Students at Eagle Rock School

Service-learning is recognized by Eagle Rock as an effective, experiential means of preparing young people to make a difference in the world. From the school's inception, service has figured strongly in its values, expectations and commitments. Students are expected to serve Eagle Rock and other communities as an ongoing part of their learning experience and knowledge acquisition at the school. The service-learning instructor and fellow coordinate service-learning experiences and partnerships, providing many direct and indirect community service opportunities for students through a variety of short and long-term activities.

Opportunities include Service Specials—a hands on service-learning course that meets four times a week each trimester and engages students in on- and off campus community service as well as regular opportunities to think, discuss and write reflectively about their service experiences and viewpoints; Chores—a community-wide work program where students and staff participate in campus maintenance; EagleServe—two to three days of community service each trimester provided at Eagle Rock and to the wider community; Service-Learning Advisory Council—where students have a voice in planning, action and decision-making around service-learning; Independent Service Projects—students develop a proposal to integrate a service-learning opportunity into their coursework or personal time; and Classroom Service-Learning Projects—coordinated through different instructors and courses. Service-learning appears in courses like Soccer and Service; For the Birds; Service, Spanish and Culture in Guatemala; Four-Corners of Service and Culture; Wilderness; Math and Cooking; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; Sacred Benches; and Sustainable Resources. These courses are found across the curriculum in art, math, world languages, science, societies and cultures, music and human performance.

Service partnerships are maintained in collaboration with local organizations and agencies. These include Rocky Mountain National Park, MacGregor Ranch, the Prospect Park Living Center, Park School District, the Town of Estes Park, the University of Colorado, Rocky Ridge Music Camp, Sunrise Rotary and many more.

Travel and off-campus experience in the wilderness program and in various courses provide service-learning opportunities in both local and distant communities. Students may experience anything from trail work to cross-cultural dialogue, from tutoring at an elementary school to renovating a home on the Navajo Reservation, from picking up trash to organizing a PeaceJam project on global peacemaking, from working with Latino children in Estes Parks Roundhouse program to teaching English classes in a rural Guatemalan community school.