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The Student News Site of Prospect High School

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Service Club's new leadership makes changes

SUPER SERVICE: Service club members work on at the Prospect blood drive. Service club has helped out with over one hundred events this school year. “I love service club so much. It literally is my life,” sophomore Rochelle Hopkins said. (photo courtesy of Michelle Tantillo)
Service club members work on at the Prospect blood drive. Service club has helped out with over one hundred events this school year. (photo courtesy of Michelle Tantillo)

By Colleen Stanford
Staff Writer
Senior Alexandra Gorodiski walked into the room and instantly saw many glum old faces light up with grins wider than the Grand Canyon. She felt like a wave of happiness washed over the senior citizens as she entered through the doors. Their happiness was infectious, and instantaneously it caught on to her.
It was one of many times this happened when she walked into the Lutheran Home when she would come to play bingo with them.
Gorodiski was there as a part of Prospect’s Service Club under the leadership of teacher Michelle Tantillo who took over the club this year. The Lutheran Home bingo events are just one of the many events the service club helps with each year. The events range from helping with the Arlington Heights Memorial Library book sale to serving food to homeless people at Timothy’s Ministry.
“[Service club] gives a good name for Prospect,” Tantillo said. “It gives people a place to be able to do something that makes them feel good and help others.”
Service club runs many of their own Prospect events like the food drive or adopt-a-child. People in the community also contact Tantillo about events that they would like volunteers at, and Tantillo then posts a sign-up sheet on the service club website encouraging students to sign up and help at those events.
According to Tantillo, she has records of just over 100 students signing up for activities although many more are on the service club email list.
Students are in service club at many different levels of involvement ranging from people who do weekly activities to people who only do one or two events.
“[Service club] gives a place for people who maybe aren’t involved in other activities because we welcome everybody to join our organization,” Tantillo said. “So whether you are really busy with things and just once a month [there is] something you want to help out with or a weekly thing [that] you want to do stuff.”
One change service club has seen this year is the new leadership of Tantillo. She took over service club this year from former teacher Dave Jacobson who retired last year.
Tantillo has been involved in service club at Prospect ever since she was a student here from 1997-2001. She had helped work on a few special projects like Relay for Life or adopt-a-child as a teacher, but this year she completely took reins of the club.
Gorodiski feels that Tantillo is the perfect person to have taken over the large task of running the club.
“She really has a passion for [service],” Gorodiski said. ”It’s so awesome to see someone as young as she is to really have taken [service club] in her hands because it is a huge responsibility to have a whole club. The fact that she is able to put that passion and instill it in the students in the service club is and then also really push herself to be at every meeting, every event, and to make sure that everything is running smoothly. I think that she has done a really really really nice job [of taking over service club].”
As the new leader Tantillo made one drastic change effective immediately once school started. As opposed to previous years where students would go sign up for events on a sheet of paper each week, she created a website where students could sign up for the events they want to help at.
Tantillo feels that, especially with the number of students with access to iPads, the website has made it easier for students to sign up.
Another change Tantillo created is for next year’s executive board, which will be dramatically different than this year. Gorodiski is one of the five seniors on this year’s executive board for service club. She and the other exec board members were taken into Jacobson’s office one day in their junior year and asked to be on the exec board because of their leadership qualities within the club. However for next year’s exec board, Tantillo is shaking things up a bit.
As opposed to having a general exec board of about five seniors who are on the committee of almost every single event, next year there is going to be more specific specialized jobs that the board will have. An example of one of these jobs is that there will be an exec board member whose main focus is the food drive. These board positions are open to all current freshmen, sophomores and juniors to apply for next year.
“[The goal of changing the exec board is] to help get more people involved, to help bring more ideas to the table and to help make sure all of the events have as many resources as possible involved in running them,” Tantillo said.
Freshman service club member Samantha Roberson was very excited when she found out that the exec board was changed for next year.
“I think that [the change] is great because it allows for more students to be involved,” Roberson said.
Gorodiski feels that the new exec board set up will work well for next year. She feels that it is great getting more people involved because she feels that service is very important.
“It is really important to realize how much better you are making the other person feel [when you are doing service for them],” Gorodiski said. “A lot of people don’t realize what an impact they are making because every small impact can kind of snowball to make a larger one.”
 
Upcoming service club events:
5/28- Robert Frost 50th Anniversary Celebration
5/30- Prospect Heights Community Days
6/27-Prospect Heights block party
7/24-25 – Mt Prospect block party
8/2- Arlington Heights Memorial Library book sale
 

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