As a K-8 elementary Guilford School's staff worked diligently in the early 1990s to integrate service-learning in a meaningful way within the academic program we offered our students. The task proved at times to be suprisingly easy, and at others amazingly vexing. The successes we had seen in our students participating in service learning type activities prompted us several years ago to consider ways to amplify the effect across grade levels. Our search often focused upon finding ways to provide meaningful continuity of activities, related to curriculum content and promoting student investment. This search paralleled needs faced by curriculum initiatives underway in Vermont and within our own district.

As we approached our third Institute in 1997, we held onto and in fact sharpened our belief in using local history projects to develop a sense of place and belonging for our students. We analyzed existing projects that range from school gardens to local history projects in terms of Best Practices for Service-Learning—that is attempting to move various aspects meaningful to teachers foward. Student ownership and initiative is one such example. All in all it was an amazing, and yes!, sometimes quite challenging journey.

A BRIEF HISTORY
Early on some of us became convinced that conducting a summer institute on-site would give us the time and opportunity to begin that work at a "whole staff" level. We saw an institute as a key opportunity to move forward and to expand on our commitment to developing programs that break down the barriers between school and community. In planning the first of what was to become an annual institute, for four consecutive years, we began a journey of unexpected rewards and insights. It proved to be a classic case of process complimenting product rather than opposing it. We created questions that, in some cases, we struggled to adequately answer. But we felt very good about what we accomplished knowing we had done so as a group.

Local partners in developing various phases of the Institute included our school staff, The Guilford Historical Society, the Environmental Learning for the Future (ELF) Program and the local Grange.

Staff and community members worked together to plan Guilford's Summer Institute for a number of years. The first Guilford Summer Institute took place in 1995 (designed as a graduate course through a partnership with Norwich University and titled: Service Learning as a Teaching and Learning Strategy) and brought together nearly ninety percent of the school staff, both certified and classified. The Institute included community members and parents as full participants and partners.

That was, for us, an unprecedented undertaking. The results went well beyond a written document's ability to convey. We discovered much about ourselves as a school and community. We uncovered and shared many local resources. We exponentially increased both our enthusiasm and our workload. We designed usable curriculum. We grew as a school and community.

Participants at the Institute were asked to develop concrete ways to engage Guilford students with community members and groups through school activities that served real and actual needs. Activities included a participant tour of local sites that lend themselves to inquiry projects. We looked for direct connections to real life applications of school-taught skills. Teams of participants worked to connect school gardens and a nature trail to the curriculum. We worked to expand use of the Guilford Gazette as a tool for both learning and local communication. We shared community and school need survey results from the last several years. We heard from a panel of adults for whom school had been a less-than-joyous experience. We worked hard, we laughed a lot and we learned a lot about each other. We also broiled during the hottest weeks on record in our part of southeastern Vermont.

Beginnings
In October of the first year a core group came together to discuss ways in which the curriculum at Guilford could more closely reflect our belief in the value of community service learning. We had already determined that the shortest route to achieving our goals would be to hold a summer institute in an effort to bring everyone on board. At that October meeting, we developed a mission statement that guided our subsequent thinking: We desire to create a curriculum which uses the he community of Guilford as a resource, develops an ethic of caring, a sense of place, and an understanding of history and of our future. Thus, the school grounds, the community and its history have become the focus of our efforts.

Since the early 1990's, the staff of Guilford Central school worked to develop a curriculum that was more closely coordinated throughout grades K-8. This effort was independent though related to a district-wide curriculum improvement initiative. Guilford's staff identified "Big Ideas" in each of the subject areas that helped us organize our curriculum. The Institute allowed teachers and community members to work together on curriculum that had a service learning component as well as broad and deep connections to the Vital Results of Vermont's Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities.

The planning group continued to meet at frequent intervals, expanding and contracting in numbers. We hoped that by expanding those involved in planning, both the staff's and the community members' stake in the process would increase. We were initially far from certain that all staff would be willing to commit a week of their summer to attend the summer institute The planning committee struggled with finding ways to increase the level of ownership felt by the staff. We returned key goals to the larger staff for consensus and insured that there would be something of importance for everyone. (It should be noted that service learning, while valued, at that point was not a widespread priority of our staff.)

Common criteria were agreed to for all "strand areas" The criteria range included service learning, K-8 collaboration and a clear plan to address equity issues. Prior to the Institute, the planning group reviewed the VT Content and Performance Standards for usability during the Institute. We developed a one page summary of the Standards when it became clear one was needed. With assistance from VISMT, we developed a planning template to help participants focus the activities being designed around our criteria. The criteria were important because they ensured participants would use common language and share a priority system. The common purpose would be community engagement through service learning.

Over the course of planning for the Institute, the planning committee kept the larger faculty informed of its progress and conducted brainstorming sessions about local resources. We also organized a staff tour of the school grounds to refamiliarize ourselves and to generate ideas. Students in the middle school built several raised garden beds during a unit on agriculture.

At the Institute, participants used a planning document to develop activities. They reported that the process of filling in the template often caused them to rethink and refine the proposed activity as each of the components (service learning, K-8 teaming, equity, standards) was addressed. We observed that as thought was given to each component and how it would be applied or gained, the activity itself began to change. In some cases the change was wholesale. Once participants became enthusiastic about a component such as serving community needs, that component could essentially "rewrite" the activity. Strand participants were also informed by the success of others in meeting criteria in unique ways, creating a healthy climate of idea exchange.

Institute participants developed ready to use lesson plans, short unit plans, single day activities, and longer term plans requiring significant development work over the next several years. The challenges taken on were large and met with varying degrees of success during the year. In the depths of winter it was hard to retain a sense of enthusiasm and commitment to gardens or a nature trail, for example. Sometimes there was a sense that we had tried to do too much and "failed."