By Carol Lucas
In my earlier years when I was helping to raise two daughters and maintaining a teaching job, I had very little free time to volunteer. However, by 1988, one daughter was in college, and the second one was getting ready to graduate from high school. Fortuitously, it was also that year that I was offered a position that permitted me to teach three classes of English in the morning and coordinate a community service learning program in the afternoon.
Our district instituted a program that mandated students to accrue 120 hours of service over the course of their four years in high school. My job included interviewing each student to see what his or her interests were and finding appropriate sites that might be willing to take student volunteers.
It was a challenge on many levels. The first, ironically, lay with the parents of the so-called gifted students who chose to rally around what they saw as the oxymoron of “mandated volunteerism.” However, I was ready for that argument and responded with statistics regarding several colleges that saw this as a plus when students were applying for entrance to these institutions.
The first year of the program included only freshmen as this was a new requirement that did not yet apply to upperclassmen. The following year, it was the freshmen and sophomores and so on.
For many of the students, particularly those who thought they might enter the medical field, this was an opportunity to use the program for career exploration. I hastened to tell those kids that, should they find that this wasn’t what they had hoped it to be (bed pans and being on your feet for hours on end), the lesson was as valuable as loving every moment of their placement. Even a bad experience could ultimately be a good one.
In addition to finding weekend placements for students outside of the school setting, I created projects that reached the community but were carried out in the high school. We began the tradition of the “Teddy Bear Holiday” early on.
I contacted a center where children were held until, hopefully, they were fostered. It was amazing how many children were faced with that existence, and as I worked with the director, I came to see how great the need was. Confidentiality was a must, so we were given first names only, and a gift the child wanted for Christmas.
It was the kids’ idea to add a teddy bear to that wish and for weeks we became ‘bear-driven’; thus the name of the project. It was also the decision of the students to reach out to every extracurricular activity group, asking them to sponsor a child. How they pulled off what became a wild, competitive approach still amazes me.
The French Club bear wore a beret. The football team somehow found a bear with a helmet. The band bear had a drum in his hands. Even the kids who didn’t belong to a structured group somehow found one another, and their child received the largest bear I have ever seen. I shed many tears over the joy that project brought.
We also held a Senior Citizen’s Prom, all planned by the kids. Those who decided to make this their project knew that short of illness, they had to attend the dance. One committee contacted the school cafeteria to arrange for dinner to be served. A second group engaged local florists for corsages and boutonnieres.
There was a band, and kids decorated the gym the afternoon of the dance. But the best part was watching the kids dance with the seniors; know as well that the seniors showed the kids some of their dance steps. It was a wonderful integration of kids and seniors, and we had more than a hundred attendees every year.
One story that must be told involved a sophomore in my English class who was an average student at best. Will simply did not fit into any of the niches kids tend to carve out in school. There was an elementary school within walking distance of the high school, and I was able to get permission to send several kids there one morning a week for six weeks. Will was one of those, and he worked with third grade students in reading.
All students in community service were required to keep a journal of their activities which I read and commented upon. The third grade teacher and her students had a party for Will when he was leaving, and the students made a huge card for him which all signed. Will wrote in his journal, “I never thought so many people would like me at one time.” More tears on my part.
When I retired and my late husband and I moved to Beaufort, we began volunteering with Second Helpings. Later, after he passed away, I began volunteering through hospice, one-on-one with children who had lost a parent or loved one. I came to realize that my own grief was muted as I worked with those kids. Yes, I was working through my grief, but I rapidly got over the “why me?” stage as I watched those kids struggle.
Later I was a part of the “Corridor of Shame” project, and as President of the local AAUW chapter, I suggested a Books for Birthdays project through the Corridor umbrella. So many children in Beaufort and Jasper counties lacked reading material, so once a month, we would take cupcakes for a class celebration and books for the kids with birthdays that month. The women with whom I worked were wonderful and threw themselves totally into this.
I write all of this to say very simply, “Get out there and volunteer.” There is so much need, and so many opportunities. Your heart will swell many times over, trust me. The gratification I received far outweighed any effort I put forth, and you don’t know whose life may be changed as a result.
Carol Lucas is a retired high school teacher and a Lady’s Island resident. She is the author of the recently published “A Breath Away: One Woman’s Journey Through Widowhood.”
