High School Service Learning as a Student-Directed Club

Serving the community, particularly at faith-based high schools, is often an integral part of the school curriculum. While certainly laudable, in practice, many schools struggle to ensure not only that students are actually doing the service work, but that the work is fulfilling and something useful for the students and the people or organizations they serve. In recent years, there has been a steady trend of schools doing away with service hour requirements, finding that students tend to see service as a “box to check” before graduation, instead of an opportunity for them to grow. But this trend has created a vacuum. Schools are seeing new challenges with respect to their service programs. This research seeks to identify methods for motivating students to engage in community service; the ways in which administrators and faculty can ensure that student volunteers have an impactful learning experience that is equally beneficial to the community the students are serving; and the long-term effects of providing impactful learning experiences on the students and the community. After considering this research, this presentation proposes a student-directed service club, where social justice themes are studied and integrated into service projects, as a model for providing a meaningful service learning experience for high school students