National Honors Society is an established association in high schools all across the country. This club allows upperclassmen to volunteer throughout their community. Many students use NHS to appeal to colleges.
“To be a member of NHS, students must have (and maintain) a GPA of 3.5 and complete 15 community service hours from our running list of opportunities,” club sponsors Kathleen Troyer and Josh Bodenheimer said.
Opportunities include national organizations, such as Feed My Starving Children, as well as local opportunities, such as elementary school events, and high school-specific opportunities, including tutoring. The volunteering opportunities provided for DGN students are dynamic – opportunities are constantly added and taken away from the list.
The goal of this ever-changing list is a reference point for students, not a jumping-off point. Only opportunities on this list are counted as NHS hours, so individualized situations, such as church events, are not allowed.
“We have encouraged members to bring service opportunities to our attention for us to post – and sometimes that would work and we did post; other times it did not align with our parameters so we did not post,” Troyer and Bodenheimer said.
This school year, one specific NHS opportunity has faced many difficulties in being approved: tutoring. Students can only receive NHS tutoring hours by helping other high schoolers who are a part of STRIVE, a school club that connects students with educational help. STRIVE runs before, during, and after school in the DGN library and testing center. Students who show up can find both teachers and student tutors. However, the number of student tutors often long outweighs the number of students who need tutoring.
“A lot of time you’ll go and sit there for an hour and you won’t get any credit for it because there are way more tutors there than people who need tutoring,” Junior Carly Ermitage said.
With the limited amount of other opportunities open, Ermitage, along with many other NHS students, rely on tutoring through STRIVE to complete a majority of her NHS hours. However, when no students showed up for tutoring help, Ermitage could not receive tutoring hours even when giving up her time.
“It’s nice to, one day a week, stay after school and hopefully get tutoring hours. But it would be nice if you could stay after and for sure get tutoring hours. It’s always a gamble,” Ermitage said.
As a school, having low numbers of students who need tutoring is a good sign of learning comprehension, meaning NHS service hours are difficult to earn. Current and future members must work hard to find service events, making this club induction more coveted.
“We are hopeful that next year and beyond more community opportunities will be brought forth for our members to participate,” Troyer and Bodenheimer said.
