Service Learning: Engage with local Latino communities
Can't go abroad? Take a service learning course for your IE!
Service learning is not volunteer work. Instead, it can provide new perspectives and even long lasting friendships.
English 391
By Kaitlan Doherty
My junior year, spring semester, I had thought I would not be able to go abroad. As a result, and a necessity to complete the Spanish major, I needed to do an integrated experience course instead. So I took English 391! It was a course on Multilingualism and Literacy and I absolutely loved it. The community engagement aspect to it was that we had to volunteer at the International Language Institute (ILI) in Northampton. So, I would go there once a week for three hours and learn how to become an ESL tutor. I interacted with people from countries all over the world and it was such a wonderful experience. I actually loved it so much I am continuing to work with ILI this semester and I have a Chilean ESL student who is my absolute favorite person. Even though I ended up studying abroad, I would take this class all over again because of all I learned from working with ESL. It is something I have discovered I am so passionate about and want to keep in my life forever. The bonds you make with students can truly affect you and also give you wonderful and lasting friendships.
Tutoring in Schools
EDUC497 by Esther Kang
Another option is Tutoring in Schools if you are interested in education or working with kids. This course will introduce you to tutoring culturally and linguistically diverse students in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. A focus of the weekly seminar is too highlight the different methods of learning and how to maximize the student's potential. You will volunteer as a tutor in a school of your choice. If you want to work with Latino students, pick a school in a town with higher Latino populations or talk to the professor to find the best placement. You can always change schools if it's not working out. I did not know this initially, and I ended up in a science classroom with few Spanish-speaking students and just learned about cells all day.
The seminar is taught as a flipped classroom. The homework tends to be time consuming but straightforward and easy. The current professors, Sharon and Bob, are very kind, and I recommend this course.
English 391 ML
By Andrea Velazquez
Let's face it, not everyone gets to study abroad. It's a sad, but very true reality for a lot of college students. However there are different ways to fill the IE requirement of the Spanish major. So in order to complete it I, rather begrudgingly, decided to take English 391 ML, a course on Multilingualism and Literacy. It turned out to be one of the greatest classes I have ever taken at UMass. One of the cool things about this class was that it was very hands on; we got to go out in to the community and choose what project we could work on. I was apart of the pop-up writing centre at the ILI in Northampton. Once a week we would pile in to a car and head down to the centre to help out people at various levels of English on assignments and the like. One moment we might have a grad student who just needs some refinement on a thesis and the next, a person could be someone who just stepped foot on American soil with just a vague notion of how to write a paragraph in English It really prepared me for what I can except out in the interpreting world. It was also amazing to connect with people from so many different cultures all at varying ages and different stages in their lives. I highly suggest considering English 391 if you can't study abroad- heck, I suggest taking it even if you can.
Service Learning Vs. Community Service
By Christine Brennick
Why is service learning different than volunteer work or community service? While the purpose of volunteering/community service is to benefit the person or group whom is is being served, service learning has a reciprocal component. Service learning is service that benefits not only the person receiving the service but also the person giving the service. Moreover, service learning also has a curriculum component. That is to say the person who is doing the service learning is learning from their experiences and gaining valuable knowledge and also following a curriculum of learning in the classroom.
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When we talk about service learning it is important to be aware of what we are really doing and why we are doing it. Are we helping? Are we fixing? Are we serving? One of my favorite readings does a great job explaining this division which is greatly related to service learning. Below I have copied a brief excerpt from this reading to help explain more about service learning.
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"Fixing and helping create a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected." Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.
When we help, we become aware of our own strength. But when we serve, we don’t serve with our strength; we serve with ourselves, and we draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve; our wounds serve; even our darkness can serve. My pain is the source of my compassion; my woundedness is the key to my empathy.
Serving makes us aware of our wholeness and its power. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals: our service strengthens us as well as others. Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will renew us. In helping we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving we find a sense of gratitude." Click here to learn more about community engagement.
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The Boltwood Project is a student run, all-inclusive, service learning project here at UMass that aims build inclusive environments and peer to peer relationships. Volunteers go out into the community to different service sites and spend time with individuals with disabilities. Theses sites range from elementary schools to skilled nursing homes. You also receive 2 university credits for your volunteer work, reflections and attendance of 3 weekend seminars per semester. During the seminars we learn about different topics surrounding disability. There is also the opportunity to apply for a leadership position as a site supervisor in which case you would also enroll in the leadership in service learning course.
In the past three years at UMass, I have progressed from a volunteer to a supervisor, and I am now one of two coordinators of the project. I have gained invaluable experience and skills while assuming these various roles. As a volunteer, I spent time working with individuals with psychiatric diagnoses co-occurring with physical and cognitive disabilities at the Farren Care Center; this experience gave me insight and perspective about an entirely new population. Several of the patients in this facility spoke Spanish and minimal English, and I saw first-hand how important it was to them to have someone who could communicate with them in their native language. Now, as the coordinator, I organize 150 volunteers, 23 supervisors and maintain communication with over 20 different community partners. I have learned the importance of advocating for both mono-lingual and bi-lingual individuals with disabilities and the impact I can have on people in many different community settings.
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My work with Boltwood has greatly shaped my experience at UMass. Not only have I developed meaningful and long lasting relationships with my peers and new friends at my service sites, I have also enriched my learning more than I could have imagined. My work in Boltwood definitely compliments both my majors of Spanish and Communication Disorders and has helped me to form a clear vision of what I hope to do in my career as a speech pathologist. Without Boltwood, I would have never fully discovered my desire to work to provide speech therapy for underrepresented populations.
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Service learning is a great way to get involved at UMass and in the surrounding communities. There are many service learning opportunities on campus – many of which offer academic credit. For more information about the Boltwood Project please click this link or send me an email at: cbrennick@umass.edu
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For more information about other service learning opportunities at UMass check out the Civic Engagement and Service Learning website.