Service Learning, Boys, and Fish Tanks

Kristy VantLeven

"So Ms. VantLeven, you mean we're really going to do the fish tank?"

This question came from one of the young men with whom I worked for half a school year without feeling as though I had reached him. He had been one of my biggest challenges, and he was finally engaged in my class. He was attentive and excited to learn about different kinds of fish that we could have in our school fish tank.

Like this young man, most of the boys in my class of 27 (all boys) were excited about the aquarium. They even volunteered to buy parts we needed and bring them in so we could get the fish sooner. I had started the project to get them more involved in their learning and I was finally starting to break through to them.

I have been teaching at Chattanooga Middle Museum Magnet School for five years. It is an urban middle school of about 300 students near downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. The majority of the students qualify for free/reduced-price lunch. This school has been going through reform for the five years I have been working here. It was reconstituted; it adopted a magnet program; and it has been awarded several grants to strengthen literacy.

Through this reform, I saw my students achieve more and earn better test scores—except for some of my African-American boys. They fell further and further behind their peers. They were failing academically and had a higher number of referrals and suspensions. Two of my co-workers and I sat down and agreed that this was not a student problem, this was our problem and we needed to do something to help.

Taking on the Challenge

As we were reading articles about struggling African-American males and best literacy practices, we came across some articles about service learning. We researched the idea of service learning, talked to other colleagues about this idea, and came up with a plan. For one year, I would teach an all-boy seventh grade language arts class and one of my co-workers would teach the same group of boys seventh grade science. We would link our curriculum through service-learning projects.

That summer, we selected a group of 18 seventh grade boys of differing ability levels. Some were special education, others had repeated grades and were much older. We believed that we had a good mixed group.

As we discussed some possible service-learning projects, we agreed that we did not want these projects to be just volunteer hours done after school. We wanted the projects to be guided by content and grounded in our curriculum. We considered starting recycling projects to correspond with the ecology unit and a blood drive at the school to connect with our study of cellular biology. Letter writing and research would be perfect ties to language arts.

We planned the schedule so that I could take my planning first block and teach the class second block, which would allow us to take the boys off campus for two-hour blocks to complete the service-learning projects. We would chart our progress by taking anecdotal records during class, maintain a journal about what we saw after class, and get together weekly to discuss observations. My co-workers would also come in to observe classes and take notes.

Planning Meets Reality

By the time August rolled around, we felt ready. Of course, this is when the reality of teaching set in. My perfect group of 18 boys had grown to 27. The largest class size I had ever had was 24. We also discovered that transportation for our service-learning projects was not possible. It was time to improvise.

I brainstormed with the boys about some different projects that we could do for the school. I hoped that this would address several of my objectives in starting the project. First and foremost, I wanted to get the boys more engaged in learning. I also wanted to see a change in how the boys felt about and took care of the school. Finally, I wanted them to take responsibility for something. The scariest part of this for me was letting the boys determine the curriculum. I was surrendering control.

The boys decided they would take care of the fish tank in the library. I would teach the standards required by the county, but would let the students choose what that would look like.

I was a bit nervous when they chose the aquarium project. I didn't know a thing about fish or fish tanks. This was going to be their opportunity to become the experts.

In most schools, teachers spend hours planning what they are going to teach and then turn in a lesson plan that reflects their planning. I was stepping into uncharted territory. I could not plan several weeks ahead. I could not even plan several days ahead. I was going to be learning with them and allowing their findings to guide where we went next in our curriculum.

So there I was with my boys, and we had started something new. The project blossomed from there.

I did not want the boys to just learn about fish tanks, as fun as that would be. I still had language arts standards that had to be met, so I chose short fiction stories and nonfiction articles about fish and aquariums to begin our unit. We also went to the library and the computer lab and researched different types of aquariums and fish. We read about tank management and fish compatibility. After they learned to write business letters, they wrote to different pet stores in the area asking for donations.

Unexpected Developments

Some unexpected things happened while we were working on this project. For the first time, the boys stopped expending their energies by throwing paper wads at each other every time my back was turned. They also stopped play fighting as much and began to work together.

When we went to the computer lab, there was a constant hum of voices. Students moved around, but not to thump each other on the ears. Instead, they were showing each other what they had found on the computers. Rather than arguing about who stole their pencil, they argued about what kinds of fish we should get for the tank. The entire tone of the class changed for the better.

Every day, a student would come in and ask if we were "doing the fish tank," and 26 other faces would turn to me in expectation. The other question that permeated the class was "Are we really going to … ." The boys wanted to make sure we were really going to fix the aquarium, mail letters to businesses, and learn about fish. It was important to them that the learning we were doing was "real."

The Spark of Learning

I learned more from this process than the boys did. I am a little more comfortable now with letting my students take control of where the learning goes. I have also learned that authentic learning is very important for boys. When I think back on my class before and after the fish tank project, I know that there is a huge difference in the tone of the class. When they could see the relevance in what I was having them learn they were much more cooperative with each other and with me.

Since the aquarium project, we have been working on units that haven't incorporated service learning and it has been a struggle to keep the boys focused on the schoolwork. For the population of students I work with, it is important that the service learning be integrated into part of the school day. Sometimes it seems hard to justify using so much class time on service-learning projects, but if they are taught using state standards and benchmarks it doesn't waste teaching time.

Not only that, the outcome of student learning is incredibly powerful. The boys continually talk about the fish tank and can remember everything they learned about it.