In New Castle High School there is one person in particular that goes out of their way to help the community. This person has been helping our community as long as she has been a teacher in this school.  Her  name is Mrs. Joseph. She started teaching in school year 2003-04.  Mrs. Joseph also had the first service learning class.  Students were very excited to participate in community service rather than being worried about a class grade.  Most students well exceeded the number of community service hours required -the least amount of hours students had was 100 hours. Service learning students thought of two projects each and even went to the extent of cleaning urinals in bathrooms at the City Rescue Mission.

Throughout the year she has multiple food drives. For Christmas has drives for food and blankets. Another time she has a food drive is for Martin Luther King Jr. day. One of the points she encourages students to do for the community is something that ” speaks to your heart”. Such as if you love animals, volunteer at the animal shelter. When she was a child her family could not get a turkey for Thanksgiving so later in her life she started having food drives to give turkey on Thanksgiving.

When she does these community service its not for a sense of karma. It is purely to help the community. She says the community needs civic minded citizens to help the community. People need a good example to look up to through random acts, and one of the concepts she has is random acts of kindness day. The community can also see these acts by the clean up days.

Some activities she recommends for students to just get out there and just do community service are volunteering at the Salvation Army,  new Castle Library, and New-Visions . Indeed, Mrs. Joseph would be very excited to see the community and Newcastle altogether be a happier and safer place to live, and  so would I.