Longhouse School

How to build a culture of service  within a school? How to help students integrate an ethos of service within their lives?

Heidi, a high school senior from New York City, was one of the “youth consultants” who helped write the Longhouse School mission statement in the summer of 2025. Here she writes about her personal experiences volunteering on multiple projects. It is slightly edited to improve flow.

The point of this post is to describe a week of volunteering in the life of a high school student. Some of Heidi’s volunteering activities are organized by her school and her Buddhist religious organization; others are self-initated by her and her band.

Perhaps this tableau can help develop a vision of this practice.

Today I read an article [Education With Purpose](https://www.worldtribune.org/2025/education-with-purpose/) about 13 students from Soka University of America who spent a week studying the Amazon and conducting exchanges with the Kambeba Indigenous community outside of Manaus Brazil and with the Soka Amazon Institute. They studied biodiversity, our relationship with nature, and how we can coexist with it responsibly. It seems to me that whenever possible education should be rooted in action so students have a clear purpose.

We finished our Girls Volleyball season with a 9-1 record, top in our division. I am so proud of the freshmen and sophomores who powered the team. For the past two years the upperclass students volunteered in efforts to recruit incoming and second-year students. We spent a lot of time embracing, encouraging, and teaching the new students

As a result, I didn’t get all that much playing time this season but that’s okay. We graduating teammates are leaving behind us a team that will only get more dominant as the years go by. I hope we set an example that student athletes should have an expectation for serving younger students.

Tomorrow the students from the Boy’s and Girl’s Volley Ball and Track Teams volunteer at the New York City Marathon. Many of us are in marathon training so there is a lot to learn! Coach told us, however, that we will be mostly working behind the scenes and might not even get to see runners. That’s okay. It took the volunteering efforts of many people—staff, parents, teachers, the PTA, and the Administration—to get us to where we are now. Our turn to do things that no one else really wants to do—moving water and supplies from one location to another, and cleaning up after thousands of runners and cheerers.

The Jammy Girlz (a girls’ rock band Heidi and bandmates co-founded) volunteer ever Friday afterschool” at the Early Birld Dinner hosted by Restaurant. It is attended mainly by retirees and we’ve become friends with many of the audience members. Sometimes they feel very isolated and I can’t tell who walks away happier: the encouragers or the encourages!

I think parents volunteer more than anyone else. All the band members crashed at our home so we could practice. Thanks again to Pupa who took precious time off from his Jamaica Strong Recovery efforts to transport us and our instruments from the school, to the restaurant, and to the house! Thanks to parents for preparing food for us. We enjoy seeing you enjoy yourselves!

The Jammy Girlz will rehearse in the morning and then volunteer with our Middle School girls at the ACS location. This is our second year working with some students who have undergone terrible problems in their lives. Our school principal encouraged us to raise a group of “successors” who can also be girl rockers.

The 8th graders have their auditions coming up for a couple of specialized high schools with great music programs. They have come a long way since we started working with them. We are proud of volunteering with them and hope that not only will they continue with music but some of their trauma got frozen off.

The big question is, how can we keep this program going after the four of us graduate?