Junior Class Gives Back to the Community
While many people assume that it is difficult to find opportunities to help the community, this year’s junior class proved otherwise by making a difference in the Acton-Boxborough community this autumn. On November 3, 2009 (a release day from school for students), around 110 juniors raked leaves for senior citizens in the area for Junior Community Service Day. The project was a huge success for several reasons, most notably because of the large impact high school students had in the area.
“The raking day has been a tradition for juniors but seems to be overshadowed by the senior service day,” said Chris Pullerits, secretary of the junior class. “During one of the class meetings, we talked about this event and it got me thinking about how important this is for seniors. What might be a week-long job for a senior citizen, a group of kids could do in a couple of hours.” With this idea in place, class officers still had a lot of preparation to do before the day of the event. Students organized themselves into teams of five to eight people. Some teams even came up with a team name, such as the Muckrakers, Team Buffalo, and the Ros Rangeles Rakers. After organizing these groups, all eighteen teams submitted their rosters to Chris. Then Chris and the rest of the officers contacted senior citizens in and around Acton and Boxborough to obtain a list of those who wanted their lawns raked. On the day of the actual event, all the teams arrived at the high school between 10 and 10:30 a.m. to check in with the class officers. After that, it was off to the yards.
Each team arrived at a different yard, ready and eager to help out. Everyone came prepared with their own equipment, which made raking leaves much more efficient. Using a combination of rakes, tarps, and wheelbarrows, the teams cleaned the yards. Though raking leaves required plenty of physical effort, being with friends made the time pass by much more quickly and sped up the process as well. Students worked hard to finish each yard, still managing to have fun on their day off as they jumped in huge piles of leaves and enjoyed the good weather.
What made this experience memorable was the impact one student could have on the community. This event promoted class unity for juniors and also inspired many people to get into the spirit of community service. The juniors responded positively to the event. “I enjoyed it because I thought it was a good way to help out those in need and have fun with your friends at the same time,” says Aditya Yadavalli, a junior at ABRHS who participated in Community Service Day. Says junior Alice Meng, “it was an easy and good way to get involved in our community and get some community service hours. I did have a lot of fun, even though raking ended up taking longer than expected. And jumping into huge leaf piles was awesome.” The juniors walked away with a sense of accomplishment when the day ended. Hopefully, this event starts a series of other community service projects by high school students. Until then, keep up the good work, juniors!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
