Hopefully, the trend will continue and more people will make their way to mainstream conferences to share knowledge, skill, and practice with the thousands of educators who sincerely want to know more of what we do in the service-learning field. As editor and contributing author, Rahima Wade has put together a comprehensive guide to service-learning as a strategy for addressing civic education in the public school curriculum. Enhancing awareness of the common needs and common good among community members, and developing a sense of communal identity through participation is central to Wade's notion of civic education. Wade and a host of contributing authors weave this notion of citizenship into each of the book's four parts. This book is appropriate for a wide range of knowledge and experience levels.
Novices can receive a thoughtful and thorough overview key programmatic components and issues.
Within the past decade, an increasing number of school districts have begun requiring service for graduation, including those in Atlanta, Georgia, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Washington, DC, and Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. At this point, Maryland is the only state which mandates service as a high school graduation requirement. This spring, the first class affected by the requirement will graduate and practitioners in Maryland believe that non-graduation rates will not rise significantly, if at all. Some other states are considering service mandates. Connecticut, for example, is sponsoring a series of debates in middle schools about requiring service for graduation.