These Teens Are Out to Serve Community

They are everywhere, wheeling patients out of hospitals, assisting teachers in the classroom, even building homes in Mexico. Countless high school students across the nation spend an untold amount of time performing community service.

Students and teachers say being involved with community service helps students as much as those they serve--so much so that many schools have made it mandatory, and others, such as Moorpark High School, are considering such a requirement.

“I think there’s nothing to lose in volunteering,” said Monica Gaur, a junior who attends Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley. “You get good experience. You’re helping out in the community. You’re being a good role model.”

Since fall, Monica has donned her candy-striped uniform once a week and reported to Simi Valley Hospital’s pharmacy, where she helps by delivering medication to other areas in the building. In return, she learns about the pharmaceutical field, which she is interested in.

“You can see a pharmacist at work and see exactly how their job is,” Monica said.

Volunteering also can help a student gain admission to a competitive college. Demonstrating involvement in the community shows they are “well-rounded not just academically, but emotionally and socially,” said Deanna Owens, a counselor at Rio Mesa High School near Oxnard.

It used to be that colleges such as UC Berkeley chose as much as half of the freshman class based purely on a numerical evaluation of GPAs and SATs. But now the schools are increasingly looking at other criteria, such as essays and student activities, Owens said.

Once students start volunteering, they often get hooked, educators said.

At some schools, community service isn’t optional.

At Marshall High School in Los Feliz, for example, students are required to perform 20 hours of service over the course of their four academic years. The average number of hours that each student performs, however, is 63.

“Once they get into it, we’ve found that it becomes something they want to do well beyond their requirement,” said Steve Zimmer, who teaches English as a second language and is coordinator of the school’s Service Learning Program. Edmundo Rodriguez, a Los Angeles Unified School District administrator and former Roosevelt High School government teacher, said he would like to see community service made a condition for graduation.

“I think value can often be derived by doing something you ordinarily wouldn’t do,” he said. “I know many of my students would not have been hired to work in the institutions where they volunteered, like a community newspaper or a hospital.”

In Ventura County, a committee at Moorpark High School made up of parents, students and staff members may recommend next year’s freshmen be required to perform a certain number of hours of community work to graduate.

Many in the group said this would help students better understand their community, said Nicole Lipka, a senior who sits on the committee.

“A lot of kids don’t know their community,” Nicole said. “All they know is their house and how to get to school. They don’t know the people and the lives they lead.”

Volunteer work, she said, “gives you more respect for the community, it helps you understand why a lot of people are the way they are. You get to know people and you are not as prejudiced.”

Marshall High School’s Zimmer said he hopes classroom-based projects that also serve as fieldwork opportunities will become the norm.

Biology students, for example, might study the ecology of the nearby Los Angeles River and then fulfill their service requirement by leading field trips and educating younger students about the river’s aquatic life and the dangers of pollution.

Ventura High School runs a classroom volunteer program that has lasted more than a decade. High school students receive 10 credits for volunteering two class periods, five days a week, to help teachers at local elementary schools such as Ventura’s Will Rogers School.

Will Rogers Principal Jose Montano reports nine students are in the program and that the students are in high demand by teachers.

“At the beginning of the year I asked the staff whether they wanted a master’s or observer’s from the university, or the high school helpers,” he said. “The high school students are the one they want the most.”

The students love having the older kids around and the school always wants more students than can be spared, he said.

Other volunteer activities that students are involved in include cleaning up the local beaches through the Surfrider Foundation’s Ventura County Chapter and serving meals at the Oxnard Rescue Mission. Some students even volunteer outside the country.

For example, a group of students who attend El Rio and Adolpho Camarillo high schools spent two days of their spring break last month in Mexico for a home-building project organized by Padre Serra Parrish in Camarillo.

A group of 28 teens and 12 adults nailed wood together, placed tar paper on roofs and finished painting homes in a single day.

“Those kids worked so hard,” said Becky Buettner, a Rio Mesa High School counselor whose daughter was one of the volunteers. “They were tired people at the end of the day . . . I was really proud of our kids.”

Ultimately, volunteers often go for more because they receive some returns as well, said Jayme Wilson, a junior at Santa Susana High School.

Jayme volunteers at the Simi Valley Boys & Girls Club, where she makes sure the youngsters aren’t getting into trouble and helps them out when they are injured.

“As a junior leader, you earn a lot of respect from the kids,” said Jayme, who says the kids come to know what days she will be in. “It’s like making little friends. They’re so cute.”

Hong is a correspondent and Goldman is a Times staff writer.