Students Should be Permitted to do Community Service 

As a small school, it’s a challenge to do all that is needed to keep the school running, but students can help. Students can provide assistance while learning new skills and good citizenship along the way. 

During the past couple years, I’ve seen students help Proctor Staff by aiding the janitors and I believe students should have the option to help different people within the school as well.

These different “jobs” would help students learn about the significance of work, so that as they grow, they’ll be more comfortable in the workforce. It would be totally optional, yet still expose young adults to the opportunity of learning new skills. 

The different volunteer work could include helping: the cafeteria staff, the janitors, substitutes, front office staff, etc. 

The skills learned by these students will include leadership, communication, time management, teamwork, problem solving, empathy, compassion, and confidence. All of these skills are important as people grow as individuals.

This volunteer work wouldn’t require students to miss out on a whole day of school, but would let them occasionally miss a class to help staff while advancing their skills. 

It's an important skill to be responsible and caring as you grow older, but to do so, you’ll need hands-on exposure. It’s good to grow knowledge from a book or classroom, but it’s also important to learn from experience outside the classroom. We need to grow to become good citizens and to do that we should help others. 

This is often seen outside of school in places like fire departments, food banks, and hospitals, but I believe if we bring this idea of contribution through volunteering into the school, it’ll lay a foundation of contributing to society in the future. 

“It’s very helpful (for the students) to see what the people who work in the school go through,”  Supervisor of Maintenance Jamie Provo says, adding, “The kids should be more involved in the school.”  

When students helped out the janitors, it was a good chance for them to understand how hard the janitors worked, gaining empathy. They also learned how to use different tools and time management since they knew they had to finish their school work before doing the work. 

If we expand volunteer work in the school, students will gain new skills and staff will gain recognition for what they do here.