Senior Service
Integral to the School's mission, Senior Service is a five-week intensive community service experience, which challenges all seniors to put into practice the moral and ethical convictions they have developed at St. Sebastian's. The program provides opportunities for students to actually do what is right and good so they will know first hand the truth, common to all people of good will, that virtue brings happiness.
Beginning in mid-April, when formal coursework is complete, each senior is required to commit one hundred and fifty hours of service to a non-profit organization which serves needy members of the community.* The work done at the placement site must involve consistent one-on-one contact with the clients it serves. This ensures that each student takes an initiative and makes himself vulnerable in human relationships, relationships which are sacred and which form the heart of Senior Service.
Through weekly discussion groups, seniors are required to reflect critically upon the meaning of their experience, and to articulate those reflections in a final essay. At the conclusion of their service, the entire senior class gathers in the Chapel to share their stories and testimonies with one another and with the faculty. This morning of oral presentations often ranks among each seniors finest hours.
The philosophy underlying Senior Service is rooted deeply in the Catholicity of the School. The fundamental lesson of the program is one shared by almost every major religion-loving one another gives meaning and purpose to life. As a Catholic independent school, St. Sebastian's exists to develop within each student an awareness of God and a vocation to follow Christ. The message of Christianity-love of God and love of neighbor-invites and includes all people who seek to live a virtuous life. Senior Service takes Christ's example as its guide, and asks each student to imitate His life.
Senior
Service is a culmination of a student's educational experience. It brings
home to
students, through face-to-face interaction, the great need of so many
in the world, and the difference they can make in that world. It teaches
students about their own responsibility to care for others, about their
obligation to help restore and retain the human dignity of all people.
Most importantly, Senior Service is rooted in Christian love. Students
learn that loving their fellow human beings is right and just, and that
humbly reaching out to others is an authentic fulfillment of Jesus' teaching.
Recognizing the bold and deeply counter-cultural nature of such an ideal,
the School's mission nevertheless demands that its students attempt to
see the face of God in the faces of all, and respond to them with love.
* The standard requirement for service is 30 hours per week. Students enrolled in AP courses perform part-time service until they have completed their AP exams (1 AP = 22 hours; 2 AP's = 15 hours; 3 AP's = 9 hours; 4-5 AP's = 5 hours).