People disagreeing about whether or not to build a new school may suggest a research project into how things happened during a similar debate in the past. Some basic responsibilities can be considered. Many towns have rest homes for community elders. Each year, new people move into them. Perhaps a junior English class could take responsibility for seeing to it that every elder in the rest home has a chance to tell his or her story for the record.
Young people feel the poignancy of assisting old people to provide a legacy no one else can provide.
An art class might accept responsibility for contributing a photograph of a mountain or creek or the city park, taken from the same point on the same day, each year. The value of this record would increase each year that it was taken, and future researchers will be able to ask the collection questions that no one anticipates today. Scientists attempting to understand the carrying capacity of the land in Yellowstone Park pored over old photographs, ignoring the tourists in the foreground to study the vegetation in the background. An industrial arts class might commit to photographing new buildings in town to add to the community's visual record of its built environment. A home economics class might collect traditional family or ethnic recipe along with oral interviews for a foodways collection.