Last updated by Kasey Murphy on 09/20/2022 We are quite convinced, no matter what type of club you are in there is always some sort of drama. Whether it be leadership, lack of participation, or just personalities crashing - there is definitely drama that always runs through high school clubs.
When it comes to community service clubs in high school or high school service clubs like the National Honor Society in your high school there might not be as many social dramas, but more so drama or problems within the mechanics or the organization.
Either way, we are going to give you a few steps to try to prevent High School Service Club Drama and how to deal with it if it arises.
How To Prevent High School Service Club Drama
One of the best ways to prevent high school service club drama is by setting up your community service club to be very straightforward and easy for all members. If your club operations are clearly outlined and easy to follow, it limits the chance of high school students in a leadership position and getting upset at other members.
The other important factor is to always keep a non-judgmental attitude and make it clear from the start that judgments and negative attitudes do not belong within the high school club setting or towards other people in the high school service club, for whatever reason.
Especially due to high school service clubs being centered around the idea of community service and volunteerism, negative aspects and drama should never be overshadowing these values.
Follow these tips to really make sure high school service club drama is minimized.
1. Make A List Of Potential Issues In The High School Service Club
If you are in charge of a high school community service club or a high school service club, you will have to do a little bit of planning before you meet up with your students again at the beginning of the semester.
One of the things that you can plan out is all of the different problems and drama that might fall into your high school service club. We will give some examples:
A student didn’t show up to an event and the others were counting on them.
Personal drama between two people or groups of people in the high school club.
A “team leader” tries to confront a student about not reaching their hour requirement and offends the student.
Some of these issues simply cannot be avoided, but some can! The ones that cannot be avoided or prevented, make sure you know how to deal with them!
2. Find Solutions To Those Issues
If there are issues within your high school club that are easily preventable, get that out of the way! Here are some ideas:
Make sure students who are leaders know it is not their responsibility to confront other students.
Or, don’t have student leaders at all!
Use an online sign-up system to have people sign up for events online, so only an admin knows what is going on!
3.Outline How To Make Your High School Club Rules More Operable and Organized
Sometimes, the tipping point of high school club drama or any problems, in general, could be stress. So, if you make your high school service club very easy and comfortable for the students, they might not stress too much over little details, especially not during your club meetings or events!
4. Find Tools To Help Encourage The Club’s Mission
It might be hard to encourage or communicate how important your service club mission is, but if you can find ways to showcase the importance of your high school service club and community service activities, it might be able to help tear away from the drama.
Make sure to put extra emphasis on the high school service club’s mission at the forefront of your organization, to push high school drama to the back!
We have a whole different article on how to motivate students to volunteer, here!
5. Bring In Guest Speakers and Other Activities To Keep Students Occupied
Another way to avoid high school drama in your community service club is to keep students occupied with other activities during meetings or events. Then, there will be other things to think about and different perspectives of your service club than just meeting up with students who might have conflict!
Another thing to think about is how you might be able to free up your time as the administrator of a high school service club, in order to focus more on the student’s morale and divert conversations away from drama!
One way you might be able to do this is by implementing an event RSVP and community service tracker for your high school club! This will allow the high school students to sign up for events and track their participation, as well as volunteer hours!
You can find a system like Track It Forward, that does all of this and also allows students and administrators to track community service hours towards a goal or requirement like some high school service clubs have!