Environmental Summer Challenge (ESC), (The): A Milwaukee Area Service Learning Partnership

In the summer of 2008, a group of members of the Southeast Wisconsin Service Learning Consortium (SWSLC) met to discuss collaborative projects that would develop deeper connections among SWSLC members as well as the greater community, which would also create an ethnically, economically and socially diverse learning experience around a common community concern. The SWSLC is a group of K‐16 administrators interested in advancing the use of service learning in their institutions. What emerged was a "thick" collaboration of partners that included K‐12 administrators and teachers; higher education administration, teachers, and students; community‐based organizations; and several AmeriCorps VISTAs who planned a three week summer service learning experience for middle school students in the greater Milwaukee area called The Environmental Summer Challenge (ESC). The curriculum developed for the various sites relied on the "3S" model of curriculum development wherein the student learns "self" and "social" understanding in conjunction with the "subject" (environmental stewardship and sustainability was the focus here). The mixed groups of students from urban, suburban and rural schools were ethnically, economically, and culturally diverse in the extreme (a total of three languages were spoken in one group). Analysis of quantitative data suggests that students were changed in three areas: civic responsibility, environmental responsibility, and respecting differences. Analysis of qualitative data suggests that the experience was transformative for all partners involved in the project. [authors]