CSL students wrote field notes to process their service-learning experience. Written after each session, these field notes provided opportunities for them to report and reflect on their experiences and to relate them to concepts under consideration in Victoria's course. The field notes were divided into three sections. In the Observation sections, students wrote about what they had observed (to include as many senses as appropriate) in the session. The purpose of this section was to train them to attend carefully to what was going on around them on a particular day and to report their observations as objectively as possible.

In the Reflection/Analysis section, students were asked to reflect on their experiences. In this section, they could write about whatever they chose, to include complaining about assigned tasks, recalling/connecting with their own experience in elementary school, wondering about student (and even teacher) behavior, or offering hypotheses about their observations. The purpose of this section was to allow them to vent when necessary and to infer and suggest hypotheses as creatively as they wished.

In the Question section, students wrote out at least three questions concerning the day's experiences. These questions gave them the opportunity to problematize their experiences and to connect their experiential learning with the more vicarious and abstract material presented in the sociology class. They also helped students focus their observations during future visits to the school and to find topics for their researched essay on issues in education in the United States, a dually-submitted assignment for ENGL 101 and SOCI 101. Through my weekly reading and responding to these field notes, I was able to provide feedback to help them learn to keep detailed observations as well as to recognize the difference between reporting observations and inferring from them.