Volunteering opportunities for middle school students.
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Anonymous
Volunteering should be for….volunteers. It should never be made mandatory for all students or for a grade in class. It puts unnecessary burdens on families. Some families don’t have time to help facilitate this. |
Anonymous
+1 There are local cleanup days, both for pulling out invasive plants in parks, and for general cleanup. Get online and find those, OP. Be aware, they're only held a few times each year so check now, so you don't miss them. It's not that big a deal to organize a simple food drive to contribute to a food bank (the student can email friends/relatives/people at their house of worship if you do that, etc. and then you drive them to collect donations folks leave for them on the front porch or whatever). Food banks are in GREAT need of donations. Food for Others is one, in the Merrifield area near Vienna, if you're in VA, but please check their website first to see what they need; it's not helpful to any food bank to donate random items, they'll tell you what the greatest need is. Food for Others also used to do "Power Packs" of specific foods that they distribute to kids through schools, and both our Girl Scout troop and our church have packed many Power Packs and taken them to Food for Others over the years. I'm sure other food banks will be glad to get food donations too. My DD was in Girl Scouts and we are active in our church so those provided a lot of ways to do service time. Sometimes the student really does have to make the volunteering happen--it's not easy to walk in and do volunteering at established places like shelters or soup kitchens because, well, they often want people over a certain age. But students can organize good, simple volunteering like clean-up days or food collection etc. It's good for MS-age kids to do something that gets them outside their heads and reminds them there are others less fortunate than they are whom they should help when they can. |
Anonymous
It’s easy for you to say bc your family is already involved with organizations that do service, so it would be easy to arrange volunteer opportunities for you daughter. Please understand there are families that aren’t involved and therefore don’t have the connections. Families who are struggling to make ends meet and don’t have the time on the weekends to shuttle their kids to volunteer. Or need their kids to watch younger kids. Forcing all families to volunteer is unnecessary, inequitable, and ridiculous. |
Anonymous
There is a reason why it’s called service learning. Because it is an opportunity for kids to learn something in a work environment. It only puts a burden on the family if you choose not avail yourself of the opportunities that exist within the schools. |
Anonymous
| I’m an elementary school librarian and I’d love to have A couple of middle school students come over after school to help shelve books! |
Anonymous
| Fairfax county asks for volunteer service with library branches. Parks systems as well advertised on Fairfax park website. Also, you may just call nonprofits or churches in your area and ask what they might need help with. Kids should make those calls themselves. That’s part of process of growing up and having agency of oneself. |
Anonymous
How would the middle school student get to the elementary school? Middle school is out by 2:15. Then the bus takes kids home. How would working parents get their kids over to an elementary school for volunteer work? |
Anonymous
Here is the thing. It's not that every single opportunity needs to be available to every single kid. It's that there need to be a wide enough variety of opportunities that each kid can find one. So, the elementary school option can be for kids who live within walking distance of an elementary school, or whose middle school is in walking distance, or have father's like my kids' Dad who is a first responder and doesn't work every weekday. And other families can find weekend opportunities, or take advantage of opportunities within their middle school, or whatever. |
Anonymous
ES offer many evening events that are always looking for volunteers. They can also come in on a Teacher Workday. There are always teachers looking for help or a PTA event. |
Anonymous
You are thinking of students who have stay at home parents to drive them. |
Anonymous
Or live in walking distance from an ES, or know how to take public transportation, or have a parent who works shifts as any one of a number of jobs that work shifts, or require an early start and an early end. Your inability to imagine that people live lives that are different from you is part of what service learning is designed to address. |
Anonymous
Requirement maybe on paper only. It’s not enforced. My son was an 8th grader last year and he said they mentioned it in class. He never did anything outside of school and didn’t log anything into the system nor did most of his friends. The local elementary school often asked for volunteers at their events and said some spots could be filled by those looking for service hours. I only know because we have younger children there and I’d get the emails. Even if he wanted to do that, the signup genius spots filled so quickly since we have a really active PTA. |
Anonymous
If schools want kids to do service hours, they should help the kids by providing sign up times and time at school to sign up and offer transportation for them to the service places. Otherwise the burden falls on families and for some it’s too much. |
Anonymous
| 9:15 again to add to my post. To the other person who recommended the invasive plants, we looked into that. My son was interested. The issue is a parent had to go with them for the entire time. While that’s nice in theory, we have multiple kids and don’t have time to devote a day to that after working all week. It was his volunteer requirement, not mine. He can find volunteer opportunities when he’s old enough to go alone. |
Anonymous
Exactly. Having this as a requirement in middle school is a burden on families. It’s basically virtue signaling. |