Community Service

COMMUNIT Y SERVICE

It is part of Landon’s core mission to develop talented young men not only for lives of accomplishment, but also for lives of responsibility and caring. As a consequence, the school requires its boys to commit to a community service program marked by enduring and wide-ranging opportunities. Involvement in these activities helps develop personal attributes and dispositions — civic responsibility, crosscultural understanding, environmental stewardship, leadership skills, critical thinking, care for place and for others — that are essential to a complete Landon education.

LOWER SCHOOL

Community service efforts in the Lower School encourage boys to broaden their awareness of the needs of others, and identify activities in which boys can participate to address those needs. As part of Landon’s extended program of character education, community service in the Lower School stands as an essential part of the division’s curriculum. Whether involved in programs that speak to responsibilities within a larger, global community, or whether serving more local constituencies, participation in community service projects reinforces the importance of the Lower School ethos celebrating honesty, doing one’s best, and looking out for the other fellow, no matter who or where that other fellow may be.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

Landon Middle School works in myriad ways to fulfill the school’s mission to “[prepare] talented boys for productive lives as accomplished, responsible and caring men.” As part of the effort to meet this goal, Landon both encourages and facilitates student participation in community service and service learning. To ensure that students understand the connection between serving the greater community and becoming socially responsible citizens, Landon creates, supports and promotes community service opportunities and service-learning reflections that enable students to develop the following skills: the compassion to appreciate the needs of others; the confidence and competence to address these needs appropriately; and the conviction and capacity to serve others in their time and place of need. Through its ethics program, in-school and extracurricular community service, and service-learning programs, the Middle School, in partnership with its parent community and its student leaders, is dedicated to creating activities and events that help students develop the skills necessary to serve others in our communities.

UPPER SCHOOL

Though community service participation is not mandatory for boys in the Upper School, the vast majority of students demonstrate that such a mandate is unnecessary; indeed, Upper School boys not only join extant service projects in great numbers, but also create and develop specific areas of service on their own. Those seeking opportunities found through national organizations can aid Habitat for Humanity, the Special Olympics, Operation Smile, and the American Red Cross blood drive. Others can engage in local work, such as tutoring at Ivymount and Garrison Elementary Schools; or on-campus programs recently created by students, such as Dodging for Diabetes. In the Upper School, Landon boys are given a great many occasions to serve others, and this activity enables students to practice and develop a disposition of care that endures beyond school requirements and situations.