Community Based Learning: Youth and Education

This program is designed for students who are interested in gaining practitioner experience by connecting with the community through interning in schools, youth and community education programs. Students who participated in Gateways for Incarcerated Youth 2024-25 can continue peer mentoring with Green Hill youth through internships. This program is offered through the Center for Community-Based Learning and Action (CCBLA), one of Evergreen's public service centers: https://www.evergreen.edu/communitybasedlearning

The foundation of learning this quarter will come from the work experience gained interning. As a way to develop a generous, inquiry oriented and critically reflective practice, we'll create a curriculum informed by the dilemmas, issues, and questions that arise from the unique experiences you bring back to the classroom for discussion/problem-solving. We’ll ground and inform our inquiries using principles of liberatory, humane and just education.  We will learn and practice: (i) tools for reflexive practice that can help to "widen our apertures" (Hammond, 2014), and (ii) protocols for collective sense making.  We'll seek out and engage resources to inform and address emergent questions in the form of readings, guests & presentations identified by students, faculty and/or community members.  In addition to participating in weekly field seminars and workshops, participants will maintain a structured weekly field journal.  You will also create and share a synthesis project.

Students who are interested in this program should contact Sonja Wiedenhaupt (wiedenhs@evergreen.edu).  Both Faculty and the Center for Community Based Learning Center provide support for finding sites. ( ccbla@evergreen.edu)