CURRENTS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING VOL. 7 NO. 1, FALL 2014 WORCESTER.EDU/CURRENTS CURRENTS@WORCESTER.EDU 100 Inderbitzin – A Lot of Life Ahead Michelle Inderbitzin is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Oregon State University. She primarily studies prison culture, juvenile justice, and transformative education. Dr. Inderbitzin earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Washington and has been a faculty member at Oregon State University since 2001. Along with her on-campus classes on crime and deviance, she regularly teaches classes and volunteers in Oregon prisons and juvenile correctional facilities. “A lot of Life Ahead”: Connecting College Students with Youth in Juvenile Justice Settings through Service-Learning Abstract My upper-division course on juvenile delinquency comes alive when students have the chance to interact with youth in juvenile justice settings. This article considers the challenges, rewards, and pedagogical justifications for incorporat- ing a significant community-based learning component where students in the class work directly with delinquent youth into a sociology course. Interacting with system-involved youth offers college students a much more active learning environment than is typical in on-campus, lecture-based classes (Inderbitzin & Storrs, 2008; Storrs & Inderbitzin, 2006) as service-learning courses necessar- ily embrace a “learning paradigm” rather than the more traditional “instruction paradigm” (Barr & Tagg, 1995). Even as students learn about delinquency and the structure of the juvenile justice system through class readings, lectures, and discussions, they are able to go inside a state youth correctional facility, learn from the “experts,” and form their own impressions. Implications for disciplines beyond sociology and criminal justice are discussed. Keywords Service-learning, experiential learning, transformative learning, juvenile delin- quency, sociology Introduction Studying sociology and topics such as crime and justice, social problems, and inequality ofers college students a chance to examine and better understand the importance of context and opportunities in their own lives. As they learn theories of crime and deviance and delve into the circumstances surrounding delinquency, students may come away with increased empathy and under- standing for those who have faced diicult choices while growing up. Studying juvenile delinquency ofers a window into alternative worlds for many under- graduate students who have been fortunate enough to have supportive fami- lies and the means to attend a university. Building service-learning into such courses can demonstrate to students that even small actions can make a large diference in their own communities. Michelle Inderbitzin TEACHING REPORTS