Community Service and School Graduation Requirements

I believe that we as citizens need to help the environment and the communities we live in. “While most colleges do not require community service for admission, there are still many benefits to participating, including showing colleges that you are involved beyond academic courses, giving you the opportunity to earn leadership positions and awards, and, most importantly, positively contributing to your community.” -(Laura Berlinsky, Oct. 13,2016) I agree with this and when schools are making students help the environment and community there are good things and bad things that come with that. I believe this is a good thing and it is something that could be implemented in so many different ways because it is a great way to raise environmental awareness as well as promote good citizenship and morals.

High school students are soon to become adults and helping out the environment and community is a great way to promote good citizenship for the youth. These students are the next generation and teaching them ways to recycle and pick up trash and learn how to work together to get things done promotes leadership and teamwork, I think community service is a great way to get these students to stay away from bad habits so instead of smoking they’ll be cleaning up and learning what these bad habits actually do to the environment. One of the things people argue is that these students don’t see community service as a way to help out the environment they just see it as merely, something they have to do to pass and graduate or get into a good college. The way I see it if you’re going to do community service that is not the mentality you should have, what you should be thinking about is the impact you will have on the environment and community. “ The task is not one which entails an outrageous amount of work and can leave students with an experience that shows them that giving back is not only good for those they are giving to but for themselves as well.”-(Jen Johnson, Rockwood, Nov. 16 2011) Some of these students think that the community service is a waste of time and takes up too much time that could be spent on working on school work or having free time to go out on weekends, what they do not understand is that this is a great way to hang out with friends and learn teamwork all while helping the earth and people. This is a requirement to pass high school and a way to learn and have fun but kids these days would rather be inside all day. I believe our generation needs to do more for the community instead of more for our own self gain, if these students think that mandatory community service is too much and the schools agree, then they could shorten the time frame into fewer hours making it easier to handle for these students. There are ways to get around things and fix problems and t=community service could show them exactly that. Say there is a pile of trash and the students are in groups of three and hav to get the trash into a bin a few meters away, the students could either give up, or learn a way to get through by making a plan and executing it. These services are great ways to learn teamwork and leadership and pass high school all together. ""The greatest part of SSL hours is that students learn transferable skills that can be applied to a variety of unique situations,""-(Robert Hopkins,March 10,2011) Learning these teamwork skills and performing these tasks will help when it comes to getting into jobs and many other things because you will be more well rounded and you will have more social skills and be more capable than others in situations where teamwork comes into play. I believe that students should indeed have to do community service in order to graduate high school and that is why.

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