Jeffrey Reaser

            Participant III reports on an 18-month partnership between two linguists, four faculty from an Education school, and 24 in-service, middle grades teachers in Raleigh, NC. In this project, the service-learning model is tweaked as the participant teachers are transformed into students and then researchers. After education in language variation, the teachers conducted personal inquiry projects related to language and life. In all cases, the inquiry project eventually informed classroom pedagogy and resulted in the creation of educational content that is now available to any teacher. Instead of course credit, we were able to offer credit toward license renewal as incentive. This model has three distinct advantages over course-based service learning: 1. Teachers have established and prolonged contact with a population that can benefit from the teachers’ inquiries; 2. Teachers bring experience and skills beyond that of college students. 3. The project was not constrained by the timeframe of a semester course.