America Patton

Reaching towards equity, equality, and inclusivity through culturally relevant service learning projects with a focus on writing, inquiry, innovation, and reflection.

The following curriculum resources were created by the following National Writing Project Teacher Leaders from the 2021-2022 Advanced Institute. I collaborated to create a service learning curriculum titled, "Passageways that lead to freedom". The curriculum and resources are available online for teachers, families, civic leaders, diverse school districts, and for home school students to engage in service learning projects beyond their own ZIP code and community. One of the goals of the service-learning curriculum is to increase classroom rigor, improve students critical thinking skills, to move diverse school districts closer towards educational equity, and to allow students to discover future possibly career pathways that they can pursue beyond high school. Another goal of the curriculum is provide diverse teachers with additional differentiated teaching resources that could help to bring diverse cultures, communities, and indigenous populations together locally, nationally, and internationally to share ideas, solve problems innovatively, and to help sustain a culture of peaceful collaboration with a common goal to engage in continuous learning, inquiry, culturally relevant service-learning, and rigorous dialogue. Beyond that, another goal of the service-learning curriculum is to encourage students to create a service-learning portfolio with a focus on inquiry and innovation that students can improve upon through their entire K-16 school learning experience, and beyond into their professional careers. When diverse students are applying for academic scholarships, students will be encouraged to present their service learning portfolios to university academic departments so that university professors can gain a deeper understanding into the service-learning inquiry work that students have been immersed in throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school. After graduation, students will be encouraged to continuously improve and develop their service-learning portfolios and service-learning projects within university learning laboratories, and throughout diverse communities. I believe that the earlier that students are exposed to quality service-learning projects, then the sooner they can discover and be exposed to various career pathways that they could possibly study beyond high school. In the future, I envision diverse students presenting or sharing their service-learning portfolios to various college academic departments, global professional industries, to diverse stake holders, and civic leaders. I believe that when students are immersed in quality service-learning projects that are aligned with state and national learning standards could possibly increase the amount of college scholarship funds students could receive. Lastly, another goal of the curriculum is to allow students to not simply have high ACT, or SAT scores, but to improve students cognitive scores in the area of service-learning.

Celebrating the African-American experience in Kansas City, Kansas, this self-guided tour highlights notable locations throughout the area's rich history.