Service-learning programs cover a wide spectrum over which they can be infused into a curriculum. There is a range of choices depending on resources, community participation and initial enthusiasm which dictate where your service-learning program falls. Some of the characteristics of each option are as follows:

• students spend two days serving and three days on planning, training, written reflection, group discussion and activities.
• Focus is on personal development of student, real-life experience and career development.
• Student receive elective credit or substitute social studies or language arts requirement

• Long-term community project developed by group of students.
• academic skills demonstrated through implementation and sustenance of project through completion or throughout the year.
• student achievement and development dominates because of the independent nature of the program.
• teachers represent advisors and role models, leaving room for student creativity and independence.
• service involves entire school or school district and crosses grade levels and class subjects.
• students and teachers work together to organize projects which fit into the curriculum.
• student leadership, interdisciplinary learning, and cooperative learning development.

• concrete realization and application of concepts learned in the classroom.
• student investigation in a group setting of a project that will assist the community.
• skill development and proficiency exercised in one or more areas of academic discipline.

A rare but highly desirable approach is for community service to permeate a school's curriculum. In one large city system, a special magnet school on the human services has been created in which all students are in field placements in human service agencies. Their volunteer work has two purposes-career exploration and the development of social responsibility.

In a parochial school, service to others is woven into many courses and serves as an organizing principle for the total academic program. For example, biology students work in a food co-op where they teach nutrition to low-income elderly people; home economics students run a daycare center several mornings a week for neighborhood preschoolers; and advanced math students offer their computer skills to small businesses to manage inventories and do financial projections.

In these examples, the students are practicing the humane application of knowledge. In these models, community service is not just for the selected few motivated students who choose to become community service providers, but rather they are viewed as a key organizational principle that affects all students.