Throughout the country and around the world, National Honor Society (NHS) chapters are enabling students to improve their schools, help others, and make their voices heard. What accounts for a chapter’s success? Students, advisers, and principals all working together to ensure that this leadership experience serves the greater good. On the following pages, a principal, an adviser, and a student from three different high schools in Prince George’s County, MD, share the difference that NHS has made to them and their school communities.

Promoting a Culture of Achievement

Melissa McGuire | Principal

I’m always pushing my students at Gwynn Park High School in Brandywine, MD, to be well-rounded scholars. When they start applying to colleges, I tell them that admissions officers don’t just want to see a student with good grades. They want to see your activities and how you are part of the school community. And one of the best ways to show that is by being involved in NHS.

Having an active NHS chapter can help shift the culture toward high achievement. Sometimes students think it’s uncool to be the smart kid, so when they see football players, cheerleaders, and all other types of students being part of the organization, it shows that it really is cool to be smart.

I see our NHS students as role models, especially for the ninth graders. That’s why we invited our ninth graders to attend this school year’s induction ceremony in November, where we inducted 40 new students. I think it’s important for the younger students to see NHS students’ excited faces when they’re inducted and to connect with our NHS members, who are not only leaders in the chapter but also are active in other schoolwide groups, including ROTC and student government. It’s great for the NHS students to be seen in different contexts throughout our building. Ultimately, I want the ninth graders to aspire to be like these older students.

NHS Students at Gwynn Park High School in Brandywine, MD.

Like students in most NHS chapters, ours participate in a lot of service projects, such as partnering with our environmental sciences program to do beautification projects on our grounds. NHS students also provide tutoring and academic support for their peers, mostly during lunch hours.

I would love to see our NHS chapter grow. It speaks volumes about the culture of a building when you have many students who qualify for membership. One challenge is that some of our first-generation college-bound students aren’t really aware of the benefits of NHS, especially for college admissions. I would like to see our current students engage in more mentorship opportunities so we can build a bigger pipeline of students for the program.

I also promote the program whenever I can, whether on the morning announcements or when I’m on cafeteria duty or in my regular calls and texts to parents. I want all our students and parents to know about NHS and how it benefits our kids.

Melissa McGuire, EdD, is the principal of Gwynn Park High School in Brandywine, MD.

Building a Chapter From the Ground Up

Michele Smith | Adviser

When I joined the faculty at the Academy of Health Sciences at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, MD, in November 2021, I was asked by the new principal to be the NHS adviser because of my previous experience as an NJHS adviser. As I began to gather information, I learned that the chapter wasn’t active and that all the members had graduated the previous year.

Working with our two counselors who had been involved with the chapter in the past, we set to work reading through the resources for faculty advisers on the NHS website, and we recruited some of our most dedicated teachers to help draft our chapter’s bylaws, selection/induction process, member profiles, and candidate information packet. In April 2022, our work paid off when we officially inducted 33 senior class members. A couple months later, we inducted 91 candidates—our largest cohort to date. Given our growth, I asked my colleague, Jerry Comparativo, to serve as my co-adviser this school year because he was so helpful with last year’s induction ceremonies.

I attribute our large membership to the fact that our school is the first early college high school in Maryland. Students simultaneously earn their high school diploma and an Associate of General Studies or an Associate of Arts in Teaching. Our school enrolls 397 students in grades 9–12—or Year 1, 2, 3, and 4—as we refer to them. Almost all second-year students meet the 3.0 GPA eligibility criteria to be considered for NHS. But our NHS chapter members must go beyond fulfilling this academic requirement to be selected.

Although our students come from across our very large county, we’ve still been able to host two service projects this year. One was the Give Thanks, Give Food drive for Thanksgiving, which was a partnership with the Capital Area Food Bank. We decorated food boxes, placed them around campus, and publicized the food drive through our NHS and school-based social media. The majority of our members participated, and we collected more than 500 pounds of nonperishable food in the five days before Thanksgiving break.

The second project was our Giving Tree, which focused on the social and emotional wellness of our Year 1 students as they faced the challenge of final exam week (as first-year college students). But instead of having students buy gifts for kids in need, our chapter members came up with the idea of writing motivational messages to the Year 1 students before their first final exam week to encourage them to keep up the hard work. Their messages included proverbs, quotes, advice with spiritual content, anecdotes, and letters to specific students (like siblings). Almost all our chapter members participated, with 81 of them writing such notes.

Our chapter faces challenges due to our school location, the size of our chapter, and members’ varying schedules. Many students travel by bus for more than an hour to and from school, and they have heavy course schedules, so it’s been amazing to see the growth of our chapter over the past semester.

Because our students live all over the county, we meet virtually for general meetings. However, we still have a huge presence on campus. Our organization has the largest membership of any of our high school’s organizations, and our NHS members hold leadership positions in many other clubs and organizations in our school. For example, Sadichhya Shahi and My Thanh Katherlyn Le are both Year 4 students and NHS members who were elected to serve as the Prince George’s Community College’s Student Governance Association president and vice president, respectively. Holding elected positions at the college level affords them the opportunity to help bridge the gap between both schools since our students are members of both communities.

I’m also proud of Saniyah Ikard and Zoë McCall, two of our Year 4 NHS members who chartered a new Black Student Union this year. They wanted to create an inclusive and safe space for students to embrace Black culture, while also educating students of all races and ethnicities. They have already hosted a discussion on the impact of violence and policing in our community and held a gingerbread house competition for our underclassmen after final exams.

Members of the NHS Executive Cabinet at the Academy of Health Sciences at Prince George’s Community College.

One thing that has surprised me about our NHS members is that they don’t see their NHS membership as something just to add to their college applications. They feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment in being selected, but they also want to ensure the chapter has a strong presence on campus. I remember the pride I felt when I was inducted over 30 years ago at Oxon Hill High School, also in Prince George’s County. Many of our students also have parents or siblings who were in NHS, so their families understand that pride of being a member, too.

I’m also hearing more from the parents of freshmen and sophomores about how their children can get in, and some parents are even suggesting possible service project ideas. Especially since our school has so many students of color, I love seeing the pride they have in our chapter becoming stronger in our community.

Michele Smith is an English and academic resource teacher and an NHS co-adviser at the Academy of Health Sciences at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, MD.

Giving All Students a Bigger Voice

Ryan Travers | Student

The NHS chapter at Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, MD, feels like one big family. The same is true of our whole school, especially with the other student organizations and the science and technology program that I’m enrolled in. The teachers make everyone feel welcome, no matter your background, and students are like that, too.

The 70 or so students in NHS are very close-knit. We help each other all the time, and we also like to plan events during the school year for Teacher Appreciation Week, or Black History Month, or other occasions. Last year, for example, we organized a teacher appreciation brunch. We spent all week preparing for it: We made cards, flyers, and posters to show our appreciation to the teachers when they came into the school, and we served them breakfast. Our individual members also do lots of service projects out in the community.

I was inducted into the chapter last year when I was a junior. I decided to join because I wanted to help set an example at our school, as well as be a part of such a prestigious group and be able to show what good character is, what discipline is, and what the core values of NHS are. I wanted to help make a difference in our school and our community, along with my peers who are part of it.

I think the chapter has an impact throughout the school—and not just for our members. We all have friends who aren’t in NHS. We listen to their ideas about what they would like to see in our school community, and we bring those back to the group and discuss them with our officers and our adviser, and then we see what we can do. It gives all the students a bigger voice.

The best thing about becoming part of NHS is definitely the feeling of having family at school and the lifelong friends I’ve made. I do think one of the perks of being a member is that colleges love to see that you’re well-rounded and that you’re making a difference in your school community with the service hours. But of course, we don’t just join to put it on our résumés.

If another student asked me why they should join NHS, I would tell them that if you’re very passionate about making a difference and advocating for what you believe is right and what you want to see in your community, this is a great organization. And it’s not just for your school community; you can be of service to the broader community, as well.

Ryan Travers is a senior at Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, MD, and a member of NHS.