Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Community Service, One Student's View

Recently in the Reading Workshop, students have been writing persuasive essays. This is a guest post by student author Rachael J.

Kids should be really encouraged to be a part of community service. The reason I believe this is because the University of Michigan says that “it is common knowledge that volunteers get much more out of their service experience than they expect.” Sometimes kids really need to get their hands dirty to see how rewarding community service can be! Community service can really be a better teaching tool than sitting in a classroom. Kids learn more if they actually do something.

Community service has made huge differences in student's motivation and in communities. Researcher Diane Hedin indicates, “the biggest problem students must overcome in school is a lack of motivation” (Hedin 1989) If a student is dreading school because “it's boring”, that can be changed! Get the students involved! Kids like to feel needed! They like to know that they did something that someone would appreciate. “One of the most effective ways is by strengthening students’ relationships with their community and helping them become more personally engaged in their education through national service ( http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.black/homes).

Community service makes students feel good. I know this because I got involved. It was on Make a Difference day and Mrs. Woods asked for volunteers. I did not know what I was going to be doing that day, but I then found out that it was raking leaves for people that could not do it themselves. Now, I have plenty of leaves to rake at home, so I have raked leaves before. Our neighbors get mad if we don’t rake them up because they would blow into their yard. Anyway, it felt really good to do something for others and they really appreciate it. Plus, it cleaned up our community, right here in Laurelville, the town that is not even found on a map.

Little things can make a huge difference. Cleaning up your community might even improve your community's ways of life. If you have a clean and environmentally-friendly community, then the people inside the community can go outside without finding a hobo in their dumpster. What does this have to do with community service and students? Well, as the saying goes, you get back what you give, but you get back even more with volunteering for community service. With just a few hours of your time, you help your community, and in the long run, your community helps you.

A clean community can give back in many ways. Students can help their community in so many ways. They can supply fresh air for us to breath, clean water for us to drink, healthy crops for us to eat, and an awesome community to live in. Seriously, if you want to keep Hocking County beautiful then make a difference and get out there and help your community.

You can read more of Rachael's work on her blog, Notes From Rachael.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think people need to clean up more too because I have seen some back roads and high ways. Sometimes my mom and I can't hardly ride our horses down the road because of broken bottles and other trash. Were afraid that the horses will cut their feet.
I never really thought about community service helping a kids motivation until now. This sounds like something that I would like to do.

Anonymous said...

I think that the more kids start to clean up maybe they will act a little better when they are older. I live on a back road and some times we will walk up and down the road and pick things up. I think that if more and more kids started to pick things up then there might be a lot less problems. Also way to go Rachael.

Anonymous said...

Students and kids everywhere need to help out in some way. I totally agree with you Rachael doing community service is a huge reward because you feel good about yourself after you have helped somebody.

Mr. McGuire said...

A lot of Laurelville students will have a a chance to help soon when we have our Relay for Life. I hope we have great participation this year.

The Breeze said...

The Jenzabar Foundation is a non-profit awarding grants to student leaders in community service. The foundation is passionate about financially supporting youth involved in communities in the US and around the world. For more information, http://www.jenzabar.net/about_jbar/Foundation.html