Community Service
Community at The Academy: Experience, Service, and Activism.
Being a student at The Academy is like having a six-year internship in public life. Students have a broad range of experiences on campus that help them understand what it means to be a contributing citizen: doing chores, living with the Honor Code, participating in school meeting, volunteering to organize an event, playing on a team, acting in a play, serving as an ombudsman or council member, working in the kitchen.
The Academy is a public-spirited private school with a deep commitment to community service. We try as a school to be a good corporate citizen, to help out where we can, to connect with other institutions and neighbors in ways that make Charlemont and all our hometowns better places to live. Students and teachers serve a community meal to over one thousand west county residents each year; they clean up riverbanks and parks; they've built shelters in New Orleans; they've provided musical instruments to inner city students. (To learn more about community meals, click here.)
The Academy civic experience produces activist citizens, young men and women who become agents of change within their communities, first in college, then in their workplaces and neighborhoods. Because they have so long been expected to ask themselves "what is my responsibility in this situation?" and how can I help make this better" they take those questions with them. They also take with them the skills and confidence needed to make a difference.
