<p>My son is currently very active in the Key Club and in a school mentoring program. He hasn't really started counting those hours seriously. I have begun to notice that applications need applicants to quantify hours. Since he is only a sophomore now, what are normal benchmarks for CS hours? He averages around 100-150 hours in Key Club each year, and at least 1 hour each week with mentoring during the school year.</p>
<p>Does your sons school have mandatory CS hours? If so they usually have some type of form that a student gives to their CS leader which requires a signiture. I am assumming the applications that you mention are college, National Honor Society and scholarship applications. Your son can use one of these forms or simply print one up that a CS leader could fill out every month. The form could be short and simple with his name, grade, service organization, service leaders name, service leaders signiture, type of service performed, and number of hours performed. </p>
<p>I wish CS was still about service and not about mandatory hours, but I also realize that many kids learn about service when they are “encouraged” to participate in something meaningful.</p>
<p>Would volunteering as a stage manager for a community theater count as solid volunteer hours? My D has lots of other volunteer activities, but I wonder if this is worth counting. She spent 15-20 hours/week from November-April with this group, as it stages a new show every month. (She’s taking a break now for APs, etc, but plans to start up with them again in the fall).</p>
<p>Community Service is not required at our high school. My older son’s only CS activity was volunteering at the Senior Center one summer. My younger son did math tutoring senior year, some weekend work for the neighborhood junior year and into the summer and also worked at the Senior Center. I really don’t think colleges are sitting there counting the hours. </p>
<p>To me being stage manager sounds much more like an extracurricular activity than community service, but so what? It sounds like a great experience, probably something she could address in one of her essays.</p>
<p>I would not consider stage manager at a community theater as being community service. It is, however, a great example of a leadership activity. (Learning how to deal with actors, directors, grips, sound and light techs, musicians, carpenters, painters and more is also a great exercise in dealing with human nature at its best and worst!!!)</p>
<p>How about being an acolyte at church? Do you count that as a community service? (I was thinking not - what do you think?)</p>
<p>“I would not consider stage manager at a community theater as being community service”</p>
<p>I would consider that volunteer work. In fact doing that would contribute lots of volunteer hours. The stage manager is volunteering at a nonprofit. In fact, doing things like ushering for community theater also counts as volunteer work. </p>
<p>Lots of times people think that volunteering only has to be something like picking up trash or answering the phones. Meanwhile, there are many interesting things that one can do as a volunteer that allow one to get experience and skills in fields that interest you.</p>
<p>I’ll just repeat what someone said at some college info session. Someone asked about community service and whether ___ would count. The answer was that they didn’t really care what column you put your activities in. The important thing to them was that you weren’t just sitting alone in your room playing computer games.</p>
<p>That said, Northstarmom is right. Community service doesn’t have to be unpleasant and boring. The best community service activities are ones that are in line with your interests. My older son helped in the computer lab and wrote some scheduling programs when he worked at the senior center. My younger son taught an origami class and gave some violin concerts.</p>
<p>Our town holds a huge Dickens festival every year for an entire weekend. Both kids worked at the festival each year and got many community service hours. They got to dress up in Victorian clothes and help create the illusion that the town was back in the nineteenth century in England. I know they had fun. Concerts, teas, ballet performances (The Nutcracker of course) were all on the menu.</p>
<p>Sorry, I still disagree with considering theatrical production work as community service. It’s an EC, and one of great worth to those who participate, both directly and as audience members. However, as mathmom states, it does not matter where this activity gets put on the profile. Your kid is doing something worthwhile and enjoying it.
(You better believe that D2 listed her productions as stage manager on her applications and a couple of her essays reflected her experiences.)</p>
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<p>Not. Our experience, explained in detail as district policy of the school board, was that any activity that served the spritiual or practical needs of the membership within a given church or synagogue for worship, as well teen youth group activities of all varieties, was not considered community service. Sure it helps develop the spiritual life within the congregation’s members but doesn’t serve the larger community outside the church in a direct enough manner. We know it may help indirectly --by making the youth a person more willing to serve and help all others – but it’s too many steps removed to ‘count’ for this purpose. </p>
<p>However, if the adults in church go to pack Thanksgiving meals for the hungry in the larger community (town or city; not limited to other church members in need) and the youth pitch in to help on that specific task(in other words, it benefits those outside the church) that is considered community service hours for exactly the hours that youth spent to help pack or deliver such meals (so don’t count how long it took the group of adults to plan the day; don’t count time spent in prayer before or after the food delivery…) </p>
<p>When students worked weekly as volunteer teaching assistants at our Sunday school, that also didn’t count as “community service” but was a voluntary extra-curricular activity. </p>
<p>For denominations where youths go out into the neighborhoods to proselytize, that is NOT considered community service. In fact the reaction against it is part of why the colleges don’t want to see “religious youth groups” listed as community service hours, no matter what the teen youth group is busy doing.</p>
<p>Some students who become board members or elected officers in a relgious youth group list that as “leadership experience” outside the school, but it’s still not “community service” even if their group engages in a lot of community service when they gather.</p>
<p>paying3tuitions - I’m interested in your comments, as my D has done some amazing volunteer work through our church. Our church has a very progressive reputation in town, despite being mainstream Protestant, and is known to have outstanding youth groups that are open to anyone who is interested. </p>
<p>Every April they give up their spring break to rebuild house in south Louisiana and each July they go to NW NJ to work on homes for low-income or elderly residents. To validate the worth of these trips, the youth drop-in center in our town often provides scholarships to 2-4 teens to participate each year and these kids are NOT members of our church. </p>
<p>My D is very proud of this work and plans to list it prominently on her applications. </p>
<p>IMO - this, the stage work, plus meaningful Girl Scout activities, combined with her grades and test scores will make her a well rounded candidate. (she’s not a jock, but did play JV in 2 sports for 2 years).</p>
<p>I agree with mathmom, that what colleges are looking for is community involvement.
Your high school may have a narrower definition of community service, but I think colleges recognize the value of all kinds of activities.</p>
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<p>She should be proud and she should list it prominently! Your D’s accomplishments paint a great picture of a caring, social-justice, active teen, IMHO. </p>
<p>I should have made my post much clearer. My point was that in New York State, two school districts where our kids graduated h.s. would not let anyone count such hours in THEIR (the high school’s/ the state’s) “Community Service” requirement which all public school students must perform in order to graduate high school. </p>
<p>They met with us over it so I heard their rationale and was repeating that here, in case someone wanted to use that to evaluate their own application for how to distribute the hours invested in various activities.</p>
<p>I just found it ironic, although I do understand the logic, that my youngest, who had invested hundreds of hours of difficult community service through an outwardly-directed religious youth group (not nationally focused like yours, but still with some local and regional projects) that he got caught by surprise, last minute, on the one thing he thought he had satisfied a hundred-fold: Community Service!</p>
<p>Three weeks before graduation, his GC called him in and said he had to find and do an additional 10 hours of CS in a more easily recognizable form, shelving books at our public suburban library, simply to graduate h.s. Which he did, of course; just a hassle to schedule that in last-minute on exam weeks when he could have done same anytime over the prior year. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the “church” related extra curricular activity vs. community service activity answers and thoughts. (I’m glad our h.s. does not have a specific community service requirement.)</p>
<p>My kids go to a Catholic high school. They are required to put in 4 hours to each of these categories each semester.</p>
<p>-dignity of the human person
-nurtures family/community
-safeguards basic human rights
-serves the poor/vulnerable
-protects dignity or workers
-creates solidarity
-cares for the environment</p>
<p>How nice - and 28 hours in four years won’t over-burden anyone. (Is it dignity “of” workers? What would be an example of that?)</p>
<p>Sorry, it is dignity OF workers. I’m not sure I can cite a specific example, but they do spend quite a bit of time at the immigrant center helping with resumes, etc to aid the immigrants in getting jobs where they feel respected and valued. And it is 28 hours PER semester.</p>
<p>Our school does not have the mandatory CS (yet). He has been volunteering for himself since he was able to help people, much to my surprose. I will work with him to begin to formally count his hours in anticipation of scholarship and college applications.</p>