2025 marks a significant year for NEHS: its 20th anniversary! NEHS is celebrating by encouraging student members around the world to participate in our 20 for 20: Social Service Project, which asks each individual to give 20 hours of their time to support their community. Some student members may choose to support the elderly, migrants, and veterans, while others might focus on aiding the unhoused, disabled individuals, and other marginalized groups: we encourage you to support your community in any way you can!
Read on to find out how Lara Habib, Historian at Clovis West High School in Fresno, CA, and her student member colleagues developed wonderful projects to support their school and wider community.
The Clovis West High School National English Honor Society, Advised by Jeffery Williams, had a great year!
The largest event that our chapter hosted was a book drive in hopes of promoting literature to the underprivileged youth in our community. Through the book drive, we were able to collaborate with a local nonprofit organization, Reading Heart, and Clovis West successfully collected and donated 1,350 books to Reading Heart of Fresno! Working with Reading Heart meant our members spent time going through each novel and sorting each into different categories. Helping local youth through Reading Heart brought our members together and allowed them to explore their love for reading.
With many graduating seniors forming part of NEHS, the Clovis West chapter put together a College Essay Workshop in November for seniors to work on college statements and essays after school. This was a great way to get peer review or teacher assistance before these students officially submitted their college applications.
Since there were many new members this year, the chapter worked especially hard to brainstorm ideas to become more involved with NEHS and successfully encourage more students to join next year. The members plan to find more organizations to donate to and more opportunities through which they can volunteer their time and give back to the community on behalf of NEHS, such as selling books through a local book fair, or even putting together a book fair to give away free books in areas that don’t have much access to literature.
We also plan to invite some local authors and writers to speak about their experience with writing and, potentially, give some young creators at Clovis West advice about the steps to take to begin writing and share how they have been able to write a book or pursue literature as a career. We hope to be more involved in our community and collaborate with other organizations as much as possible next year!
With all these plans in place for the coming year, our chapter was still able to participate in the Poetry Slam! The Poetry Slam is an annual event run by students that aims to give young artists the ability to share their poems, raps, and rhymes, in a fun and supportive space. The winner of the Poetry Slam was a proud NEHS member herself, Madison Dye!
Lara Habib is a senior at Clovis West High School. She is involved in many extracurriculars and enrolled in many AP courses. Not only does Lara stay involved in school activities, but she also participates in different events outside of school such as internships and various volunteer opportunities in her community. Lara has a love for the arts and languages, but she wishes to pursue a career in law. Her goal is to attend a four-year university and then transfer to law school to become a private criminal attorney. She is currently the captain of the winning mock trial team, which has won first place in the county for two years. Aside from her dedication to pursuing a law career, she loves to read, paint, write, and draw. Her participation in NEHS and many other clubs and organizations has truly made an impact on her life and has given her the opportunity to express her artistic and academic abilities freely.
National English Honor Society
The National English Honor Society (NEHS), founded and sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, is the only international organization exclusively for secondary students and faculty who, in the field of English, merit special note for past and current accomplishments. Individual secondary schools are invited to petition for a local chapter, through which individuals may be inducted into Society membership. Immediate benefits of affiliation include academic recognition, scholarship and award eligibility, and opportunities for networking with others who share enthusiasm for, and accomplishment in, the language arts.
America’s first honor society was founded in 1776, but high school students didn’t have access to such organizations for another 150 years. Since then, high school honor societies have been developed in leadership, drama, journalism, French, Spanish, mathematics, the sciences, and in various other fields, but not in English. In 2005, National English Honor Society launched and has been growing steadily since, becoming one of the largest academic societies for secondary schools.
As Joyce Carol Oates writes, “This is the time for which we have been waiting.” Or perhaps it was Shakespeare: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer . . .” we celebrate English studies through NEHS.
National English Honor Society accepts submissions to our blog, NEHS Museletter, from all membership categories (students, Advisors, and alumni). If you are interested in submitting a blog, please read the Suggested Guidelines on our website. Email any questions and all submissions to: submit@nehsmuseletter.us.
