as an organizing tool for addressing contemporary issues, fostering cross-cultural understanding and promoting civic dialogue. Working within this philosophical framework, SPARC has created murals and other forms of public art in communities throughout Los Angeles and increasingly in national and international venues. [click to enlarge above image]

SPARC’s Mural Resource and Education Center (MREC) is the country’s largest one of a kind repository of information about murals and other forms of public art. Since 1976, SPARC’s MREC has amassed an impressive amount of written and visual documentation focusing on multi-ethnic public art, techniques in mural making, and the role of muralism within the historical civil rights struggles of the African American, Chicano, Asian, Women, and Native American movements. A sample of the MREC imagery includes: responses to the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, the representation of the Farm workers movement, extensive and varied images of Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. One of SPARC's latest projects is a collaboration between Miguel Contreras Learning Center High School students and UCLA students to produce a new 18ft x 33ft Digital Mural for permanent placement in downtown LA. [click image above to enlarge] The project involves creating a mural commemorating the legacy of Mexican-American labor leader Miguel Contreras while visually representing the issues affecting the students of the Center who come from the local area. more


A Sunset Walking Tour of Venice Beach's Community Murals
We will be joined for an evening's walking tour of Venice Murals by representatives from The Social and Public Art Resource Center, Los Angeles (SPARC) We will learn about the history of a specific set of community murals in Venice, but more significantly what community murals suggest as a form of collective action, community improvement, and legacy for future generations.






Building Sustainable Communities Through Service-Learning
DESCRIPTION: Sustainability provides an integrative concept for service-learning that helps build participants' skills, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs with the goal of creating a better future. Embedded in education for sustainability is a process that is integrative and participatory and one that uses long-term thinking to meet academic and service goals in a complimentary fashion. In this workshop we will explore the interconnectedness of communities in all their forms and the high impact role that service-learning can play in this process for both teachers and students.


Encountering Sustainability: A Walking Tour
DESCRIPTION: Spend an afternoon on the Loyola Marymount campus exploring a number of sites with implications for service and sustainability. This hands-on field trip will serve as the backdrop for beginning your own investigation into the relationship between service-learning and Sustainability. With the goal of sustainable communities as a motivating force, service-learning provides an ideal strategy for students to become invested in caring for their own communities.

Our stops will include the Tongva Memorial Garden, an ethnobotanical garden overlooking the Ballona Wetlands and the Pacific Ocean. We will also visit The LIONS Garden, an on-campus community garden that demonstrates the growing of native plants and organic food crops as well as the use of appropriate technologies such as composting, rain water harvesting, and storm water management. Other campus sites of interest will include the William H. Hannon Library, a LEED Gold certified building that features a number of green building techniques. Each of these sites will provide a unique opportunity for Institute participants to reflect on using place as context in developing ideas for service-learning focused activities and curriculum that build sustainable communities. Loyola Marymount University is notable for having implemented the first university-wide recycling program in the country in 1990. By 1995, the University was recycling 50 percent of its generated solid waste and was the first campus in California to recycle 100 percent of its green waste. In 2003, LMU completed installation of a roof-top solar electric system which was, at that time, the largest at any university in the world. read more about LMU's green initiatives
with Joseph Rasmussen, LMU Sustainability Coordinator


Instructional Best Practice for Service-Learning
DESCRIPTION: CWI's Instructional Best Practices for Service-Learning were designed to create common language and understanding around the use of service-learning as a teaching strategy. The Best Practices form a valuable tool for professional dialogue and are a core component of our work in helping educators (and students) plan, extend, and reflect upon service-learning activities and projects. The Instructional Best Practices have been field tested by thousands of educators who have successfully used them to plan, refine, and evaluate both new and existing service-learning activities and projects. The Best Practices also provide a useful way to talk about service-learning within your own institution, becoming essential to designing high quality service-learning activities and programs.


Resilience through Reading: A Praxis Model for Community Engagement
Students undergo remarkable transformations in their personal beliefs by participating in a team taught college course—integrated with the "Reading Friends" tutoring program at Whittier College. With a combination of challenges and resources existing within the community of Whittier, this course and program exemplifies the ways in which local partners can work together toward a crucial common goal. Learn about the ways in which participating undergraduate students engage as active citizens while developing competence in education and social work practice through their work in an elementary school literacy partnership. Much more than a typical tutoring program, "Reading Friends" promotes understanding and meaningful involvement in the lives of others and with the community. This interactive workshop will include an overview of the program along with a discussion of activities that can support our students in integrating theory and ethical practices. We will also explore the diverse social systems that shape young people's learning, and strategies for reflective, mindful practice. This workshop holds lessons important to any service-learning program's intent to nurture a sense of a student's self efficacy and growth as a member of the community. with Kathleen Ralph and Paula Sheridan

Impacting Policy Through Service-Learning
DESCRIPTION: Policy research is most effective when policy makers identify the questions they need answered to address social problems. Childhood obesity rates suggest that our children’s generation will be the first to experience a shorter life-span than their parents’. Recently, the City of Whittier was identified as having one of the highest obesity rates in the country, so Lydia Jackson Elementary School (LJS) invested limited resources in a salad bar and requested that we assess its effectiveness. In response, Whittier College students conducted direct observations, interviewed LJS students, created and administered parent questionnaires, analyzed quantitative and qualitative data, and presented findings that fully justify continued use of the salad bar. In addition to gaining valuable critical-thinking, leadership, technology, and teamwork skills, Whittier College students expressed appreciation for the opportunity to learn about people from different backgrounds and “give back” to their community. with Lorinda Comparo

Site-Level Best Practice for Service-Learning
DESCRIPTION: The Site Level Best Practices have helped educators, administrators, community partners, and students support long term service-learning efforts for more than a decade. We will explore a practical guide to identifying and meeting site level needs, issues, and challenges on the road to supporting service-learning. Faculty members will offer their own insights and explore practical needs and considerations encountered on the road to supporting and institutionalizing service-learning.

Reflection: An Essential Ingredient for Learning
DESCRIPTION: Take a look at how reflection can become the guiding force behind service-learning and how it deepens understanding. Learn and practice a variety of strategies and techniques with veteran service-learning practitioners. Discuss spiral reflection. Engage in the popcorn method, a refection collage, image journaling, and scrapbook documentation. Take a look at how reflection can be based on the multiple intelligences.

Planning for Effective Student Voice and Participation
DESCRIPTION: What do we really mean when we talk about nurturing meaningful student voice, both in curriculum projects and within the life of the classroom, school, or program? Education is the foundation of our democracy and service-learning experiences that encourage genuine student voice also create opportunities for leadership. In doing so we increase student engagement, ownership, and ultimately learning outcomes. We will put a sharp and realistic lens to student voice through a veteran educator's candid reflections and suggestions. Our goal will be to identify the necessary steps, components, and needs that contribute to making meaningful student voice that is systemic and lasting. Amid a backdrop of actual project based experiences, participants will hear candid reflections and specific suggestions. Participants will hear candid reflections and specific suggestions. We will explore a continuum of possibile entry points for embracing a pedagogical foundation that supports real student voice within the curriculum. Service-learning experiences that encourage genuine student voice also create opportunities for leadership. In doing so we increase student engagement, ownership, and ultimately learning outcomes.

Traveling the Path to Intentional Service-Learning
DESCRIPTION: This workshop will take us inside one teacher’s journey into the world of service-learning. Our focus will be on what it was like getting started, beginning to forge community relationships, and working to create student (and teacher) engagement and success. Along the way we will encounter a number of surprises, both positive and negative with a candid sharing of successes and the willingness to fail along the way. with Matt Leader

Higher Education and K-12 Partnerships
DESCRIPTION: This workshop will be led by Whittier College which was recently named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with distinction by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). In addition, Whittier has received a special classification awarded earlier this year from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement for Teaching for its high level of community involvement.

This workshop offers an opportunity for K-16 and community program participants to explore the exciting possibilities offered by partnerships between higher education, K-12, and community based programs. The focus will be the cultivation of relationships between Whittier College and local K-12 schools and youth-serving institutions. As part of its mission as a liberal arts institution, Whittier College has spent 10 years developing the notion of “practical application” into long-term experiential-learning partnerships and projects with local K-12 schools and youth-serving institutions. The philosophy underlining experiential learning at Whittier is “best fit”: faculty and students are free to structure service-learning and community-based research in ways that benefit both the students and the community. This workshop will showcase a variety of different models of engagement from curriculum-based, co-curricular, direct, and indirect service, with the hopes attendees will find ways to adjust sample projects to serve their own needs. In addition, we hope to highlight practical strategies for cultivating partnerships with local colleges and universities in creating experiential learning activities that involve meaningful interactions between college and K-12 students. with Christine Hill and David Sarabia

Thinking Forward: Meeting the Challenges that Lie Ahead
DESCRIPTION: We will use the collective thinking and experience of the full group to think long term—identifying and problem solving potential roadblocks, unexpected changes, and unforeseen “landscape alterations” that can affect the well being and survival of even the most successful projects and programs.

Gardening, Service, and Nutrition: Across the Currculum and
Through the Community
DESCRIPTION: School based agricultural and nutritional education is on the rise. Thousands of schools and communities across the U.S, have evolved their own unique forms of gardening projects. From bean seeds planted in cups on classroom windowsills to elaborate outdoor nature centers, gardening has many benefits, especially when thoughtfully integrated into the school or program curriculum. In this workshop, we'll visit dynamic examples of school gardening and discuss ways in which service-learning can be used to address the challenges of planning and sustaining a school or community garden program. Participants will learn about service projects that can be done using school based gardens as well as greenhouses. These outdoor classrooms provide a perfect environment for providing the hands-on learner a real connection to science, math, health, and language arts curriculums. We will also make connections to nutrition and the local food movement and learn about successes and challenges inherent to projects that involve managing gardens and greenhouse throughout the school year. with Rick Cota

Service-Learning and Assessment [optional discussion group session]
DESCRIPTION: Assessment is about observing how our students are doing and providing feedback and support so that they can do better. Involving students in the assessment process helps them understand how and why they learn. In this workshop, we’ll look at some techniques for aligning assessment with learning goals in service-learning practice, including deepening the connection between journal writing and service and aligning curricular goals with service and assessment using Connecting Service-Learning to the Curriculum. This workshop begins with a quick resource review. We then look at some powerful assessment models collected by a national study group on service-learning and assessment. The workshop concludes with a frank discussion of how assessing what students learn through service fits into the larger goals of local education. We encourage you to bring your questions and dilemmas about assessment.

register online l download printable registration form
Please Note: Additional workshops will continue to be added. Check back often for updates.