Community service is a fantastic way to be civically engaged because it’s a way to give back to your community. Participating in community service has a wide range of benefits for people participating in the service. Community service doesn’t just benefit the community, it benefits the person serving. Serving for an organization that has a personal interest can make people’s day.
Community service is a way to give back to the people who helped us. Since Parker doesn’t require community service for Upper School students beyond Civic Lab, the ability to impact the outside world is limited. Parker offers other opportunities to help, such as clothing drives and bake sales, but it doesn’t mandate individual participation. The requirement of participation makes sure that students help and invest in their communities.
By requiring five hours of individual community service per semester, Parker could help students learn significant life skills and how to appreciate the work of volunteering. Of course, requiring copious hours of service may convince students to focus merely on finishing their requirements instead of actually being invested, so a small requirement allows students to become involved, and offers a springboard for some to jump off of their requirements and do more hours if that is what they want.
Since Parker wants to educate students in and out of the classroom, requiring hours of community service enhances the learning already happening in school. Students are passionate about numerous topics but don’t have the motivation to go out and do service to learn more about them. Requiring students to complete community service would help them to learn about their passions through a hands-on approach. Students only learn so much from reading articles and keeping their opinions to themselves. Going out and participating in service would help them learn more about something they like, allowing them to structure their curriculum.
Now, an argument against this is that students always have the opportunity to do community service, even if it is not required. However, students lack the motivation to go out and do things that aren’t required of them, which makes sense. Most students have homework and extracurricular activities filling their schedules, leaving them with little extra time. That’s why it’s important not to require excess amounts of outside service. It would still be incredibly beneficial to require small amounts of service, just five to ten hours per semester. That’s it. An amount that is both manageable and still leaves an impact on the organizations that students are volunteering for. Volunteering doesn’t need to be a boring thing. It is meant to be an exciting event. However, it is work, and students are already incredibly overworked and stressed. Community service is not just helpful to the community, but also to the person completing it.
Parker offers Civic Lab as a type of community engagement. Civic Lab is more of an education program. It teaches the problem, but it isn’t the solution. It’s great learning about what’s going on and what can be done to help the community, but Civic Lab doesn’t actually require students to be part of the solution. Civic Lab is meant for engagement. Learning is a great way of engaging, but service and being a part of the solution are even more important.
Parker strives for “expanding learning,” and community service is something that is such a great way to learn outside of the classroom. Volunteering takes on many different forms, from cleaning up trash to organizing files. Community service teaches skills that aren’t often learned in school.
Volunteering for a cause that means a lot to people and helping them out can be very rewarding for you. Volunteering can happen with friends and family and can be an exciting event that students can look forward to.
