From leading garden tours to planning a visit for Japanese teachers and participating in community theater, middle schoolers at Fort Worth's Applied Learning Academy learn academic content by working on community projects. Students' writing skills soared as they developed, edited, and field-tested brochures and trail-guide maps for their botanical…

This article describes the House of Shalom Youth Centre Program in Ontario, Canada, and the group model which was developed there for working with youth. Six career counseling workshops were developed using the "Life Skills" lesson model. An example of an experiential exercise is provided. (LKS)

Through an interagency, community-based approach, data were collected on 238 children with serious emotional disturbances in DuPage County, Illinois, including child's age, gender, race or ethnicity, learning characteristics, psychiatric status, and adjudications; parent marital status and employment; child's living arrangements; family history of…

As the official position statement of a committee of the National Mental Health Association, this paper advocates a national mindset that finds violence simply unacceptable and supports social, health care, and community support policies that promote healthy and secure communities that will ultimately prevent violence. (SLD)

The North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement promotes the concept of retirement as an active fulfilling time of community service and learning. The center offers college for seniors, matches retired professionals with students as mentors and tutors, brings retirees and community leaders together, and sponsors an annual seniors wellness day.…

A multimedia campaign led to a 62 percent increase in number of people who called for information about how to aid abused/neglected children in one U.S. community. Analysis suggested that such campaigns should focus on helping actions rather than the problem, should use client-based market research, and should rely on public-private-nonprofit…

Presents guidelines for organizations planning head injury prevention programs for bicyclists. The guidelines examine the magnitude of the problem and potential impact of helmet use, characteristics of helmets, barriers to increasing helmet use, and approaches to increasing helmet use. Bicycle helmet legislation and community educational campaigns…

A survey of 2- to 9-year-old children in Jamaica identified 193 (out of 994) as having a disability. Of these, 62 percent were determined to need special education, 29.5 percent needed community based services, 21 percent needed spectacles, 21 percent needed specialist referral, and 6 percent required medical treatment. Training of community…

Describes how English teachers can help students to "read" their world and become responsible and responsive citizens through community service projects which structure opportunities for students to engage in literacy struggles in the real world. (PRA)

Institutions for people with disabilities can be "deinstitutionalized" by changing the way they are organized and regulated. The process of developing community learning environments in residential programs involves design of daily living routines, assessment of residential living skills, identification of teaching objectives, development of…

This rebuttal by the original authors to a critique (EC 609 029) of their article describing the TAPER psychotropic drug review process supports the process as an individualized approach to psychotropic drug treatment and as an interdisciplinary approach appropriate for use in community-based services for individuals with developmental…

Describes the Livingstone Family Centre in Bedford, United Kingdom, focusing on the characteristics of the local community, staffing considerations, parent involvement, and such center activities as an annual pantomime, keep-fit classes, infant care visits by community health workers, a toy library, and joint activities for parents and children.…

New and emerging perspectives of educational contexts of literacy are reviewed that emphasize the inseparability and reciprocal influence of literacy practices with the social and ideological agendas of the communities, institutions, and settings in which the literacy practices are embedded. Research on conversational contexts of literacy…

Description of community online systems focuses on a Freenet in Illinois called P.A.T.H. (Public Access to Heartland). Highlights include patron use; discussion groups and bulletin boards; electronic mail; reference questions; Freenet's place in public libraries; and sample reference questions answered by Freenet information providers. (five…

An approach to evaluation initiated by the Kellogg Foundation called cluster evaluation (not to be confused with cluster sampling) is described. Cluster evaluation provides a skilled, credible evaluator to work with a cluster of projects to assure that useful and defensible information is obtained for program evaluation. (SLD)