He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed.Young people engage in community service all the time through their boy or girl scout troop, 4-H group, or church youth group. But teacher Chuck Holloway has initiated a service program that operates within the public school system.
Henry David Thoreau
Community service programs engage students in activities which serve the community in a real way. Examples are canned food drives, a school recycling program, or a community beautification program.
At Tri-North middle school, there are 360 eighth-graders "who will each complete at least twelve hours of service to the community," Holloway says. "That means the community gets over four thousand hours of service, and the kids get valuable philanthropic experience. Everybody wins."
Holloway's goals for the program are consistent with the theory of "life-long learning," and he tells me the students will realize that much of life's worthiest lessons are learned outside the classroom. As he explained this idea, he recollected his days of volunteering when he acquired his taste for the altruistic.
Tri-North rewards students' work with a grade, but Holloway tells me that the true compensation comes later when the students fathom the merit in "social conscience and contribution."
In the beginning he heartily tells the students, "Trust me. I know what I'm doing." They of course are sarcastic and a bit scornful (as we all once were). But eventually they come around to Chuck's way of thinking and make the discoveries he predicts.
The results are encouraging. Tri-North's community service project is receiving acclaim from faculty, parents, area business people, and most importantly, the students.
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