Armed with the desire to incorporate service learning into the school setting, Dr. Jim Shellard, along with students from last year, decided it was time to implement a service theme for the student body. The creation of the new theme, wellness, is in an effort to gain participation from the freshman English classes.

“[I] am not trying to discourage students from doing service in any other areas, but I find it helpful to have a theme and then attach to it,” Shellard said.

Beth Ann Barber, freshman english teacher, explains that in order to implement a service learning project, freshman English and Communication courses were recently combined to form a year-long course.

“[Teachers] love the Communications course and [service] was already a part of [it], so we combined the two because service learning is so important, and student activities were really promoting it,” Barber said.

Barber explains that the plan for this year’s freshmen is to research a problem within the community and identify a solution. After that, they will find a charity linked to the selected problem, create a presentation and persuade an audience to agree with the students’ beliefs.

“The students will raise money all year long, and all money raised will go to their charity,” Barber said. “We also [strongly] encourage the students to go out and actually do service [in the community].”