Do you have a heart for helping your community grow? Are you willing to pass on valuable knowledge and experience to a high school student?

At Wagner Community school, we strive to connect students’ learning to their future. This spring, we are excited to again offer a course for high school upperclassmen called Service Learning. During this course, students will partner with community members to identify a need within the Wagner area and provide a service alongside the community partner. I, Megan Fischer, am the instructor and facilitator. Service Learning has been a passion of mine since focusing on it while I was in undergrad. I’ve been teaching in Wagner for eleven years. I am excited to continue to help connect our students more closely with the community.

Students will work closely with community members to gain experience with the specific needs of the business or organization, as well as the wider community. Starting January 6th, the students will focus the first few weeks on classroom work. However, between January 27th and February 7th, students will begin to partner with business associates and community members that could offer expertise and insight into a community need in which the student has shown interest.

I know our community strives to provide services when there is a need in our community. I’m hoping to instill this vision in the young adults, who are the future of our community, so that they can identify and provide services now and in the future.

Some project ideas could include, but are not limited to collecting and organizing elders’ stories, planning and executing a food drive, volunteering at the food pantry, advocating for the backpack program, assisting with the community garden preparation, or organizing a meal train for a family.

Would you be willing to host a high school student for an agreed upon number of hours to help our young adults to gain knowledge of how to best help our communities?

If this is something that interests you, please reach out to me by January 10th. I can be reached at megan. fischer@k12.sd.us or 605384-5426.