The Silver Sword Community Service Award plan has undergone major changes due to complaints from both students and advisors, as well as the leave of Caroline Moala, the previous Silver Sword counselor.
The award is given to students who’ve accumulated points for the community service they participated in such as leadership or being club presidents. To avoid confusion caused in the past, the main change in the plan differentiates between community service and school service.
Students will be awarded the Silver Sword Community Service Award for participating in 200 hours of local community service and recording hours on the Silver Sword Community Service Award Annual Tracking Worksheet and Google Form annually. The Google form officially opens from April 20 to May 1.
The other award students can earn is the Silver Sword School Service Award, which is awarded to students for Aragon community service. Students who receive the award must participate in a minimum of three different activities, one leadership position, and earn at least 18 points amongst their four years. Individual positions are awarded one to three points.
“It used to be one award for service to the school, and outside community service; now one of the changes we’re making is two different Silver Sword awards,” said assistant principal Clarisse Mesa. “One is the Silver Sword School Service Award, and then one is the Silver Sword Community Service Award, because that has been part of the confusion, [since] they’re two separate things.”
Students may prefer one type of service over another, and administration found it beneficial to acknowledge such preferences. This separation can also help with college applications.
“Community service is important and cool in its own way,” Mesa said. “Students who like to do whatever form of service to the local community [are given] recognition of [effort] when it’s a lot of hours … [and] they [can] still put it on [college applications] … You can separately report community service [and school service]. [That is] an Aragon specific thing, no other schools in our district have it.”
Some students appreciated the format of the Silver Sword printed sheet, finding it clear, while others viewed it as complicated.
“I really like that [the sheet is] a menu that you can see from the back,” said senior Aarshiya Agarwal. “It is easy to … [understand] and [see] how many points [one can receive] … I do think they need to update [the points], especially as a Leadership student.”
Additionally, students had issues with the point system; many disagreed with the categorization and felt certain positions deserved more credits.
“The layout was kind of hard to understand,” said sophomore Calla McLintock. “I’m in Leadership, and there were different [positions] that had different points, and I was really confused about that. [For] clubs, I did have to redo mine because I messed up on the club funding; [I found out] being treasurer for a club [that has funding earns a] different amount of points.”
Administration aims at addressing such concerns with the new Silver Sword plan.
“A lot of the confusion was about the points,” Mesa said. “[Students gave us feedback that] the points were really complicated [and] hard to track too, which is an issue for the counseling office staff and advisors to [track] … So [we asked] how can we simplify [the points] … [Now, it’s] one point for doing something, [like] being a member or a player, two or three points if you are a leader, depending on the exact amount of time involved in the specific [activity].”
Current sophomores and juniors are allowed to self-report points and don’t need signatures for previous years; said points will be on the honor system. However, seniors must submit their old blue Award Tracking sheet with the fall semester’s points and signatures to counseling advisor Angela Castillo by March 13. Students who fill out the sheets and qualify for the award are given a tassel as well as recognition for the services contributed to the community.
