x2VOL Blog: Tracking Service Hours at your School

COVID-19 has brought a host of changes to schools across the country and throughout the world. The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and the transition to distance or modified learning has created challenges. 

School campus closures and transitioning to distance learning haven't stopped the students of Newark Academy from serving their community in powerful ways this past semester.

During COVID-19, volunteerism and serving others around you has never been so important. Even though, students across the country are spending their time indoors and practicing social distancing, they are getting creative with ways to continue to serve others who are in need during this pandemic. 

We know teachers, school counselors, and all staff and admin, are learning to work and manage their jobs from home during this time. 

There are a lot of service opportunities to take advantage of in your community and beyond. But for today's technology and online driven students, taking service online can be a great option.

Whether your school, district, or club has a service requirement, or encourages students to serve, the process to track, manage, report on, and engage students in service can be complicated and time consuming. 

Community service is an important element in education. Reports have shown that participating in community service during high school positively impacts a student and even increases a student's likelihood of being accepted into college. While service is great, there are complications that come along with students completing regular service. From tracking hours to approving hours and ensuring students are completing their service before graduation, it takes a lot of time and effort from the administrators and service leaders to ensure success.

One wonderful part of the holiday season is the desire to do good for others. Whether individuals are donating to organizations they are passionate about or are going out into the community to serve others, the giving heart is alive and well during this season. There are a lot of opportunities for students during this time not only to give back to others, but also make progress on their service requirement for school.

Summer is the perfect time of year for students to spend some serious time serving in their community. There are so many different places and groups of people for students to serve. Check out these summer service opportunities:

The news is riddled with stories of college applicants bucking the system and working outside of the rules to get into universities of their choice.

College acceptance nowadays takes so many things into consideration when evaluating an applicant. It's more than just about their grades. It's about their extracurricular activities, the sports teams they are on, the clubs they are in, their standardized test scores, and who they are as a person. The stakes are high and students are feeling the pressure.

x2VOL has received the CODiE Award for Best Social Emotional Learning Platform two years in a row. But what is Social Emotional Learning (SEL)?
Social Emotional Learning is the process by which individuals learn to understand and manage emotions in order to learn empathy, how to achieve goals, and how to relate to others among many other things.