Building Community Partnerships: Learning to Serve while Learning to Teach

Service learning is a well researched pedagogical approach to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This essay describes two special education teacher preparation approaches that successfully linked candidate learning outcomes together with service to the community. One approach attached undergraduate teacher candidates in special education with an elementary school to facilitate the delivery of an afterschool learning program for students in need of additional skill development. The other approach connected graduate candidates with community partners in support of the development and implementation of specific projects of value to the community agency. Each of these collaborative learning opportunities created a win for the community partner and a win for the teacher candidates, as each of these opportunities better prepared these candidates to build a strong sense of community from within their school and also by reaching beyond the walls of their own setting.