How do service learning and self-directed learning connect and what are the implications for early adolescent students? The authors explore both the service learning and self-directed learning literature and research to discover the connections between the two approaches and concepts. This essay reviews existing frameworks for self-directed learning and the ways that high quality service learning can help early adolescents develop important skills of self direction for learning. Examining research in both fields for intersections and connections, the authors share a visual framework that could be used by educators to develop service learning projects that build and extend the critical skill of self direction in students. The implications of this paper include applications to educator design, organization, and structure of service learning experiences in the middle grades. Increasing student self direction has been linked to positive outcomes for students and could be explicitly integrated into the design of service learning experiences (Lew & Park, 2015).