• To explore and help to strengthen the relationship of primary 
and middle school students’ sense of relationship of self to 
community in a variety of contexts; 
• To collect useful information on how students of elementary 
and middle school age perceive and value their relationships 
with the community of school, of neighborhood, 
and of city; 
• To develop and execute engaging activities, creative play, 
and exercises that encourage constructive engagement with 
peers, school, local community, and city;
• To enhance the communication and leadership skills of UGA 
students.

The course is divided into three basic units: 
1) preparation for a ten-week program;
2) the execution of the program itself;
3) information collating and evaluation. 
This outline has been designed for a class that meets three 
times per week during a fifteen-week semester.

I. Preparation.
For the first three weeks, the instructor and students will 
obtain background on the community center, on the schools 
served by that center, and on the general demographics of the 
students they will be serving.  At least one site visit to see 
the facilities and meet the staff working with the targeted 
students would be conducted.  Prior to the site visit, the 
instructor will have secured a memorandum of agreement between 
the center and the Institute.  The instructor and students will 
research, develop, and collect material from which to construct 
lesson plans. Students will divide into teams for planning and 
lesson plan development.  Schedules will be developed.  Some 
thematic questions for lesson plan development might include:
• What is a community?  What are my communities? Where do I fit 
in?
• How can a community make room for differences among people 
and cultures?
• How can I help make my community the best that it can be?

II. The ten-week program.  
The first meeting of each week would be between the instructor 
and the teams of UGA students leading the workshops; discussion 
of the previous week’s activities and planning for the current 
week’s activities would take place.  At the beginning of each 
week’s meeting, the students would submit a journal/log for the 
previous week.  The next two meetings of the week would be 
between the teams and their students.  The culminating event 
would be a public performance to exhibit the students’ work.

III. Assessment and evaluation.
During the meetings held during the execution of the program, 
the students will have developed and constructed instruments 
for measuring student learning outcomes for the program, as 
well as for audience assessment of the public performance.  
They will prepare the exercises and student work collected, as 
well as any research material they may have found useful, for 
archiving at the Institute.  Collected material will serve as a 
database and be made available to the next instructor and group 
of students conducting the program.  This phase of the course 
will take up the final two weeks of the semester.  An 
evaluation and analysis paper will be submitted during this 
phase.

On the syllabus, the instructor will direct students to read 
the UGA Student Honor Code.  They will be notified that the 
code will be followed and that breaching the Honor Code could 
result in serious consequences.