Community
SERVICE Pennington students give back in myriad ways
S
tudents at Pennington don’t ask if they can get involved in community service; they figure out individual ways to make a difference. Each year, Dr. Hawkey asks our community members to leave Pennington a better place than they found it, and this aim is embedded in activities by groups ranging from the Green Team to our fabulous Campus Guides and Student Ambassadors to the students who volunteer on School committees, such as the landscape master plan committee. We believe that service is an important component of what it means to be a good citizen. Because we expect our students to become involved in many different ways in their own communities and on campus, we neither require service nor officially track student service hours. However, because of our close involvement with several nonprofits, service trips, our annual Community Day, and the Horizon senior internship program, virtually 100% of Pennington students do participate in some form of community service, under the direction of Chad Bridges and David Hallgren. Faculty and staff members are also dedicated to serving others. Some lead groups to volunteer at places ranging from the Christina Seix Academy in Trenton, where STEM leaders bring their skills to elementary classrooms, to Guatemala to save endangered turtles and to build homes, and even to Africa in 2020, a first for Pennington. On campus, every faculty advisor is involved in the School’s new composting program. Global Studies and Applied Science speakers offer glimpses of a number of ways to help make the world a better place. Student travel, both within the United States and abroad, is often grounded in the goal of Pennington’s Global Studies program: to provide learning opportunities that help our students form relationships inside and outside of the classroom and develop a sense of responsibility for themselves, for others, and for the world in which they live. This is the heart of service learning. Some of the ways in which The Pennington School is involved in community service are highlighted below. We will include more clubs and groups in future issues of Pennington Magazine; there are simply too many to include all of them here!
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Pennington Magazine Fall/Winter 2019–20
