Anonymous wrote:My girls often earned SSL hours by volunteering at their former elementary school. They would help with the spring carnival or any sort of movie night type event. They also helped teachers set up their classrooms. Contact elementary schools during pre-service week or the last day of work for teachers. Teachers are often moving classrooms and could use extra help.

And here’s a good example of how forcing kids to perform free labor also allows us as a society to continue to underpay teachers.

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Anonymous wrote:There’s like 14 people who work in the SSL office. I think volunteering and service is important, but SSL hours misses the mark a lot of the time. Students earn 45 hours for just taking required classes. I’d be ok with eliminating the requirement and re-assigning the SSL office.

I'd be more inclined to keep the requirement if service was actually community service. Instead, though, students can get hours automatically in class or (looking at a recent email) attending a zoom where they "have the opportunity to engage in a youth town hall with Montgomery County councilmembers".

Exactly! Actual volunteer service. Not this bs.

It’s not volunteer service if it’s mandatory.

Child Labor Loophole.

Honestly, does this requirement exist to teach kids to accept exploitation? Maybe to acclimate them to no pay for their labor so that someday they’ll be thrilled with minimum wage?

AYFKM? "exploitation"? These are opt-in activities. Nobody's being "exploited". Good lord...

Y'all raising a bunch of gold-digging moneygrubbers thinking their presence is a present or some mess. Service learning exists to supplement your parenting deficiencies and teach kids that being of use to their community is part of being in a community. You don't get paid for every little thing you do, nor should you, nor should you expect to. Damn.

And it's STUPID easy to collect these things. My HS kid has over 400. My 7th grader has over 200. They are not particularly engaged or generous people, and I've never once had to suggest they volunteer. They found activities they were interested in, and found ways to be of use at the activities they enjoyed. Students get about half of the 75 hour requirement just for in-school activities, probably because you wanky whiners whinged enough that the school started subsidizing your children's community service. If your kid can't figure out how to give 35ish hours of service between 6th and 12th grade, well, congratulations on the leech you raised.

It's just over an hour every month between 6th and 12th grade. If you're not raising your kids to be at least that generous, that's your L as a parent.

So… yes. People like you are trying to indoctrinate kids to perform labor for free. (Otherwise you’ll call them names.)

I get it. You’re rich but don’t want to pay a living wage to your daycare providers, and certainly not to your future baristas or burger slingers.

"Is it useful" and "Is it difficult to complete" are two completely different things.

This thread started by people who seemed overwhelmed by the # of hours needed. Almost all of the responses I've read on this topic suggest this isn't a widespread concern. There are lots of options-- during school day, at school after-hours events, online, etc. such that a kid in any circumstance can get the objective met, probably in sixth or seventh grade. But it takes some thought/planning.

In terms of the utility, I personally appreciate the fact that giving students seven years to complete their goal forces them to engage in planning, encourages them to think about how they might like to get them done early to get the requirement out of the way, etc. This was the first 'grown up' thing my kids accomplished-- i.e. doing their own planning and meeting the requirement without my involvement. Aside from the merits of doing public service, this long term orientation is an important life skill.

Is it useful to society? Probably only as useful as the kid (or parents) make it. I think the stuff where they help out at their own school is a nice lesson on contributing to make their community work well. But I'm sure many kids get their hours checked-off without any feeling of accomplishment. As with everything, you get out what you put in.

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Anonymous wrote:There’s like 14 people who work in the SSL office. I think volunteering and service is important, but SSL hours misses the mark a lot of the time. Students earn 45 hours for just taking required classes. I’d be ok with eliminating the requirement and re-assigning the SSL office.

Agree. It's not a useful program.

Plus it's not just the people who work in the SSL office. Each school has to have someone in charge of it. Plus other random required paperwork for SSL programs.

If it's true that there are 14 full-time bodies who work in the SSL office, that's horrific. There's not that many opportunities, sending out the occasional email with weblinks is not that useful, the opportunities not very accessible to most students and most of the hours kids get are the BS kind of "watch a video about blah blah for 2 hours" or "attend a PTSA or county council meeting." Put those bodies in the classrooms to teach so my kid can have fewer than 34 kids in his middle school classes.

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Anonymous wrote:There’s like 14 people who work in the SSL office. I think volunteering and service is important, but SSL hours misses the mark a lot of the time. Students earn 45 hours for just taking required classes. I’d be ok with eliminating the requirement and re-assigning the SSL office.

I'd be more inclined to keep the requirement if service was actually community service. Instead, though, students can get hours automatically in class or (looking at a recent email) attending a zoom where they "have the opportunity to engage in a youth town hall with Montgomery County councilmembers".

Exactly! Actual volunteer service. Not this bs.

It’s not volunteer service if it’s mandatory.

Child Labor Loophole.

Honestly, does this requirement exist to teach kids to accept exploitation? Maybe to acclimate them to no pay for their labor so that someday they’ll be thrilled with minimum wage?

No, it teaches them how to be those thousand points of light which the GOP loves to rely on.

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Anonymous wrote:If you shovel snow in your neighborhood and pick up litter and tutor your classmates for 7 years, you'll easily rack up.... 0 hours because it's not for an approved nonprofit organization.

Yep, and lots of those 'non-profits' are actually making a profit.

So you're against money?

Anonymous wrote:My girls often earned SSL hours by volunteering at their former elementary school. They would help with the spring carnival or any sort of movie night type event. They also helped teachers set up their classrooms. Contact elementary schools during pre-service week or the last day of work for teachers. Teachers are often moving classrooms and could use extra help.

Exactly. There are a lot of these opportunities even in the middle school. Right now ours is offering SSL for setup and cleanup of an evening event.
My kid also got two hours SSL for going to a PTSA meeting (agree this isn’t volunteering but the point is that there are opportunities at the school).

Anonymous wrote:If you shovel snow in your neighborhood and pick up litter and tutor your classmates for 7 years, you'll easily rack up.... 0 hours because it's not for an approved nonprofit organization.

Our middle school Is offering SSL to HS students to tutor the middle schoolers during homework club after school. So nice try with your cutesy response.

Anonymous wrote:If you shovel snow in your neighborhood and pick up litter and tutor your classmates for 7 years, you'll easily rack up.... 0 hours because it's not for an approved nonprofit organization.

Yep, and lots of those 'non-profits' are actually making a profit.

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Anonymous wrote:DD finished hers in 7th grade because she wanted the MS award. Then she wanted the HS award so she started racking up hours whenever she could.

DS entered MCPS in 2020 and still managed to finish his 75 by 2022 despite the pandemic.

Middle class seniors in good health have zero excuse.

So just let the lower class (aka poor) seniors fail?

How do you take that from the bolded comment about middle class seniors having zero excuse?

Anonymous wrote:There’s like 14 people who work in the SSL office. I think volunteering and service is important, but SSL hours misses the mark a lot of the time. Students earn 45 hours for just taking required classes. I’d be ok with eliminating the requirement and re-assigning the SSL office.

Agree. It's not a useful program.

Plus it's not just the people who work in the SSL office. Each school has to have someone in charge of it. Plus other random required paperwork for SSL programs.

If you shovel snow in your neighborhood and pick up litter and tutor your classmates for 7 years, you'll easily rack up.... 0 hours because it's not for an approved nonprofit organization.

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Anonymous wrote:There’s like 14 people who work in the SSL office. I think volunteering and service is important, but SSL hours misses the mark a lot of the time. Students earn 45 hours for just taking required classes. I’d be ok with eliminating the requirement and re-assigning the SSL office.

I'd be more inclined to keep the requirement if service was actually community service. Instead, though, students can get hours automatically in class or (looking at a recent email) attending a zoom where they "have the opportunity to engage in a youth town hall with Montgomery County councilmembers".

Exactly! Actual volunteer service. Not this bs.

It’s not volunteer service if it’s mandatory.

Child Labor Loophole.

Honestly, does this requirement exist to teach kids to accept exploitation? Maybe to acclimate them to no pay for their labor so that someday they’ll be thrilled with minimum wage?

That and to make rich brats go slumming for a bit, to teach them some compassion for the poors, and motivate them to study hard to get a good job.

Different lessons for different classes. It's quite beautiful.

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Anonymous wrote:DD finished hers in 7th grade because she wanted the MS award. Then she wanted the HS award so she started racking up hours whenever she could.

DS entered MCPS in 2020 and still managed to finish his 75 by 2022 despite the pandemic.

Middle class seniors in good health have zero excuse.

So just let the lower class (aka poor) seniors fail?

Sure. Teach them how the real world works. Unfair rules that disrespect your humanity.

Your nanny making soup that your mom paid for, while you watch == SSL

You making soup to feed your little sister so Mom can work longer hours = not SSL.

The law, in its majestic quality, forbids the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.

My girls often earned SSL hours by volunteering at their former elementary school. They would help with the spring carnival or any sort of movie night type event. They also helped teachers set up their classrooms. Contact elementary schools during pre-service week or the last day of work for teachers. Teachers are often moving classrooms and could use extra help.