Students becoming a bigger part of community service

Over the years, students participating in volunteer work through community service has been a great way for students to help out their community while learning what volunteer work is really about and bringing students closer to members of our community whom they otherwise would not interact with. This school year, the staff are pushing students more than ever to become a part of something bigger, something that does not just focus on GPA, or grade point average.

Assistant Principal Aaron Drevlow has a goal for his students to “Learn not for school but for life,” which is a saying painted along the rotunda. Drevlow understands that GPA has been a huge part of what colleges have focused on in students in the past. However, colleges are starting to shift towards the approach of looking at the volunteer work students have done and how they have helped out their communities.

Students have gone through high school driven to get that 4.0 GPA and spending all of their time studying and doing homework.  There is not much time for anything else because that is what the students think colleges want to see. The students don’t realize colleges are starting to look at way more than just GPA; they look at the level of challenge of the classes that the students took and what the students have done that introduces them to the real world.

Drevlow said, “It’s one thing to be book-smart and it’s another thing to actually use your book smarts in the community… the most prestigious universities are looking for activists in the community,”

Community service also gives students the opportunities to get out into the real world and help solve problems that they normally would have no idea these problems existed.

Drevlow said, “Why are people behind a cause? Because they see a problem and they want to create a solution. Those are the people in the future that you want to employ, employees that just want to solve things,”

Junior Anna Duerr loves to volunteer in organizations that work with children because she loves to see them use their creativity. Duerr volunteers at the Lake Elmo Public Library and at Children’s Hospital; Duerr also loves helping out at these organizations because it takes a lot of time and effort to get these places to reach their goals, and volunteers spend a large amount of time making sure the organizations are doing all they can to help their communities.

Duerr said, “I have gained a much deeper understanding and sense of gratitude for the community members involved with these organizations. It takes a lot of work to make these places run efficiently and most of that work is done by volunteers.”

Jordan Wallace, senior and president of the Key Club, volunteers because she loves giving back to her community and doing things for people who don’t need to repay her.

Wallace said, “Key Club does anything from cleaning the stadium after football games, unified bowling, to feed my starving children. The benefits of volunteering in our community is the opportunity to be able to do something for someone who will never repay you.”

Wallace said, “It’s a type of fulfillment that you can’t get anywhere else. Community service allows you to give back to a community that has given you so much.”