Volunteering is not voluntary for students

October 17, 2003

Is the Liberty Union High School District's Teens Link with Community, or TLC program, really working to teach students what serving one's community is all about? That is a question that many parents have wondered since the program started.

The district started the program in 1993 as part of a statewide intervention to help students gain a relationship with their community by teaching them volunteerism. Each high school student is required to volunteer 20 hours during his or her senior year. At first, students who did not fulfill the requirement would receive a lower letter grade in their American Government class. Not a big deal for a good student. It seems that several students along the way decided that it didn't make a difference and they didn't volunteer.

Last year, the school district decided that the program should be a requirement and if the volunteering wasn't complete then the student would not be able to graduate from high school. The program was elevated to become part of the district's standards and benchmarks. The question arises as to whether the district is truly teaching volunteerism if the students cannot voluntarily make the decision to volunteer.

While the school district has repeatedly said that the program is very successful, some parents question its validity, stating that after students complete the volunteer work they are asked to write an essay about what they learned from the experience. Is it possible that some of the students really don't learn anything from the experience at all and just write the essay to make sure they get a grade and fulfill the required hours?

One parent stated that her daughter received credit for her hours by volunteering to help her teacher in the classroom. The parent wondered, if the program is really geared toward getting students into the community to volunteer, what they learn from volunteering in the classroom.

Which brings us to another dilemma. Where do students look for volunteer opportunities in our community? If the students were asked, for instance, to help clean up a field that was polluted with garbage or paint a fence with graffiti on it, would that be teaching them community volunteerism or would it just be having them pick up someone else's mess that no one else wants to clean up? Of course one could argue that cleaning up the mess is showing pride in your community and therefore learning the spirit of volunteerism, but if so then why aren't adults out there already doing the job?

While we are talking about showing our children the importance of volunteering, we as parents must also set a good example for our children. It is hard to teach a teenager the importance of volunteering when they see that their parents aren't interested in the act themselves.

Another question seems to be whether we should be teaching our students the concept of volunteering or work ethic. It is all well and good to teach children to work for free, but this world is based on making money and supporting oneself and your family. Could programs that might be an internship in local businesses be a better avenue to teach high school seniors?

All of these are good questions. Working with the Almond Festival and the students who have volunteered there the past several years, I will give you one last thought based on my own experience.

Through the years, I have learned there are students who come to volunteer at the festival and work their tails off. They are conscientious and give it their all. Then there are other students who think that volunteering means sitting on a chair all weekend and being there but not really doing anything. They look toward the festival as an easy way to get their 20 hours done and over with because they didn't want to do them in the first place. The festival committee has even had some students who try to sign in Saturday morning and then leave for the day, only to come back Sunday evening and claim they worked all weekend.

Making the program mandatory for graduation may teach students the mechanics of volunteering, but from what I have seen, those kids who are interested in learning from the experience will come and make the best of it and do the job with enthusiasm, while those who don't won't get a thing out of it. Unfortunately there are more of those who don't than those who do.

Roni Gehlke's column on life in Oakley appears each week in the Brentwood News.

Distributed by the Contra Costa Times

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