I recently put it to my students that this nation has begun to forget about the victims of Katrina and Rita. Without front page or leading news coverage of the continuing plight of evacuees or returning residents to Gulf Coast communities impacted by those storms, our citizens return their attention to their own troubles, whispering a silent “Good Luck” as we go. It’s not that we don’t care anymore about the situation. As was demonstrated during the height of the crisis, Americans from Alaska to South Dakota to Maine to Kansas and Arizona tuned in, turned on, and made a difference for their fellow citizens. But even as the words of the President stating that the recovery would take years began to fade, we began disengaging from the situation. We’ve given our donations to the food bank, sorted out our extra clothes, participated in toy drives, and that’s it. One of my students pointed out that you can still see the Bush/Clinton campaign commercials on television. So in one person’s view, we haven’t given up since commercials are still being played.
Is that as far as our mediated culture is willing to go? Can we only take passive notice of the Internet ads for “Adopt a College” on the AACC website or the “Katrina’s Kids” link on the America’s Promise website? Or silently hope that someone (else) is still contributing to the Bush/Clinton program? In the same way that our communities should not be left to rely on the “usual suspects” to coordinate and staff annual volunteer programs, so our nation ought not to be reliant on the relative handful of volunteers willing to sacrifice their time and effort to help the recovery process along, however marginally. Recovery will cost more and take longer if we continue to give lip service to the problem.
The twin natural disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita gave new meaning to homeland security and put the spotlight on some disturbing levels of unpreparedness and the social chaos that can ensue. They also created an opportunity. Rather than allow the memories of those disasters to continue fading away, educational institutions should embrace a proven teaching method that can encourage civility, build social capital and even prepare us for future emergencies: service-learning.
Combining classroom learning and community service is not a new practice, in fact, it harkens back to the kind of reflective thinking processes taught by John Dewey a century ago. Its status as a viable teaching method is well documented. Nearly one thousand college and university presidents have signed the President’s Declaration on Higher Education’s Role in Civic Education. Nearly as many institutions have service-learning programs at one level of development or another. Recent publications, such as the Campus Compact report The Community’s College, focus on “indicators of engagement” in an effort to show exemplars of institutional focus on civic engagement and practices which develop it. At least three national higher education accrediting agencies have turned their attention to such indicators of engagement as part of their evaluation. Recent budget cuts aside, federal dollars continue to support organizations such as the Corporation for National and Community Service. In my view and that of others, the ball is rolling.
However, higher education faculty can and should do more. Those of us who have been recently so proud of the advances made through service-learning programs nationally must take this recent situation and its aftermath as proof that we are only at the beginning of what could be a cultural revolution.
Whatever your reason for not utilizing this teaching method, it cannot compare to the immediate needs your community, state and nation face right now for creative and human resource support in the recovery from natural disasters or in preparing for other homeland security threats. National training and funding is now widely available for college and university service-learning programs devoted to homeland security and emergency preparedness programs. Most (though not all) states have state Campus Compact offices. Numerous higher education websites and listservs exist to provide resources on getting started and building a quality service-learning component to your course. No matter what discipline you represent, there is a service-learning option, one that is specific to emergency preparedness or homeland security, that your students can begin experiencing in your next session.
At Lone Star College System, our five colleges are doing more. In an effort to identify opportunities, our district service-learning team has positioned itself on community task forces and funding committees specific to homeland security and emergency preparedness. We are in the process of developing an emergency preparedness/recovery specific faculty service-learning handbook complete with project ideas, examples and contact information for community partners who continue to face the fallout of Katrina and Rita. Lone Star College–CyFair has organized semester break trips to the Gulf Coast region for the purpose of helping the assessment and rebuilding effort while Lone Star College–Tomball is in the early stages of developing a bioterrorism educational gaming module for use in vocational nursing programs and in local clinics and schools.
Getting the ball rolling can be dangerous if your name is Sisyphus. Opportunities to define the debate and take leadership in emergency preparedness and homeland security issues are presenting themselves daily to service learning programs big and small. It is up to us, as service-learning practitioners, faculty coordinators, community service directors, and others to place ourselves at the heart of such matters on our campuses, in our communities, and nationally to keep the ball rolling in the direction we intend. Otherwise, we are likely to be flattened by it.