We had a wonderful time at our CivicTREK Showcase May 24, 2023 event at George Washington Middle School (GWMS). The showcase is always an amazing event with teachers, parents, students, and school leaders sharing, learning, and reflecting about service learning in Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS). Students and teachers demonstrated how their CivicTREK experiences connect […]
Author: Kyle Dunbar
Align Service Learning to Standards
Amidst the challenges of engaging a new school year following a year of pandemic, our teachers gathered again last week and showed their genuine commitment to the teaching and learning pedagogy of service-learning. We spent the afternoon working together to identify which of their academic (SOL), Five C’s, and social-emotional learning standards they planned to introduce […]
Getting to Know a New Cohort and Service Learning
We had a great session this week when we launched our fifth year of CivicTREK with an after-school in-service opportunity. Through the teaching and learning pedagogy of service-learning, CivicTREK helps teachers and students meet academic and Five C’s learning goals while addressing real-world problems and issues in their community. In yesterday’s session, this year’s cohort […]
CivicTREK Launches 5th Cohort
We are so pleased to announce the beginning of our 5th cohort of CivicTREK Service Learning here in Alexandria City Public Schools. It has been wonderful to watch this program grow and adapt to our changing times. We continue to develop resources for implementation from Kindergarten to Grade 12. As well as welcome back alumni […]
CivicTREK Continues through Remote Learning
ACPS’ 2019-20 CivicTREK cohort convened remotely on April 29th for a community-building Social Hour of sharing their efforts with project-based service-learning despite the unexpected interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers began with a brief personal check-in psychology activity, What Blob are You? noting how they were each handling the transition to remote learning. In small […]
Congratulations to our 2019-2020 cohort members
We are pleased to announce the ACPS CivicTREK 2019-2020 teachers. We have our largest group ever at 28 teachers plus a number of returning mentors and alumni. Our new cohort ranges from Kindergarten to Oceanography. We can’t wait to see what these new teachers do with their students next year as they help students tackled […]
Join us for 2019-2020!
We are excited to announce that we are currently recruiting for the 2019-2020 ACPS CivicTREK Cohort. The CivicTREK Service-Learning Cohort is an opportunity for teachers from any content area to develop project-based learning experiences in which students solve real-world problems and connect to their communities. Participating teachers will become part of a professional network and earn 60 […]
Enacted the 5 C’s during CivicTREK service-learning
Throughout the current school year, the CivicTREK K-12 cohort of teachers have implemented a service-learning approach to guide their students towards mastery of the Profile of a Virginia Graduate 21st century skills. In our most recent professional development session, teachers: shared some of their best-practice “Five C’s” success stories, critiquing and enhancing one another’s work […]
You Are What You Eat! Service learning food fair
Check out another great CivicTREK project in action. Ms. Koz-Calvo’s 4th grade Young Scholars are investigating nutrition and why it is an important part of a healthy community. They are making a plan to share what they learn with brochures, posters, and a Food Fair where they will serve healthy snacks to a very important […]
Creativity and CivicTREK: Strategies to Foster Creativity
Creative Thinking “The student uses information in original and novel ways, demonstrating new ideas and ways of doing things.” Project-based learning and service-learning “offers creative freedom, which gives the students a sense of agency, purpose, and bring even more relevance to learning – engaging them in making an impact in their community and exposing them […]