Junior and senior high school students in many schools across Canada are doing something that students in our province are not doing — they’re volunteering in their community as part of the high school graduating requirement.
In 2011, the Progressive Conservatives plan to introduce mandatory volunteering fell flat. The feeling was that groups relying on volunteers were not eager to accept high school students who would be ‘required’ to be there but not have wanted to be there. Were students actually consulted about what they wanted? Or, did directors of the various groups simply decided that students wouldn’t want to participate as part of a graduating requirement? Student input is critical; after all, it’s their futures on the horizon.
Put off by the name ‘volunteering’? Call it community based learning because, as a process, it makes a lot more sense, as all students, university-bound or not, would benefit from work/job shadowing experiences through junior and senior high school, as they spend time in the workplace, absorbing all the intricacies involved in how a business is run, perhaps experiencing several different components before settling on one they liked, about which they’d like to learn more. Not unlike opening the pages of a book and reading from beginning to end, learning about all the characters and plots and how the story ends. Hands-on learning has a staying power as it gives students an opportunity to determine if what they’re physically doing is something they’d like to learn more about, with a view to developing a job or career after high school is behind them.
Volunteerism has potential to open doors to university or to jobs opportunities or training programs that offer scholarship based on volunteer hours in the community. From volunteering grows self-driven learning which demonstrates to teachers and others that the student is sincere in his efforts and serious about his goals. Administrators must think outside the box and free themselves of outdated notions about how children are ‘supposed’ to learn.
Sometimes, student interns/volunteers may receive pay for their work and an internship may develop into a full-time summer job during high school. For the student who hasn’t been sufficiently encouraged, opportunities tend to slip out of reach, so volunteering opens access and allows them to realize that they can do the job, that they’re good at it, and that they could probably make a full-time career out of those early opportunities once the required book learning has been completed.
The spirit of volunteering actually must begin in the home with parents leading by example. From the time a child comes into the world, the stage is set for youngsters to see community service in action through their parents, their first teachers. Over time, when they age into their place as a contributing member of society, children should already have a set of skills and aptitudes that can be moulded into a means by which they can contribute in a meaningful way, so that come junior and senior high school, meeting the requisite number of hours of volunteerism/community service is relatively easy. Lots of students are well acquainted with volunteering as it was part of the fabric of their upbringing from the time they could walk; they may have accompanied Mom or Dad to community sponsored fund raising events; bake sales, service club sponsored sit down meals in the church hall, library book drive, and so on.
Most volunteering schemes in schools in other provinces expect students to complete 25-40 hours of community service to meet the graduation requirement and some schoolboards have outlined acceptable venues in which to accommodate volunteering. The library is often a great resource to establish a list of venues that welcome volunteers.
Again, I have to say, the goal should really be more about students being able to choose their own path and be allowed to demonstrate a maturity that illustrates that they know what they’re doing. Students fall across different parts of the spectrum when it comes to eagerness about mandatory volunteering. Take out the ‘mandatory’ and the landscape changes significantly. Lots of students don’t think twice about it, especially if they grew up in it, aware that their contribution to community life does matter.
I believe that there is a place and there is a need for volunteerism in our junior and high school curriculum, incorporating it into the fabric of the current learning processes and applying it as credit hours towards graduation. Many of a community’s old guard is aging out and really could use younger bodies, steadier hands and feet to work along side them, so what better way to meet the demand? Our young people are the future of community life, especially those with aging populations that simply can’t keep pace with the demands of participation. Talk to young people in your world about the value of volunteering.
Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment