What does it mean to be a service learner? Many students have most likely heard of this from either the mouths of teachers or through their attentive listening during administration run assemblies, but have a hard time relating it to themselves. What does it really mean, and how can I apply it to my life?

This conundrum is something that a panel of teachers and students chose to teach in a hands-on way. This year, seniors participated in a service day that allowed them to apply the service part of service learner to their school day.

Students worked all over, from the gym locker rooms to downtown Cincinnati, helping and serving their community.

“I really liked senior service day. At first, I was apprehensive but I quickly learned that it is a fun way to clean up places that I visit while having a really fun time,” said Alex Hull, 12.

The majority of work included yard work, cleaning and taking inventory. All senior students participated in the day so the work went quickly and the fun kept coming.

“Senior service day was way better than expected. I chose to go to Dulle Park, which is somewhere I go a lot. My group and I cleaned up the creekbed and the trails. I didn’t realize how much trash was in the creek and all around until I was the one picking it up. It made me question how I treat the park and made me more conscious of how I treat it in the future,” said Clare Knife, 12.

The only complaint that students tended to have was that they had wished the service day would have been much earlier in the year. This would have given them much earlier a different perspective towards volunteering and could have pushed them to do more events like this one with friends throughout the school year.

“I wish that the service day had been earlier, but I really enjoyed my time doing it. My group really bonded over picking up trash and finding little critters along the creek bed,” said Max Hill, 12.

Overall, the service day was successful. It allowed students to lead their school and help within their community in a way that positively represented Sycamore high school. There were many great takeaways from the event that will hopefully be applied to students daily lives henceforth.