Re-entry Activities

Re-entry activities will help students connect their service experience to classroom learning. Students may also need help finding ways to continue serving in the local community. Let us know if you have an activity you'd like to share!

• Reorientation Grants: Branch Out Alternative Breaks, a program of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, offers reorientation grants to support students who went on an alternative break trip and want to deepen their experience by connecting to local issues. The college also compiles a list of on-campus and local opportunities related to the social issues explored during the alternative breaks.
• Convene Students: Lewis & Clark's Alternative Breaks program convenes students at the annual Ray Warren Multicultural Symposium to further the students' discussion of power, privilege, and oppression.
• Share Your Story: Student participants are often required to complete a post-trip project to share their experience with the campus community.
• Educate Your Community: After an intense hands-on learning experience, students may feel compelled to share educational materials with their own community. At Gettysburg College, a student created a 5-minute video about common misperceptions about poverty and the wage gap.

Reflection strategies & ideas

• Reflection Toolkit from ORCC AmeriCorps website.
• Why Reflection is Important, ORCC AmeriCorps resource.
• "Reflecting in Action: The Learning-Doing Relationship," in Learning through Serving provides a guide for planning reflection activities for service-learning.
  
• "Service-Learning Reflection Activities," compiled by University of South Florida.
• Linfield College - Reflection Handbook and reflection ideas.

Reflection serves as a bridge for the back-and-forth connecting between what you as a student learn in class and what you are experiencing in the community" --Learning through Serving (p. 83)

research on reflection

Research may be an important part of ensuring alternative break trips provide a meaningful experience for students. Below are a few examples from service-learning journals of how reflection is a critical part of short-term immersion programs.

• "My Appalachian Experience: Reflections of an Undergraduate Student on the Short-Term Service Trip and the Challenges It Presents for Social Justice Efforts” by Samantha Lewandowski.
  
• "College Students’ Negotiation of Privilege in a Community-Based Violence Prevention Project" by Beth S. Catlett and Amira Proweller. The authors used Peggy McIntosh's reflection on white privilege, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" with their service-learning students.

• "The Meaning Students Make as Participants in Short-Term Immersion Programs" by Susan R Jones, Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon, S. Mei-Yen Ireland, Elizabeth Neihaus, and Kristan Cilente Skendall.
• "Building a Better World: The Pedagogy of and Practice of Global Service-Learning" has a list of research on the site's wiki that should help inform reflective practice.