Connect: Our Community-Minded Pillar

Community-minded learning emphasizes collaboration, relationships and real-world connections as central parts of education.

The community action, service learning, and social justice initiatives at PCS are integral parts of our curriculum that support students’ ability to enact meaningful, positive and compassionate change in their communities. Our students are immersed in place-based learning that takes our local environment and communities as a springboard for learning and incorporates community action in the project-based learning that forms the foundation of our curriculum. Additionally, students work together in cooperative learning communities, seizing on the many benefits of collaborative learning.

Community-minded learning immerses students in real-world, action-based initiatives aimed at making real change in the world.

Community-Minded Education in Action at PCS:

From building a food pantry during a trimester-long study of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, to volunteering at a local food bank to assemble “feed-a-kid” bags for local neighbors experiencing need, to working with a local environmental group to rewild our campus, community-minded learning at PCS immerses our students in real-world problem-solving scenarios that inspire compassion, activism and stewardship.

Enhanced Engagement and Motivation:

  • Community-oriented projects give learning a purpose which greatly increases student engagement.

  • Children are more invested in work that has real meaning. This often leads to better attendance and participation​.

  • Teachers in these models observe that even reluctant learners perk up when the class is doing something for someone or addressing a real-world issue.

Civic and Personal Responsibility:

  • By engaging with community issues early on, students develop a sense of responsibility and agency. 

  • Research on service-learning indicates that students who take part in these experiences show greater civic awareness and commitment to volunteering later in life. They learn that they can make a difference. 

  • As one research review summarized, quality service-learning can simultaneously improve test scores and instill values of citizenship and leadership in students​.

Improved Social Skills and Confidence:

  • Regularly collaborating with classmates helps children develop communication, teamwork and conflict-resolution skills.

  • Studies report that students in cooperative learning settings show greater empathy, better relationships with peers and stronger self-esteem. They learn to lead and to listen — skills that bolster their confidence and efficacy in and out of school.

Greater Academic Success:

  • Studies show that students in cooperative-learning schools showed significantly greater success in every subject than their peers in traditional schools.

  • Students in cooperative classrooms often score higher on assessments and can tackle more complex tasks than those in competitive or teacher-led settings.

  • Participants often show improved standardized test scores, better problem solving skills and higher attendance in school.

  • Children taught via structured group activities showed deeper understanding than those who worked mostly alone or listened to lectures. By explaining ideas to peers, asking questions and seeing multiple perspectives, students reinforce their own learning.

Key Outcomes of Project-Based Learning: