“ideals and ideas”

I’d been invited to prepare a presentation on service learning to my school’s leadership team. We were discussing a proposal to make community service an ‘expectation’ for all graduating seniors.

It was 1996, the pre power-point era, and my supporting visuals were slides for an OHP. For digital natives – that’s an Over Head Projector.

As I entered the conference room the Head of Science slipped me a newspaper clipping. “You gotta read this,” he said, “it will help your argument!”

I did read it then and it did help our discussion, and I continue to use the same article and tool kit in all my CAS workshops.

The writer, Peter Dalglish, is persuasive and focused. His opinion is challenging and thought provoking.

And he’s right.

Global Youth Service Day offers us an opportunity to promote activities that can generate the sort of ‘epiphany’ that he refers to. That “sudden and powerful moment of heightened awareness” where kids might obtain or sustain “a profound longing to do something worthwhile with their lives and not succumb to relentless messages from peers, family members and the corporate world that earning a big income must be their top priority.”