Week Without Walls, Nepal. Middle School students visited a part of Nepal where rhinos, tigers and other endangered animals are starting to thrive due to various wildlife protection schemes. They assisted in building bio gas, which help ensure Nepal’s natural environment is maintained for future generations of animals and humans alike.
Service Learning at the American School of Dubai, integrated in curriculum, blends inquiry and informed action to promote positive change, contribute to social transformation, and develop critical consciousness.
Service learning is integral to our school's mission and core values. Service outcomes might include direct service, indirect service, advocacy or research. Whether in a Week Without Walls trip or in classrooms across the school, service learning is a teaching and learning methodology that is crucial in the cultivation of a culture of contribution and service in our community. Service learning is also used as a framework for action for our student organizations.
Service learning has, at its core, the development of global contributors. It is an instructional methodology that integrates connections to world issues through the acquisition and development of skills to support solutions to local, community or global problems. Service learning is an experience defined by student agency, inquiry, and collaboration through a process of investigation, planning, action, reflection, and demonstration to address authentic needs.
Service Learning in Action
INSPIRE Week, Kenya. This particular expedition to Kenya provided high school students with the opportunity to take part in a wide range of community, conservation, environmental, and wildlife activities.
Roots and Shoots Student Organization, Elementary School. Students become part of a global community conservation organization that advances the vision and work of Dr. Jane Goodall—helping protect Chimpanzees and inspiring people to conserve the natural world.
Why Service Learning?
Through service learning, students learn about themselves, hone life skills and deepen their understanding of significant global issues. Service learning is integrated within the curriculum and ASD students, inspired by this work, often initiate a host of co-curricular student organizations which provide opportunities for the community to come together in support of worthwhile issues and causes.
Whether giving voice to the voiceless, engaging in the school garden, participating in school-related sustainable change, supporting local community partners, or becoming involved in meaningful conversations around global issues, ASD students from all ages have the opportunity to develop the critical consciousness necessary for informed action and contribution in a rapidly changing world.
