Service Learning

Service Learning links schools with their communities. Students are given an opportunity to perform community service work that complements their classroom work. Service learning promotes both personal and intellectual growth in students. It also helps them develop civic responsibility and gives students an opportunity for career exploration. Students learn by doing through a clear application of skills and knowledge while helping to meet the need in the school or greater community. Service learning connects what they learn in school with the real world.

The Riverside Service Learning program has several different components. The students have required class time to help prepare them for the types of services they will be doing at the different sites . A second component is the actual service. The students visit sites off campus during the school day. At these sites the Riverside students will serve as mentors, buddies, and tutors in several different elementary and middle schools. They will work at relief agencies, in food pantries, doing clerical work, and even playing games and just visiting at nursing homes and day care centers. Another component of the class is outside service sites that the individual students help to develop. These sites range from church work, to community programs, to baby sitting, to environmental projects.... The service learning program at Riverside High School is an evolving course that changes as new needs in the community become apparent. We strive to develop young people who possess civic virtue, self-worth, and concern for their community.

Assessments for the course include tests, personal and site evaluations, special projects, journals, teacher evaluation, etc.