Lee Pulaski, lpulaski@wolfrivermedia.com
Leader Photo by Lee Pulaski Bonduel High School students Dylan Mueller, left, and Hunter Berry rake dead leaves away from a fire pit at Shawano Lake County Park during the school’s third annual community service day. The entire student body volunteered at a number of places in Bonduel, Shawano, Cecil, Navarino and Green Bay as a way of giving back.
Leader Photo by Lee Pulaski A group of Bonduel High School students walk along the road near the school Wednesday morning looking for garbage to pick up. The group cleaned up Cedar Park earlier in the day.
The rain slowed the work, but didn’t stop it completely.
Despite drizzly conditions Wednesday, more than 300 Bonduel High School students left their classrooms, many dressed in bright yellow shirts that read “Lend a Paw,” for a real-life experiment in giving back as the school conducted its third annual community service day.
Some students descended on Bonduel’s Village and Cedar parks to clean them up, while others put a little elbow grease into fixing up the Golden Sands Golf Course in Cecil. Other groups went to Shawano Lake County Park and Navarino Nature Center to help prepare those areas for the summer, and still more students walked along roads in Waukechon to pick up litter.
The school’s band and choir students performed for residents at area nursing homes. Students from the school’s Spanish classes traveled to Eisenhower Elementary School in Green Bay to work one-on-one with younger kids as they begin to learn the language.
Missy Dowden, an administrative assistant at the high school and a key coordinator for the community service day, said the entire student population gets involved as a sign of appreciation for all that the community has done to support local schools and students.
“The community members, they don’t know we’re doing it today,” Dowden said as she was preparing to take lunch to the students working at the nature center. “Right now, they’ve seen all the kids out there in yellow, and somebody came in the building and said, ‘Hey! What are you guys up to?’”
The students were not able to get as much done as planned due to the weather. BHS business teacher Tim Mayer, while leading a group of students picking up trash around the ball diamond at Village Park, said his students were originally supposed to be painting and staining park amenities, but the showers that came off and on made that impossible.
“We’ll just keep doing what we can,” Mayer said.
The work is appreciated by officials at the various sites. Keith Marquardt, county parks director, noted that the Bonduel students’ help comes at a key time, as he won’t have most of his summer staff in place until after Memorial Day.
“They’ve been raking, setting up the fire pits — all the stuff that needs to get done and we don’t have the time to do it,” Marquardt said. “When we get these kids out there, they get a lot done in one day.”
As friends and classmates were gathering under a covered picnic area for lunch at Shawano Lake, junior Adam Kallin continued to work solo, clearing dead leaves from the pathways leading to the campground. Kallin has been involved with all three of the community service days, always coming to the county park with the Skills USA group.
“The school does this every year to give back to the community for supporting our school,” Kallin said. “A lot of the stuff our school has wouldn’t be here without the community’s support, so this is just us giving back.”
The students each year come back with a better understanding of the area’s amenities, Dowden said.
“We’re trying to broaden and go to different areas each year,” Dowden said. “It’s very easy to find projects.”