Service-Learning and the Historian’s Task

Stephen Warren

Service-learning is an exciting pedagogy that is a relative newcomer to the panoply of options available to history teachers. At its heart, “service-learning” means that students learn best when they are actively engaged in the needs of a community (1). The history field school I created acts on this definition by providing students with a chance to learn from American Indians, primarily the Absentee Shawnee and the Miami tribes of Oklahoma, as they work for each tribe’s Cultural Preservation Department. Last June 2003, ten students and three faculty members implemented a two-week service-learning field school that both tribal members and students enjoyed. The success of our effort has led to a second-year course, and we hope to expand our service-learning offerings in the years ahead. Despite the successes of courses such as this one, historians have lagged behind other disciplines in terms of their interest in service-learning (2).

There are innumerable reasons why historians have been slow to adopt service-learning courses. The poor behavior of a single student might close a community to both researchers and students for years. Yet extensive collaboration with the host community can significantly reduce the chance of problems. The benefits clearly outweigh the potential risks. Community partnerships allow students to participate in off-campus cultural activities that yield the kind of positive, life-changing experiences that many teachers aspire to provide. Established relationships between professors and host communities are essential to effective service-learning courses. By investing time and energy in the needs of these communities, students and faculty demonstrate a willingness to learn from the host community on their own ground. Positive outcomes typically result from these acts of humility and service (3).

Many communities desire partnerships with knowledgeable faculty members and the students who work with them. In fact, Julie Olds, the Cultural Preservation Officer with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, believes that “service learning is the only way to study American Indian history.” For more than a decade the Miami Tribe has acted on this belief through an elaborate, mutually-beneficial relationship with Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Jennifer Makaseah, the Cultural Preservation Officer with the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, has pursued similar partnerships with colleges and universities. In a recent interview I conducted, she explained that “the reason for us asking you to come anyway is because I had kind of looked at working with a college . . . to see about inviting students to come in and work with us, like on an internship, and to do some research, because it was going to help the tribe.” She did not have the tribal employees or the funding necessary to realize all of the Absentee Shawnees’ long-term goals. According to Makaseah, “at the time it was just me and I was looking for other resources” (4).

College students in search of extraordinary learning experiences can be ideal candidates for communities in search of outside assistance. Since John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, educational researchers have implored history teachers to connect the past and present through methods akin to service-learning. In his words, “the segregation which kills the vitality of history is the divorce from present modes and concerns of social life” (5). I wanted to avoid this segregation and to engage with American Indian communities on their own terms.

I became interested in service-learning because of obvious parallels between the goals of American Indian communities and the needs of students. But the interests do not stop there. As a professor at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, the vast majority of my time is devoted to teaching, and it is imperative that my research interests complement my teaching. I have found that service-learning promotes student-faculty research, summer internships, and campus diversity in ways that validates academic research and illustrates the tangible benefits that come from it.

The service-learning course I teach begins with a long van ride from Rock Island, Illinois, to Miami, Oklahoma. We spend a week with the Miami Tribe during the most demanding time of their year. As the Miami Tribe holds its Annual Council Meeting as well as its Annual Powwow, students and faculty assist them by completing projects linked to these events. Students paint the tribal library, prepare the powwow grounds, and assist powwow vendors as they set up their booths. A second group of students works in the tribal archive, organizing the research collections that a summer intern from Augustana will catalogue during a two-month internship that begins this year, when the field school ends. These blockbuster annual events provide our students with the kind of cultural immersion that service-learning courses can supply. In between our efforts with the Miamis, field school participants enjoy meetings with members of other area tribes.

The second week of the course is devoted to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe. Activities such as Executive Council meetings, language classes, and Shawnee football games structure our days. Student research projects—ranging from the impact of allotment of tribal lands to historical biographies of significant tribal leaders—evolved from my own primary source archive. Each student received a packet of primary and secondary source material a month prior to our departure for Oklahoma. They were all required to complete these individualized research projects before we left the campus.

During the 2004 academic year, students will assist in the creation of a national map of Shawnee locations. A senior majoring in geography has created the base map with more than two-hundred village sites scattered across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Other service-learning students will add regional biographies that will then be used to create an interactive, web-based map. This resource will be used to further the education of Shawnee children. In addition, tribal leaders will use the map to assist them in protecting burial sites and other sacred places on the lands they once occupied.

Service-learning courses are incomplete if they do not blend critical reflection on community service into the course design. Accordingly, each participating student keeps a daily journal of his/her experiences as both worker and learner. Daily journal entries help participants mull over what they have heard and seen. Students are encouraged to reflect on how their experiences as participant-observers have unlocked clues as to what it means to be Miami and to be Shawnee. Students are also asked to consider their responsibilities to the host communities and how their research might affect the lives of the people in the community.

Service-learning offers historians an opportunity to lead students—and the communities they study—to a greater appreciation of the historian’s task. Because the students lived and worked with the Miami and Shawnee, they want to give back to those tribes. At the same time, the students gain an appreciation for the value and relevance of history. Finally, service-learning unites those seemingly disparate elements of professional history—research, service, and teaching—into a coordinated effort that benefits everyone involved.

Stephen Warren is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.

1. <http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/what-is-sl.html> Timothy K. Stanton, Dwight E. Giles, Jr. and Nadinne I. Cruz define service-learning as “community action, the ‘service,’ and efforts to learn from that action and connect what is learned to existing knowledge.” See Timothy K. Stanton, Dwight E. Giles, Jr. and Nadinne I. Cruz, Service-Learning: A Movement’s Pioneers Reflect on Its Origins, Practice, and Future (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 2.

2. Oral history offers an important exception to this trend. In fact, some of the most innovative service learning classes in history have grown out of this specialization. For an overview of these efforts, see Marjorie L. McLellan, “Case Studies in Oral History and Community Learning,” Oral History Review 25 (Summer/Fall 1998), 81-113; see also A. Glenn Crothers, “‘Bringing History to Life’: Oral History, Community Research, and Multiple Levels of Learning,” Journal of American History 88 (June 2003), 1446-1451.

3. Stanton, Giles, and Cruz, Service-Learning, 139.

4. Author Interview with Julie Olds, Cultural Preservation Officer, Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, March 2, 2004. Author Interview with Jennifer Makaseah, Cultural Preservation Officer, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, March 5, 2004.

5. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), 250.