Revised Essay: High School Students and Community Hours

High School Students and Community Service Hours: The Meaning and Value of it.


Sheri Munson-Castro
Writ 101- Winter 2008
Craig Mckenney-Instructor
January 22, 2008



This is about High School Students and doing Community Service hours as part of there requirement for graduation from school.
This is something that has been implemented into the Seattle School District, where the high school that my children go to is located at. We were advised that as of January of this year it is now part of the academic plan for high school and needed to have completed 60 hours before completed the 12th grade or would not graduate. In fact for my son he was told that he needed to be signed up and show proof of this as well as have 15 of the 60 credits completed prior to the end of his first semester or it could cause him to have a lower grade in his class. Per the teacher was to teach them responsibility and not showing them how to plan things out and not wait till the last moment. I have gone out to the web site for the school and did discover that it is now part of the plan to have to do community service hours. Also did some research on the thoughts of the experts out there on the meaning and results from them doing community service hours. I think you will be as impressed as I was in what I found there are many different opinion of the positive and negative sides to this subject. Thru mostly the negative ones where not really have a lot of true value to them as most were a expression on it, such as wasn’t this what you did when you got in trouble with the law and wasn’t this treating them like slaves and giving the choice to do it or not. This was on a debating site that did give a clear email address to present here. While it true that now that it has been implemented into the school district regiment for getting your diploma it is per what I saw on the other areas a true valuable teaching tool for the children to have.
On the web site; www.browardschools.com/schools/service_learning.htm showing some of the other schools out there and that this is learning tool that teaches them skills of civil participation and develops an ethic of service and civil responsibility. And on a great site called www.lkwdpl.org/cffr/schlsumm.htm , they also had a lot of debating going on regarding the pro and cons of implementing this into the school system. Discussing all the good and as well as touching on the subject of what some people thought regarding this as a negative thing. There was also a site called www.learnandserve.gov/about/programs/schools_based.asp which has some statements and opinions from some high school students themselves expressing their thoughts on the matter as well as the experts in the field. Now thru we were not to really use it under the site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/community_services there was something written that was pretty great, it talked from the heart and soul of incorporating high school students and community hours together. All in all the experts to mostly agree that this is a great thing to have been implemented into the program for the kids. It really teaches them citizenship, values even more, responsibility, sharing and reaching out to others and not being as self centered as some kids have been and more aware of the needs of others around you. It also as my daughter who is a brand new high school student along with her brother, it helps build character and your self confidence and helps us to give back to the community as well as maybe shorten the list of the potential drop outs down the road. Also it helps to bring students, teachers and parents closer together. And I think it satisfies a need to fill some of the emptiness that some students feel in their lives and that help to have more self esteem in their selves and make them a better person as well as a better student.
In conclusion there was many different view on this matter, and thru some thought badly and some thought good about it all in all the main point I think was about this was that the saying that I saw on many of the sites was: Setting the Standard, Measuring the Results, and we will be celebrating the Success of Our Students as they stride to meet and beat the that standard. Because by the encouragement that we have given them and they are getting from this doing the community service hours as well as the confident and pride in what they do, they will go far in life and be successful in anything they do now and in the adult world they are entering into.