Tri-Village students’ volunteer spirits

Students Take Action

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No matter a student’s reason for volunteering – whether it’s National Honor Society requirements or beefing up their college applications – many say they walk away from the experience with a new perspective.

For Grandview Heights High School (GHHS) and Upper Arlington High School (UAHS) students, volunteer opportunities are endless, allowing them to go outside their daily surroundings and interactions and assist others in their community.

“We’re not in a bubble, there’s a whole world out there, and people don’t always have the things that we have, and just to open their minds to seeing different situations (other) than their own,” says Kristi Urig, advisor for the service-focused extracurricular organization known as Key Club, at GHHS.

Service learning

In both districts, service learning is extremely important for each student’s development. Service learning differs from community service as it takes concepts learned in class and uses them for community service purposes.

For example, UAHS’s AP Spanish students travel to elementary schools in the district to provide Spanish lessons.

“We train our teachers to use service learning as a teaching strategy in their classrooms,” says Jeanne Gogolski, career development/service-learning coordinator at UAHS. “Basically (that entails) using your gift, talents and skills, things you’re learning in school, to make a difference or to help someone, or become a change maker. It’s authentic learning at its best.”

A Day for Service

In 2023, GHHS hosted its first Day of Service. Instead of going to class that day, students attended a mini-

conference where volunteer organizations and community institutions shared their purpose and actions while letting the students know how they could get involved.

“I know that a lot of kids were interested in Huckleberry House because they serve kids their age…dog shelter came out, so that was real popular…Girls on the Run, which is headquartered here in Grandview, they’ve got a good response,” Marc Alter, an educator at GHHS who led the Day of Service, says.

UAHS has an incentive for sophomores, juniors and seniors to commit six hours of their summer break to volunteering. If they complete those hours, they can skip the first day of school without receiving an unexcused absence.

“(The students) recognize that they’ve done something special,” Gogolski says. “So those students, we’re really proud of it, they get to choose whatever they want to do, and they tend to choose things that matter to them, related to animal care or climate change or politics, or they’re engaged with their religious communities.”

Near and far

One of Gogolski’s favorite student volunteering stories began with a call from The Coventry Senior Living asking if some high school volunteers could assist residents with tasks including using their tech devices. 

“(The Coventry) calls me and goes, ‘I only have 25 seniors here, and I've already had more than 25 kids volunteer to come over and help,’ which I thought was really amazing,” she says.

Supporting people and causes in the community is certainly something to celebrate. However, some students decide they’d rather assist communities outside their own, often very far from home.

UAHS students have traveled all over the world to provide services including teaching English and

conducting physical labor such as building homes and other structures. Over the years, students have been everywhere from Puerto Rico to Russia to lend a hand.

In 2023, a group of GHHS students visited Costa Rica on a service trip. They spent hours doing physical labor in the scorching tropical heat and didn’t let it break their spirits.

Urig says some of the students’ parents reached out to tell her that the trip made a huge impact on their children. Through the service trip, many of the students experienced a culture different from their own.

“We were making the sidewalk to the stands to this soccer field, another group was painting a fence that surrounded the soccer field…then after we got all done with that community service, we sat down and had lunch with the community. The women in the community came and fixed us lunch, and then we got to sit down and eat with them,” she says.

What’s in it for me?

A huge incentive for many students to volunteer is to qualify for the National Honors Society or to graduate with honors. But, even if this is their initial reason for volunteering, they’ll most likely gain much more than just service hours.

“Once you’ve given (volunteering) a try, I think you discover what a joyful thing it is to help other people and how it impacts your own mental health,” Gogolski says.  “What we’ve discovered is, getting back (to in-person learning), your feeling of confidence and being able to be out in the community doing things is something that we had to work on, believe it or not.”

Local Organizations for Teen Volunteers

These are just a few organizations in the area that offer volunteer opportunities.

Maisie Fitzmaurice is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.