They developed strategies for helping others, taking responsibility for cleaning up classrooms and halls. Students feel Putnam is a safe environment for them, which encourages them to come to school and reduces our dropout rate. More than 140 students were placed in jobs with local employers during the 1998-99 school year. Principal Southworth observes that as younger students see their success, they are encouraged to emulate them. They see that when they help the community, the community helps them.
Respect breeds respect.
Service-learning is playing a key role in reducing violence, enhancing learning and helping the community. If you take a simplistic view, you can stop violent behavior pretty easily, as long as you are willing to turn your school into a prison. But to get young people self-directed toward improvement, you have to give them new options. Service-learning does that. The administrator of a secure residential youth detention center in Michigan recently transferred to head the Bay Pines in another part of the state.