Firsthand research
Wyeth Larson spends every Thursday afternoon changing bed sheets, making lab runs, and working behind the scenes in the Deaconess Medical Center emergency room as part of his research about the lack of adequate mental health care and its financial effect upon other health-care systems.
On Friday afternoons you can find Matt Covert and Hillary Eaton at the KPBX studio learning how to produce a radio show on hidden messages in media advertising.
Hannah Lindberg teaches dance classes at Pratt and Holmes Elementary schools. She plans to submit research to the Spokane Public Schools board of directors that demonstrates that dance curriculum in schools improves cognitive and affective learning.
These high school students are doing their research not for their college theses but for their practicum in community involvement class at Lewis and Clark High School.
PICI is a two-semester, award-winning class offered to LC seniors since 1994.
The class is taught by John Hagney, known as the grandfather, although he prefers father, of service-learning class models in Washington state.
As a social studies teacher, Hagney noticed that his students were conscious of social issues, but frustrated.
“They began to feel powerless. The more candid ones were saying, ‘This is interesting, but what can we do about it?’ ” Hagney said.
Hagney said he could never go back to teaching social science without somehow grounding it in ways that his students could make a difference.
At the beginning of their senior year, students choose a topic, coming up with a theory that they will either support or reject through their research. They choose a community nonprofit organization where they will intern three or more hours a week in connection with their topic.
The students read books and meet with experts and mentors. Throughout the year they refine their theories.
Their findings are presented at various stages through classroom discussions, and a paper and project are produced at the end of the year. About 50 students are in this year’s class.
Hagney, 52, remembers the black literature class he took as a college student at Northern Illinois University in 1968. He enrolled in the class, hoping to learn about black culture. But it didn’t resonate with him until he became involved with the community.
“It was then that I saw the power that involvement can have,” Hagney said.
Emily Yates, a 2003 graduate, said the PICI class changed her life. She is now a sophomore at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where she is studying sociology.
When she took the PICI class, she chose to intern at the Center for Justice. Her topic was the inadequacies in the Child Protective Services system. Because of her experience at the center, she has decided to become either a lawyer specializing in child-abuse cases or a lobbyist to promote CPS reform.
“When I answered the phone at the center and heard parents bawling because they just had their kids taken away, that was an eye-opening experience, and it made a lasting impression on me,” Yates said.
“Growing up in a middle-class home on the South Hill, I wouldn’t have gotten those experiences if I hadn’t worked at that organization,” she said.
Yates said the class also taught her how to write an academic paper and argue in her college classroom discussions.The PICI class meets the seniors’ social studies requirement, and the students are also eligible for five credits through Eastern Washington University. These credits may be transferred to other colleges and universities.
“It’s not just a stock class that everybody takes,” Larson said. “I was interested in taking a class where I could do community outreach, and I also had heard from numerous students that took the class last year that the teaching style and the classroom involvement was just phenomenal,” he said.
“I really enjoy having all these people who are volunteering in different organizations. Everyone has their own area of expertise and can bring that back and offer it to the rest of the class.
“It’s like having a new expert in the classroom every day.”
Hagney sees PICI as a combination of the best aspects of conservative rigorous academic methods and progressive methods. He believes that citizens can and should effect change, and the class shows them how to do that.
One of the many books students read in class is “Soul of Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time” by Paul Rogat Loeb.
Both Loeb and Hagney point out that volunteering is much more than providing a service to the community.
“It’s (PICI) very powerful. I would like to see other people emulating that example,” Loeb said.
“It’s great for the LC students, but it should be for every student. These are the issues that students respond to.
“It’s stretching the boundaries of what we expect from teachers, but I don’t think the teachers should be afraid to do it, and the teachers learn, too.”