Becoming a Service Learning
& Community Engagement Specialist
This unique, personalized professional development experience supports your growth as a leader in learning and service. Focused content builds purposefully on your existing knowledge while offering challenges that move you forward to your specific aims. Upon completion of approximately 100 hours, you receive a certificate as a Service Learning and Community Engagement Specialist. This program has been developed and curated by Cathryn Berger Kaye, LeeAnne Lavender, and Shei Ascencio.
The Certification Program involves a combination of:
- Tailored coaching with service learning consultants on the CBK Associates team
- Monthly cohort calls
- An online community for ongoing networking and collaboration
- Exploration of case studies
- Curriculum design of specific units and learning experiences
- Creation and facilitation of at least two PL/PD workshops for colleagues (in-person or virtual)
- Five hands-on and valuable courses (3 core courses plus 2 pathways of choice)
Core Courses include:
- Getting Started: Service Learning Foundations
- Reciprocal Community Partnerships
- Dynamic Curriculum Design for Service Learning
Optional Course Pathways include:
- Becoming a Digital Storyteller: Advocacy & Citizen Journalism
- Neuroscience and Service, Part I and/or Part II
- Rethinking Service Learning and Global Citizenship with a Critical Lens
- Creating a Culture of Service
- Engaging Teaching Strategies
- Bonus opportunities for mini-courses!
Registration is ongoing. New cohort February 2025.
We start by gathering your personal story to create your Certification Program profile and goals to ensure your program and schedule are tailored to you and your context/position. This sets you up for a deep and enriching PL yearlong experience. Course availability, coaching, and all other components are incorporated into your learning plan in a personalized way.
If you are an advanced service learning educator, we customize the core requirements for this certification with your experiences in mind. For instance, if you have already participated in a two-day service learning institute with one of the CBK Associates facilitators, you can substitute additional courses and/or coaching hours for the “Getting Started: Service Learning Foundations” course. If you are a service learning coordinator or leader, this certification program provides you with an unparalleled depth of experience and knowledge that you can immediately translate into what you do every day.
This Service Learning Certification Program is designed for:
- Beginning service learning educators who want a deep dive well beyond the basics
- Experienced service learning classroom educators
- Global citizenship, service learning and PYP/MYP/DP/CAS coordinators
- Middle leaders
- Teaching and Learning leaders
- Administrators who want to align school mission and vision with service learning and active global citizenship
Join us! If you have any questions about becoming a Service Learning and Community Engagement Specialist, please reach out by clicking the "book an exploratory call with us" button below. We’d love to chat via email or video call. We would be thrilled to collaborate with you and support your professional learning through our Certification Program this year.
Enroll a cohort from your school for special pricing and program offerings.