7th Grade Community Service is Coming to a Close

Reporter: Kara Hong

Editor: 

The 7th grade community service deadline is approaching. 

10+ hours completed has been the goal throughout the past several months. Some have achieved this goal, while some are falling short. Students have logged over 1,300 hours of community service from various activities throughout the year.

For some, it came easy to complete these hours. Helena Lindenberg, a 7th grade GWMS student who has completed well over 10 hours states, “I think it was really easy to complete these hours because I had a lot of opportunities that were presented to me, so I think it was really easy in my opinion but it might not be as simple for other students.”

As Lindenberg states, everyone has a different perspective on the matter. Students similar to Helena, may also believe that it wasn’t difficult to obtain these 10 hours. Other students and faculty of G.W think that there weren’t as many opportunities for community service compared to previous years.

Mr. Monahan, the assistant principal at GWMS, also one of the head people in charge of monitoring community service states, “Last year was really difficult because of COVID, a lot of the big organizations that in the old days would have these events and open it up and tell GW students to come to this, everyone come to that. Those all went away during 2020, 2021, and we were hoping it would come back in 2022, they really didn’t. We’ve had to be flexible and we are kinda dealing with the way the world is now.” 

Mr. Monahan believes that although some of the opportunities for 7th grade have come back, not all the adjustments have been made since the impact of COVID. For the future, some organizers of clubs and community service options believe that community service should be required for all grades because of life skills and importance.

Ms. Feit, the organizer of the Green Team, an opportunity for community service, talks about how community service should be required for all middle school grades in the future, “There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t do some type of community service. You can do it in a growing scale like 5 hours in 6th grade, 10 hours, then 15 hours, but I believe that everyone should do community service, even adults.”

Mr. Monahan thinks community service should not be required within all middle school grades, “I think it’s good to stick with one grade, 7th grade. The reason we are doing that is it’s the middle of middle school, so you have 6th grade to kinda get used to stuff, and 8th grade you are kinda focused on what you are going to do in highschool, and what clubs and sports you want to do, so 7th grade is a nice opportunity for this to fit in.”  

7th graders are starting to wrap up their 10 hours.  Community service requirements will be enforced in 7th grade for the foreseeable future.