The fall semester being full remote has posed a lot of unique challenges for honor societies and volunteer clubs. While the 2020-2021 school year may look very different, staff and students are working hard to make sure national honors societies and service clubs are still running, even with changes and restrictions put in place. 

“It is going to be a little harder because we aren’t going to be able to do all the things we normally are able to. I know tech tutoring is canceled, and I’m sure a lot of other things will be, but we are going to do our best to find different opportunities to do, so people can get their hours,” said Trevor Zink, Co-President of Key Club.

One big change for honors societies and volunteer service clubs is how service hours are going to work this year. Due to COVID-19, service opportunities have been reduced, so students will have to get more creative with what they do for service. 

“Many clubs will probably adjust to see what it looks like, or the idea of what could count as a service hour might change,” said Natalie Rosin, NHS and Science NHS adviser. “Normally, we don’t count babysitting, going to mow lawns, or dog sitting, but all of those things may potentially count.” 

These new circumstances have forced clubs to be clever with how their meeting times will be spent. For some, the transition to fully remote hasn’t been as much of a shift due to some aspects of their club already being online.

“So we’ve been using google classroom already, for the past year, as our communication tool,” said Brian Maloney, German NHS adviser. “One thing that we did last year, which was nice, was we already had a sign up for tutoring, which is one of the main objectives of German NHS, just like Spanish, as far as students tutoring the younger students.” 

Some clubs are even doing online activities during meetings to stay in touch with each other and keep things as normal as possible. Key Club, for example, has planned an online game for their first meeting on Sept. 2 called Freerice.

“It’s a little online thing where you answer a few questions and every question you get right, a little bit of rice is donated to people in need,” said Zink.

Some advisers have also put together a plan for potentially hosting get-togethers in the future with safe social distancing.

“As things progress we’re hoping that we get to a point where we’d come back for hybrid days like A days and B days that we would have a meeting for that half of the alphabet probably outside just because there’s no classroom inside that could hold that many people since our group is 70, so in half, that’s still too many. At least if the weather is nice we would be outside having social distancing,” said Rosin.

While service clubs and national honors societies have plans to keep things alive and running, some clubs are putting their programs and service hours on hold altogether.

Adviser for North Star Ambassadors, Carrie LaFreniere said, “Unfortunately right now we are not allowing any additional people into our building right now which includes students as well. Because of that, the administration and I sat down and we are putting the breaks on ambassadors right now, unfortunately. And a lot of it is because we can’t provide the volunteer hours right now since programs are not running in the building.”

Despite all of the changes being made, there is still hope that this year will provide new and fun opportunities.

“I’m just excited to talk to everyone and virtually see everyone again because I love talking to people and seeing people and just having that interaction is going to be awesome,” said Jessica Winkates, Co-President of Key Club.