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Bridgewater Serving Communities

 

Learn and Serve: BSC Volunteerism Climbs to a Whole New Level

In the spring of 2006, Rhode Island and Massachusetts Campus Compacts, part of a national coalition dedicated to promoting community service in higher education, proposed a three-year effort that would leverage service-learning and campus-community partnerships to directly impact the educational attainment, academic success, and civic engagement of disadvantaged youth. Bridgewater State College was selected as one of 16 colleges and universities in the area to receive the Learn and Serve grant to aid this effort. BSC's specific goals were to educate faculty about the benefits of using service-learning in courses; provide support to develop new service-learning courses; engage students in meaningful service-learning activities in the community; and improve the quality of teaching and learning by helping students make meaning out of their classroom and service experiences. Diane Bell, Director of the Community Service Center, and Nancy Moses, former Faculty Associate for Service-Learning, selected three faculty members and their courses to achieve these goals: Ruth Hannon from the Psychology Department, John Hooker from the Art Department, and Jim Quinn from Theater Arts.

Ruth Hannon's course, Service-Learning in Psychology, now in its third year, partnered with Old Colony YMCA's Big Sister Big Brother program for 4th grade boys called, "Boys RULE" (RULE stands for Respect, Understanding, Listening, & Expressing emotions).  The class met Mondays for three hours on campus, then traveled to the Old Colony YMCA in Brockton, MA on Wednesdays. Each student in the course became a "Big" to a "Little" in the program, and worked with them for the semester.

A proponent of service-learning, Hannon understands that in class there are always opportunities to learn and talk about what a nine-year-old needs in his life. "You can take in information," Hannon explains, "but you don't always get the opportunity to apply it in real life." With the required class reading of Real Boys, Hannon teaches the students about the effects of poverty, fatherlessness, and the lack of a male role model in these boys' lives. The students absorb the information, but to actually meet the little boy who just wants to play, or even just do homework because his single mother doesn't have time to help between her two jobs, is "a whole different experience." To be able to assess what the child needs and then make a plan on how to address it the next week is beneficial, both for the child they work with and the student's own development.

Hannon has seen great growth in the students who take the course. She says that since the majority of the students who take the class are Psychology majors, most find they love the bonds they created with the children and end up wanting to finish their degrees in Psychology to continue working with youth in the future. Many students have said they would never have had the opportunity to work with boys in this socio-economic setting without taking the course. However, some students find that they don't actually like working with kids. "And that's okay," Hannon states matter-of-factly. "That's another benefit [of service-learning]. Working with kids sounded fun reading about it and discussing it--but in practice it wasn't enjoyable for them. Better they find that out now through this course than to get a job with youth after graduating and realize it's not for them."

John Hooker's course, Art Across Curricula, taught for the first time this Spring, focused on bringing different types of art to underprivileged youth of Brockton. Hooker's class, like Hannon's, worked closely with Big Sister Big Brother at the Old Colony YMCA on Friday afternoons from 4-5:30pm. Each student was a "Big" to a "Little", this time with slightly older youth in the 5th-7th grades who had an interest in art. Four students enrolled in Hooker's class and mentored a total of 10 "Littles".  The grant money was used to purchase new art supplies, many of which the kids had never seen before.

While Hooker believes the program was definitely beneficial for all, he recognizes that there are changes to consider for next year. Meeting on Friday afternoons created a few natural distractions, as art sessions were interrupted on occasion due to parents picking up their children at various times.  Hooker feels that his students "simply needed more interaction time" with the children and proposes to change the course time to meet two days a week at the YMCA to facilitate a greater impact on the budding young artists.

Hooker stated that the course itself was geared toward building relationships with the kids and "providing the opportunity for BSC students to try teaching strategies" outside the classroom, but he believes that it takes a highly-motivated student to get the most out of service-learning. It takes a particularly devoted student to fully understand their role as a mentor and be able to connect it to their classroom experience.

David Powell, Program Director for Old Colony YMCA's Big Sister Big Brother program, finds Hannon's and Hooker's programs "remarkable." He felt the courses brought interested BSC students into programs at the YMCA, something he has wanted for a while.  Powell hopes these types of courses will continue in the future.

Jim Quinn offered the Children's Theater II course for the first time in 2008. This course used the Learn and Serve grant to offer traveling theater performances at no cost to the Kennedy School in Brockton. Based on the curriculum of the grade they were working with at the time, Quinn's class created no-budget plays to perform for the class, then had an interactive time afterward where the children were shown how they could put on a similar production. Everything they used to put on the plays could either be found at home or in the classroom; the children didn't need money--they just needed their imagination. Quinn's hope was that when the BSC students left, the curriculum could be made interactive to hold the children's interest and help keep their imaginations going.

Quinn understands the benefit to both the students and children in teaching a service-learning class, but found, like John Hooker, that the students who enjoyed the class really understood that it was about "giving more than getting. There's no [apparent] glamour in the performances, something that, as actors, many of the student are used to." There are no performance reviews, no pictures in the papers and no friends or family in the audience. "The rewards are all personal," Quinn reiterated, and he said that while some understood it, many of the students didn't grasp that understanding.

Quinn was enthusiastic about the future of the course despite bumps during its first semester. He has plans to market the course to a different group of students--mainly the Theater Education majors. What better way to learn how to teach theater in the classroom than by actually doing it firsthand?

Despite the trials in its beginning stages, the Learn and Serve grant helped inspire these three faculty members to think outside of the box when it comes to teaching. While the grant funding itself is coming to an end, all three of these courses have strong potential for sustainability in the future. Even though the courses were developed with funds from the grant, these faculty members have shown that it costs little (or in Jim Quinn's case, nothing) to make a difference in the life of a child and teach a BSC student the benefits of learning inside and outside the classroom.

 

Last Modified: September 17, 2009