Whiz Kid: Kirkwood Senior Learns Through Service

Math is hard enough without having your dad be your teacher, but today’s Kirkwood Patch Whiz Kid credits his parents’ education backgrounds with making him the person he is today.

“I think it’s given me good values” to have parents who are both teachers, said David McCoy, an upcoming senior at . “Because they are teachers, they know how to teach and how to parent very well. It’s given them good parenting skills.”

David’s passion is all about taking learning outside the classroom. He’s dedicated much of his high school career to service learning, or learning through doing charitable work for the community.

“I think it’s important for everybody, all kids, to have a background of volunteering and doing service within their community,” David said. “For me, it has definitely changed me and made me a better person.”

David said the impacts of volunteering are most powerful when students discuss them in a classroom, sharing lessons learned and new experiences, like how lucky David really is to have a home, a family and enough to eat.

“It’s helped me realize that I’m lucky where I am now,” David said. “There are people who are less lucky than I am. It’s good to help those less fortunate.”

Even as a high school student, David has become a leader in service learning. He was a member of the Missouri Service-Learning Advisory Council, based in Jefferson City, where he helped brainstorm service learning ideas for schools and doled out grants for service projects. He served in 2009 and 2010 but stopped when the program’s funding was cut.

David is also a Boy Scout. He is currently a member of the Order of the Arrow and is working toward becoming an Eagle Scout.

In May, David earned the Ernest Jones Humanitarian Award. When he’s not out saving the world, David is on the Kirkwood racquetball team and plays trumped in the KHS band. He also loves camping and is training for a two-week backpacking trek through New Mexico.

After high school, David hopes to become a pediatrician, like his grandfather who goes on medical trips to foreign countries where medical supplies and practitioners are scarce.

“You become a better community and really a better world if everybody did a little service or a little something for their community,” David said.

And that 6th grade math class that his father taught?

“I got a good grade,” he said. “I didn’t have much of a choice!”