Calvert Hall High School
Baltimore, Maryland
Teacher: George Kropp  

My Connection to the Community
By Tyler Wagner
11th Grade


A sense of community is not a revelation that people have recently grasped, but is an intrinsic quality of human nature. People are born to be relational beings, as children are a direct result of the bond formed by their parents. In the same way that children immediately become attached to their parents, people naturally form a connection to the society in which they live. In society, people have rights which allocate certain freedoms to them, but with these rights come the responsibility to act in a way that is beneficial to the society as a whole. Family values and the educational process, epitomized in my life by my time at Calvert Hall, have provided me with the fundamental principles and knowledge I need to have a positive effect in the society in which I live.

The family is the basic unit of any society, from which basic moral values and intellectual understanding emerge. Immediately after a child’s birth, the family begins to have an impact on the child. Whether parents are lenient or disciplinarians, they will have a positive or negative impact on the child, which will be visible in the child’s future actions. For the first few years of a child’s life, the family is the primary connection to society as a whole. The family is the source of knowledge for the child, stimulating his or her developing learning abilities. In the same way, family values have a major impact on the development of the child’s conscience and moral principles. These principles are in no way as in depth as those of a teenager or adult, but a child’s understanding of good and bad is the building block on which all other morals are founded. By the time a child is enrolled in kindergarten, his or her basic ideas concerning human society have already been shaped by the parents, without the child physically experiencing the world firsthand.

The second stage of a child’s development begins in kindergarten and extends throughout his or her many years of education. Education and the classroom environment instill knowledge into a child’s mind and allow the child to strengthen his or her social skills. Communication skills allow the child to function outside of school and are vitally important in the workplace. While I learned a great deal and developed socially during my elementary and middle school experiences, my time at Calvert Hall has truly revealed the world to me. In elementary and middle school, the small class size and limited diversity of the student population hindered my social development and, in some ways, sheltered me from the real world. Calvert Hall acknowledges that its students will one day face the real world and works to prepare them for this experience. While learning at a high level at Calvert Hall, students also participate in activities centered on the community. Calvert Hall does all it can to assist those less fortunate, offering a considerable amount of money through scholarship programs, one of which allowed me to consider Calvert Hall as an option for high school in the first place. Calvert Hall gets its students involved in the community, not simply through forced community service, but through optional blood drives, adopt-a-family programs, and other such opportunities. These programs are not obligatory, but are successful each year because Calvert Hall prides itself in instilling a sense of community not only between the students, but between the school and the world around it.

After the moral and social development provided by the household and kindergarten through twelfth grade , high school students look to college and the workplace to become a productive part of society. Choosing a college is one of the most important decisions that a teenager faces in life. A college cannot be chosen simply because it has strong academic or athletic programs. The college’s student community and its associated morals and values must also be taken into account. In the same way, a workplace must be chosen based upon the employer’s work ethic and environment. In both areas, college and the workplace, people should use the social skills and moral values that they have formed during their earlier years to better the society around them. It is the basic idea of common good. People have the right to free speech, education, etc., but it is our principal responsibility to better the world around us. By helping another person reach their full potential, we are bettering the community as a whole, and as a part of the community, we are bettering ourselves.

Each person is part of many smaller communities which make up the worldwide community of the human race. By learning basic moral values in the family, children are prepared by their parents for the educational system. In turn, the educational system provides children with the knowledge and social skills that they need in society. By using the skills that developed in childhood and adolescence, people can have a positive impact in their community, helping others, and by doing so make the world a better place.

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