Many schools have community service programs. The idea of service to others is appealing to parents who want their children to grow up to be generous. Many parents demonstrate service to their children by volunteering at the hospital, at school, at a soup kitchen, at a food pantry, and by philanthropy.

How can schools truly teach their students to serve? Often the first thought students have when considering the idea of service is to raise money for a charity. This particular kind of service, philanthropy, is relatively easy for many American children to accomplish. They identify the charity they want to support, and then they ask their parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors for a donation. Sometimes they get their parents to bake or help them bake, and then they sell the baked goods. Sometimes they pledge to read books or walk a certain distance in return for contributions. The result is raising funds for programs that the students are excited to support. I would argue, however, that this is only superficial service. A deeper and more meaningful service requires action and personal sacrifice.

I worked for ten years with a master teacher who understood service in a way that goes beyond fund-raising. She took her second grade students to visit the Adult Day Care Center regularly. She took them on the day of the Halloween Parade. She took them with gifts of homemade Valentine’s cards or holiday place-mats. She took them to sing and to perform presentations they had created for school. She made it a habit for them to think about their friends at the center, what those people might enjoy, what would brighten their day. She served her students as much as they served the center, because she showed them that it is important to think of others and not just of ourselves.

Another service project that can be especially meaningful is the “Season of Giving,” in which middle school students identify some activity or action they can do independently that will benefit someone else. Students then commit to performing that action for a certain length of time. At the end of a month, students share their experiences with each other. Some examples of individual projects: raking leaves for a neighbor, taking the trash can down to the street and bringing it back up to the house for a grandparent, writing thank you letters to teachers and coaches, doing chores at home without whining or being reminded, putting up or taking down chairs for a teacher at the end or the start of the day without being asked, picking up trash on the playground, smiling at everyone sincerely and deliberately, starting a conversation with anyone who looks lonely, offering to babysit for no remuneration, bringing in the groceries and putting them away, mowing the grass for a grandparent, weeding the garden – the possibilities are endless, and truly are examples of service to others.

“To be a successful human being is to serve.” – J.E. Rash, founder of Legacy International, the non-profit organization that developed LivingSideBySide®. The LSBS curriculum culminates in student participants working together to envision, design, and execute a service project that will result in a positive change in their community. Students must think of what their project team can do to meet a need in the community. Students are supported by their teachers, but the students are the leaders of the project and are responsible to ensure the project’s success. In this way, LSBS channels the social/emotional and personal knowledge students have gained in the program into action that benefits their entire community.