Success Stories

How We Learn to Dance Outside the Box

How We Learn to Dance outside the Box

Reflections of an Eight-Year Service-Learning Practitioner

By: Diane Palm

“Just because you don’t believe that I want to dance, don’t mean that I don’t want to,” sings the Gap band in their 1978 funk anthem, “I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops!).”

Those of us who work with at-risk kids know all too well that cracking their façade of indifference toward learning often involves challenging our own notions that these students just don’t want to get up and dance. Along the way, however, we eventually come to realize that most students not only want to get up and dance, but given the right opportunities, à la service-learning, they will dance outside the box.

Even though I have always considered myself quite progressive in my thinking about and behavior toward disaffected youth, it wasn’t until I was gifted with the position of service-learning coordinator at Harris County JJAEP in 2003 that I began to ‘get it.’ Service-learning is a dance. It is a magical salsa that partners kids and adults of all ethnicities, income levels, ability, age and interest groups, producing rhythmic chorus lines that both incite and excite its participants to take on heretofore unexplored challenges.

With this view, I am constantly challenging myself to become a better dance instructor. Is our dance floor large enough? Am I flexible enough to allow our kids to be in step one minute and out of step another? When we step on each other’s toes are we tolerant enough to learn from these missteps?

During frustratingly difficult times I have learned from my students, wonderful JJAEP family, and Service Learning Texas that when we allow patience to prevail, it’s possible to turn discord into a well-choreographed ballet of services that touch the lives of homeless and hospitalized veterans, bring solace to despondent elderly, provide sustenance to undernourished citizens, and supply protection to vulnerable children, animals and the environment.

Our students, who often come to us angry and distrustful, undergo a miraculous transformation when they are problem-solving or discovering things together. When they have to lead, support, inform, or plan with others, unlike themselves, they develop a healthier respect for one another. Having something outside of themselves on which to focus generally works. But, then again, the same can be said for adults.

I have also experienced a personal transformation brought about by learning to trust that young people can and will rise to the occasion when equipped with our trust that they can and will work together to solve or address authentic community or global problems.

Service-learning gives all of us practice in the art of pushing for what we want in the context of service. This is an extremely necessary tool for at-risk kids, many of whom get easily discouraged when pursuing obstacle-laden goals. However, the momentum that results leads them to find their own special way to dance outside the box!