Course plan

The process of constructing my course plan consisted of several steps. First, I considered the overall timeframe of on-site, local service-learning projects and their relationship to reflective artmaking projects. General meetings were needed prior to on-site local service-learning project meetings to allow for the students to observe a need and prepare to meet the need. Reflection occurred throughout and following each on-site, local service-learning project meeting. I therefore designed the course plan in this manner, with two weeks at the general meeting site to begin the overall project, several weeks of alternating general meetings and on-site local service- learning project meetings, and at least one week to conclude the entire project. I decided the number of weeks that should be allotted to each stage based upon the availabilities of time frame, resources, meeting spaces, field trips, etc.

Next, I considered the on-site local service-learning projects as I simultaneously considered the reflective artmaking projects. At the start of creating my ideas, it was important to present to the students an idea that was explicitly service-learning, as opposed to simply community service, so that the students could better understand the framework and rationale of the basic course plan. As the researcher, the purpose was to study service-learning. As the facilitator, the purpose was to show the students what service-learning looked like. This involved a delicate balance that required careful consideration.

The process began through reflection upon what I knew about the students and shared community. Together, we observed a need and then began preparing to meet that need. I

initiated this process to guide the students towards service-learning, and the group built upon and took ownership of the process. For example, the shared local community had recently been devastated by wildfires, and this event affected each member of the group. I suggested that a project that could demonstrate their personal and community gratitude towards the fire department could be suitable and meaningful for the students. Therefore, I developed ideas related to the wildfire according to the interests of the students and suggested them as a springboard for their own generation of ideas. I imagined the ideas based upon previous conversations with the students, their common locality, shared faith-based convictions, previous civic engagement, and individual personalities. Consequently, they approved of the ideas and decided to adopt and take ownership of them, building upon and making plans for the ideas according to their desires and interests as a group.

As a result, the group expressed their gratitude to the local fire department through handcrafted Thank You Cards and homemade cookies. They created these cards with elderly members of the community who may have desired to thank the fire department as well, yet whose gratitude might not have been explicitly expressed. With broadly defined ideas within a service-learning frame of reference, the students considered and discussed the ideas through observing a need, or sharing other observations of needs that they had perceived, and collectively making decisions regarding the needs upon which they would take action. This process provided the students the opportunity to take ownership of the ideas by selecting and/or refining them (or deciding upon entirely different ideas).

I developed the reflective artmaking projects while considering my on-site local service- learning ideas before the first meeting. As the researcher, it was important to incorporate customized reflective artmaking projects that would elicit responses according to the research

goals. As the facilitator, the reflective artmaking projects needed to enhance the students’ existing understanding of civic engagement by being educative (Dewey, 1938). It was essential for the projects to sustain the interest of the students by being fun and engaging. Considering the strengths, weaknesses, and ages of the students was important as well, so the projects needed to be diverse and multi-modal to provide a wide-range of options to engage and to help them feel comfortable expressing themselves. The projects also needed to occur within the boundaries of the available timeframe, resources, meeting space, etc.

With a broad set of service ideas as a starting point, I was able to integrate the reflective artmaking projects that I had investigated and collected prior to the first meeting. With each reflective artmaking project, I considered its placement in the overall sequence according to what I determined to be most reasonable (for the description, sequence, dates, participants, and intentionalitities of the projects, see Appendix B: Project Sequence and Rationale, and Appendix C: Conversation Starters). I developed the sequence to provide structure and planning feasibility, yet maintain flexibility to provide adaptations (improvements, additions, or omissions) according to changing needs and desires. One challenge was to provide substantial planning for a project so that it was readily available for utilization, yet maintain a willingness to omit the project from the sequence if it no longer suited the needs of the overall scheme. Another challenge was developing an appropriate sequence, considering each project and relating it to the others on a timeline, designing a method of guiding the students along the experientially educative path of service-learning. Inspiring and sustaining the elements of interest and fun needed to be at the forefront of project development alongside the educative elements.

For example, students practiced observing a need in the community by considering and defining first who their community was through a collectively generated Poster Project adapted from Foster, et al. (2016) in which students drew their community according to its proximity to the group. They visually and orally considered which aspects and members of their community were most important and influential to themselves as a group and placed them within concentric circles that encircled the group in the middle of the drawing. It was a collectively constructed reflective artmaking project that simultaneously served as a teambuilding activity. Therefore, this project belonged at the start of the first meeting. I placed projects that facilitated reflections upon service-learning itself immediately following the service, such as reflective portfolio page construction specifically regarding the recent service within this study. I placed reflective artmaking projects that considered the entire project as a whole at the end of the entire project, such as culminating reflective portfolio page construction or the video.

After determining the overall structure and sequence of the project timeframe, as well as my initial ideas for service and arts-based projects, I drafted an overall outline of what I hoped to accomplish. This overall plan broadly addressed the primary goals of the study. For example, one goal was to meet during a particular time frame each week for at least eight weeks, and within this time frame certain components needed to be consistently present each week, for both the general meetings at the home-based site, as well as the local service-learning project site. Such components included an introduction to the meeting, a team building activity, at least one reflective artmaking project, and closing remarks that reflected upon what the group accomplished. The finer details fell into place as I considered the broad scheme in tandem with the specific project planning (Appendix B).