It was a reunion of sorts when math teacher Chris Morrison visited The Paideia School in Atlanta last month.
Morrison taught math at Paideia before his family moved to Indiana 15 years ago and he started teaching at University High School. While he enjoyed reuniting with his former colleagues, this wasn’t the sole purpose of his visit.
“I went down to Paideia specifically to see what they do with community service and how they structure it,” said Morrison, who also advises University High School’s Community Service Club. “I just wanted to see what they do, how they operate it, and what ideas we can bring back here.”
Serving Through Internships
Morrison spent two days with Natalie Rogovin, Paideia’s new Director of Service Learning. Service learning at Paideia is done through internships, which provide students with an opportunity to investigate pressing issues of social justice in the community through service. Rogovin’s job is to coordinate all aspects of the internship program, including finding placements for students, overseeing supply and resource drives in the school, and helping classroom teachers find space for service learning in their curriculum.
Paideia requires high school students to complete two separate internships before they graduate. Each internship must be at least 30 hours of service with a nonprofit or government organization, but the school reports that many students continue their service long after the required hours are done.
“She [Rogovin] explained why they do this: it really forces the kids to learn more about a single organization and empathize with the people there,” said Morrison. There’s more that students can learn [with repeat service at a single nonprofit].”
Requiring Hours
While the internship program, and the hours assigned to it, differs from what University High School does in the Year of Service program, Morrison sees merits in that approach as well.
“[There’s something I] like about the hours requirement, but that would require someone to monitor those hours and help students find things to do with their time,” said Morrison. “Someone explained it to me once by saying, ‘We require kids to take four years of English, and if we didn’t require them to do it, not all of them would do it.’ What happens at Paideia is that many students find out they really like [community service].”
While he doesn’t necessarily see University adopting an hour requirement anytime soon, he would like to see the program grow to include a service and leadership course students can take or include enhancements to the existing Year of Service program. His site visits at Paideia and formerly at Culver Academies have jointly inspired him.
“I’d kind of like to look at what they do at Culver, and look at what they do at Paideia, and morph those together to use at University,” said Morrison.