Introduction
In the spring of 1999 and again in 2000, students at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) participated in a service-learning project that placed them as coordinators and facilitators of a media literacy course for elementary school students. Employing a nationally used media literacy curriculum, CSUMB students brought the discussion about issues such as media violence, gangs, school violence, gun control, and media awareness to fifth- and sixth-graders at César Chavez Elementary School (CCES), a new, technology-enhanced school serving the mainly Hispanic population of East Salinas, California.1
That service-learning project was groundbreaking and innovative on many different levels, from the way it fully integrated educational and community partners to the way in which the specific class curriculum was designed and implemented. Even for CSUMB, a school in which service learning is completely integrated into each of the majors and in which almost half of its student body was involved in service-learning experiences in the 1998-1999 academic year, the César Chavez Media Literacy project was unique. This project was one of the first initiatives to integrate service learning and media literacy, using public schools as the site to explore the intersection of those pressing, contemporary issues. The project's relevance is made even more apparent because of tragic events in Colorado, Arkansas, Michigan, Louisiana, and other communities across the country, which brought the issues of youth and school violence to the top of the public agenda.
This article discusses this particular service-learning project by examining its planning and implementation stages and by assessing some of its results. The main goal of the paper is to help colleagues who have developed or who are thinking about developing service-learning projects. I want to describe and interpret the experience in a way that makes it useful as a future reference for instructors, community partners, and students alike. The César Chavez Media Literacy project is analyzed from the perspectives of the university students involved and the elementary school students directly affected by it.
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