Breaking Tradition: Juniors Participate in Service Learning Project
Preuss students will continue to help resolve campus issues.
May 1, 2023
Juniors at the Preuss School UCSD are participating in a service learning project through the months of April, May, and June.
Service learning was previously part of senior wheel, it was a project in which all seniors are required to complete a research project, a service learning project, and an internship by the end of the school year to be able to graduate. However, this year, all juniors will be participating in a service project in place of senior wheel.
Many teachers believe that a service project would be a better alternative to juniors being required to do senior wheel.
“We don’t fully know if this will be a better alternative,”, Mr. Carr said, “But we believe that it would be a better alternative to the three wheel year because we believe that it will reduce the stress that students will get 1 semester to do a project instead of getting 14 weeks to finish a project.”
Although many teachers believe that it will benefit the junior class, many juniors disagree and are against it as it will create distractions.
”I don’t think that it’s that much of a benefit,” said Karim Berdeja (‘24), “I don’t like the decision that much because we have to worry about finishing out service learning project during the most stressful time of our junior year, and the decision was on really short notice so I’m pretty sure that made a lot of us mad.”
Students are wondering whether this is a permanent decision or will they be the only senior class to participate in a service project rather than senior wheel.
“We are considering making this change permanent”, Mr. Carr said, “as I previously said we think that it will be better for the students but we will see how this turns out.”
Many students are also wondering why they have chosen to switch the tradition right now.
“We chose to make this change with this current class because we believe this class has a ton of spirit,” Ms. Bandy said, “I think that your class has a ton of energy and you guys are a really transformative class so I believe that you guys will be able to rise up to the challenge.”
