High School Students and Community Hours

High School Students and Community Hours


Sheri Munson-Castro
Writ-101 Winter 2008
Craig McKenney-Intrustor
January 20th, 2008

High School Students and Community Service Hours

“The Meaning and Value of Them”


I have been looking at some articles about something that has started this year in the Seattle School district where my children go to high school. It involves them having to complete 60 hours of community service before the completion of the 12th grade in order to graduate. It seems that this is a new requirement that has been implemented into the Seattle School district starting this year. I had not be aware of this happening prior to the kids starting the 9th grade this past September, and they had come home from school with a form that needed to be completed and advised me at the time that they needed to try to locate someplace to do community hours. And in my son’s case he was told by his teacher that he needed to be in rolled and actively working on it and have at least 15 hours completed before the end of the semester or it could affect his grade in that class.
I was a little surprise to hear about this, I seem to remember someone telling me that their daughter had to do something like this and she was in high school at the time. So, I went out to the school board site on the web and researched into it and found that this was true in fact and was a requirement in order to complete high school but, it had said needed to be done by end of the 12th grade not the first semester or even first year. So, I called and talked to the teacher and asked why he had done it this way when even the school district allowed them time to do it. He stated that he knew kids to keep putting it off till tomorrow, and we all know tomorrow may never come or it’s rushed at the end. Which was while was true for some, not always so for the rest.
And when you go out online and see some of the reviews on it as well as the discussions out there on the pros and cons on the subject, I think you will be as impressed as I was. Thru there are some negative comments on a debating site about community hours to what you do as part of your sentence when you go to court. And it was making them out to be slaves for having to do this, stating that volunteering is not the same as required so thus they are being treated as slaves with out any choice in the matter and there were also some positive ones as well. There is also another item located on a site called Helium.com where there are a statement written by a high school student on this very item I am talking about, stating that maybe if kids had to do this prior in order to receive their diploma it would help to prepare them for the future. It would provide them with training and encouragement and maybe make fewer criminals in the world. Also, I should mention that there were about three other sites that I located with lots of great information about the positive and negative reviews on the subject there as well. One on a place called www.lkwdpl.org/cffr/schlsumm.ht and was involving Committee for the 4th R-Community Service by High School Students. It had some great points about both sides. And there also sees to be some good points as well on another site I located that is called http://www.learnandserve.gov/about/programs/schools_based.asp, which tells you about later when you go to college and that having done community service can later help in it. As it would also as my teenage daughter told me the other night when we were talking about this “Mom I think it builds character and helps you to learn to believe in yourself and others.” And even thru we were not to really use the Wikipedia as a example, I did find some great info under there at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_service that really talks from the heart about it being good to incorporate community services and high school together and that many students feel obligated to complete community service to advance their college resume.
People can go either way in their thoughts on Community Service hours and their High School Students as there is a range of reasons in that regard, for some serving your community is an altruistic act, for others it is a punishment or even sometimes to make friends. For myself and my family, we feel that it’s a great thing that been added as a requirement for graduation just like knowing how to read and write are. We feel that by Setting the Standard, Measuring Results, we will be celebrating the Success of our students as they stride to meet and beat that standard. Because as we encouraged them and they feel confident in themselves and have pride in what they do, they will go far in life and be successful in the adult world that they are entering into.