Coed, independent, PK3-12th grade school in St. Petersburg, Florida.

What is Service Learning?

Service Learning is a priority to help fulfill the School's mission of educating and graduating socially responsible citizens. The ability to take pressing community needs and combine it with curricular instruction leads to both effective learning outcomes and quality contributions to our communities. We believe that high quality service learning allows us to teach “the head” and “the heart.” Both are important in developing compassionate citizens and developing social responsibility in our students. 

Service Learning is defined by the National Youth Leadership Council as “an approach to teaching and learning in which students use academic knowledge and skills to address genuine community needs.”

Picking up trash on a river bank is service.

Studying water samples under a microscope is learning.

When science students collect and analyze water samples, document their results, and present findings to a local pollution control agency to advocate for new laws -– that is service learning!

Put another way, service learning is about the real world application of taking what is happening in the classroom and meeting a real world need in society, so that students can apply and practice classroom learning and our community can both benefit from and contribute to what is being learned by our students. Shorecrest works with our partners and values their knowledge as equal partners in service and learning.


With info from https://www.nylc.org/page/WhatisService-Learning

Implementing Service Learning

Creating a high quality service learning project involves close consultation with community partners and our highly qualified teachers. 

This involves three steps:
  1. What is the central question or theme being explored in the unit, book, semester or year? Does the question lend itself for opportunities to serve in the community so that learning is enhanced?
  2. Once the question is defined and determined to be a good service learning fit, we identify the communities and organizations that can help deepen the learning.
  3. Finally, we tackle the logistics: 
How will we serve and how often? 
What will we be doing? 
How do we ensure it is reciprocal and not one sided? (ie. How do we avoid transactional Service that overlooks community, humanity and empathy?)
How will we reflect so that the learning is deep and long lasting? 
What are opportunities for future work? 

This work is often led by the US Office in close consultation with community partners and Shorecrest faculty.

Shorecrest Preparatory School

5101 First Street Northeast
St Petersburg, FL 33703
Phone: (727) 522-2111  |  Fax: (727) 527-4191
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Privacy Policy | Faculty


Shorecrest Preparatory School is a private, non-sectarian, coeducational, college preparatory day school for students preschool through high school, located in St. Petersburg, Florida.

NON-DISCRIMINATION POLICY
Shorecrest acknowledges its obligation to prohibit discrimination, harassment, or retaliation on the basis of race, color, religion, age, national origin sex, citizenship status, genetic information, handicap or disability in admissions, access, employment, tuition assistance, educational policies, or other school administered student and employee programs and activities. Questions regarding the School’s compliance with the application and administration of the School’s nondiscrimination policies should be directed to Kristine Grant, Head of Middle School, 5101 First Street Northeast, St. Petersburg, Florida 33703, (727)-522-2111, kgrant@shorecrest.org or to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Please refer to the School’s Non-Discrimination Compliance Policy on the School’s website for information on how to file complaints with OCR.