By Bella Sullivan, Marketing and Events Coordinator
Julia Vickery, the Program Director and Students in Philanthropy Foundation Coordinator of the Abell-Hanger Foundation in Midland, Texas, achieved a significant milestone in August 2024 by completing NYLC’s Certificate in Instructional Leadership (CIIL). Notably, Vickery is among the first to complete the program entirely asynchronously, and the impact on her work is already apparent.
Reflecting on her experience, Vickery shared how the program has helped her bring clarity to her organization’s goals. She says the CIIL, “helped me to define, short and sweet, why we were making changes, why this is a good thing, and how it’s beneficial.”
Although the Abell-Hanger Foundation works with both youth and adults, Vickery saw this program as a way to learn more about service-learning and the common language shared by educators in the field. As someone who works outside the traditional classroom environment, the Certificate in Instructional Leadership gave Vickery the resources needed to understand learning assessments, curriculum writing, and instructional design.
“If you are in a situation where service-learning is new to your organization… it really gives you the importance of service as a tool in the classroom,” says Vickery.
In her own service-based programming for young people, Vickery strives to ensure that their engagement in service is transformative and lasting. Reflecting on the work that the Foundation engages in, Vickery wonders, “were [young people] being transformed in a way that continued to connect them to philanthropy when they left the program? Or were they being transformed because it was a really fun class and they got to do some good and they made some friends?”
Service-learning provides young people with opportunities to engage in experiential learning, connecting what they have learned in the classroom with real-world experiences. Frameworks like the IPARD process (to learn more about the IPARD process head to NYLC’s Resource Library and search “IPARD” to access free resources) emphasize that much of the learning actually occurs from the parts of the experience that bookend the action itself. Young people who are actively engaged in all parts of service-learning, including reflecting on their experiences as they progress, are empowered to serve their communities in a meaningful and sustained way.
Prior to completing the program, Vickery wondered how educators could assess formative learning in young people. Now she knows that service-learning experiences are an essential part of understanding how youth learn best.
Vickery firmly believes that the CIIL provided her with an immense wealth of knowledge about service-learning, even as her experience completing the program was very independent. “I got so much out of the class,” said Vickery. “I don’t think there is a more robust well of information. It would have taken me years to find all of that on my own, so to have it all in one place was beautiful.”
While Vickery feels the program is best suited for those with some familiarity with service-learning, she credits it with opening her eyes to a variety of topics and strategies to implement that she would have never before imagined.
The Certificate in Instructional Leadership is a self-paced program designed for mid-level to advanced practitioners who are passionate about the benefits of engaging students in service-learning. The coursework supports organizations seeking to build the staff capacity for leadership within their schools or organizations. Through this certification program, educators and community leaders gain foundational knowledge and the essential tools to inspire and prepare themselves and others to tap into the power of service-learning. To learn more about NYLC’s Certificate in Instructional Leadership, visit https://nylc.org/certificate-programs/.
