Somali Partnerships in Springfield

By Michaela Coughlin

Edited by Lauren Quirici

 I began volunteering on Sundays for Mentors Without Borders, a Somali partnership program based on tutoring Somali refugees in Springfield, after one of my professors mentioned that she was offering extra credit to students who participated. After my first tutoring session, I was hooked. I’ve gone to Springfield to help every weekend since.

Before becoming involved with this program, I had never been exposed to Somali culture or the Somali language, nor had I worked with or even met a Somalian refugee. Initially, I wasn’t sure if I would be a long-term tutor, but I’ve become attached to the students and personally invested in the project’s success. I am working with Uzma Hussain this semester, one of the original developers of the project.

When I started working on this project in early September, my primary goal was to create structured and independent lesson plans for the children, teenagers, and adults who attend the tutoring sessions, as well as to improve the consistency of our students’ attendance. Mid-way through the semester, transportation—a perpetual struggle for our program—became critical, so my goal for the rest of the semester is to organize a safe, reliable, and sustainable method of transportation to get our students to our program’s Sunday location.

I see progress every day. Students are eager to learn and work very hard for the entirety of our three-hour tutoring sessions. In addition to our students, our community partner, the East African Cultural Center, led by Bledel Omar, is dedicated to serving the community. The East African Cultural Center has been very supportive and open-minded about all of our ideas and suggestions. In addition to Bledel Omar, Uzma and I are lucky to have Professor Elliot Fratkin from Smith College.  Professor Fratkin has been incredibly committed to supporting the program and has helped from working through transportation and communication problems to spending his Sundays tutoring with us in Springfield.

We have encountered many obstacles this semester. Some of these challenges were expected, but many were not. Thankfully, we have the support of Alan Bloomgarden as well as the rest of the staff in the CBL office.

As a CBL fellow managing a still-developing program, I have learned leadership skills, patience, and cultural sensitivity. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to providing our students with quality and effective tutoring, and I take great pride when I see their achievements.

Mentors Without Borders

By Uzma Hussain

Edited by Lauren Quirici

The program that I am working with, Mentors Without Borders, was begun last year by myself and Mahdiya Ahmed.  This project began as a result of a CAUSE project centering around tutoring the Hussein family, a group of Somali refugees. Through them, I learned that there was a larger refugee population in Springfield. After learning this, we started working on forming a project designed to interact with and assist the refugee community in Springfield. This year, I am working on the project alongside another CBL fellow, Michaela Coughlin.The program has two CBL fellows, but we have many more mentors than we did when we started.

This year, one of the main things we wanted to work on was structure. Along with the help of Alan Bloomgarden, we discussed some methods for doing this. One of the steps we took toward establishing a better structure was purchasing workbooks that were recommended to us by Grey House, which also works with ESL students.

I am currently a senior, so I will be working on this project for one more semester. After I graduate, Michaela will take over. Structure and specialized education for each age group is something that I would like to achieve. Not all of the mentees have the same needs, and it’s important that we are able to provide useful resources to them all.

As with anything, especially a project that is relatively new, we do face some challenges. I’ve realized that it’s always important to keep in mind that although we may set goals for a semester or a year, achieving those goals relies on everyone’s full effort. Therefore, it is important to make sure that everyone is on the same page.  A project such as this is always going to be a challenge. Thinking that just because you found a solution to a problem once doesn’t mean that that problem will not arise again. It is also important to be aware of cultural differences. It’s important to be culturally conscious, and to understand that taking on a savior complex can be very problematic and should be avoided.

Mentee retention, and even mentor retention, has been an obstacle for us in the past. It’s always frustrating to encounter problems like this, but it has always been important for me to be able to take a step back and take a look at the whole picture rather than just one pixel of it.

I think above all, it has been important for me to do more than just study and take exams on this campus. This is why I sought to explore the community around me. Through such exploration, I was able to observe a need in the community and then develop this project to address it. In several of my classes we learn about ideas, concepts, and cultures through texts, but it’s a totally different feel when I actually get the chance to interact with the people who represent these cultures, who have these different ideas and concepts.

Every Sunday, I have a battle with my alarm clock in order to get up to get to Springfield. However, when I am able to make a connection with a mentee, or when a mentee understands a concept and gets really excited about it…those are the moments that make everything worthwhile. We work so hard on planning lessons to teach the mentees each Sunday, but more often than not I come back to campus realizing that I have also been taught a lesson.

Gardening the Springfield Community

By Julie Factor

Edited by Lauren Quirici

I am working with Gardening the Community (GTC), a food justice organization in Springfield. It was started in 2002 by Ruby Maddox, a then-resident of Springfield, and now the Associate Director for the Miller-Worley Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College, and Betsy Corner, the former social justice coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association. The program recruits and employs neighborhood youth to grow fruits and vegetables on abandoned and vacant lots in Springfield. The food is then sold at local markets and donated to food shelters.

In 2005, Springfield resident Kristen Brennan led GTC in fostering principles of sustainable living through biking produce to markets, using rain buckets to capture rain water for irrigation, and using more “people power” versus gas power to work the land. GTC continues to work with the city to expand the availability of urban garden space and promote urban agriculture.

I chose this project because I am passionate about food justice. During the summers, I work at a natural foods supermarket committed to providing healthy, organic, whole foods to the community. GTC served as an extension of this interest and it incorporates additional elements such as youth leadership development and building healthy, equitable communities through urban agriculture. My main role in the project concerns marketing and publicity. I manage the website, Facebook, and Twitter accounts to ensure that the community is regularly updated about the latest GTC news and upcoming events.

At the beginning of the semester my goal was to revamp the website design and update the content. We had a number of big fundraising events that required a lot of publicity so the website redesign took the backseat, but I will continue to work on it through the next semester. My longer-term goals include finding a more professional platform and format for the website, because it is currently a blog on WordPress.

My project has been coming along nicely. I have established a greater presence on social networks and managed to keep the blog updated regularly. We held our annual Harvest Celebration and Pancake Breakfast in the beginning of November, and the event sold out! I was responsible for keeping the website updated with information about the event and sending e-mail invitations and registration forms to our supporters, and we obviously had a great response. As I mentioned, the fundraisers meant that the more major web updates were put on hold, but I look forward to tackling that later this month once our big fundraising efforts are complete.

I have not run into any major difficulties in accomplishing my goals. It is simply the nature of a nonprofit with a small staff to have to prioritize our tasks, and we are successful in completing those which are most pertinent. We introduced a #GTCSpringfield twitter tag at our pancake breakfast so that our attendees could live-tweet the event and a fair number did so! It is always encouraging when the community members participate and support our new efforts.

I have done a great deal of prioritizing and getting the most immediate tasks done. I usually have to update new material to all of our web platforms before I can update the older existing material. This semester, our fundraisers needed the most attention. I worked on outreach and maintaining an organized spreadsheet of registrants as well as our entire donor database. I have gotten valuable experience working with databases that I didn’t even expect! I am constantly redirecting my approach so that I can focus my energy on those tasks which need to be completed immediately.

One of my larger goals in becoming a CBL Fellow in Springfield was to become more familiar with the community and its needs. I attended Springfield Bound, a number of workshops through GTC, and will attend an Undoing Racism workshop. The more I learn about it, the more concern I have for the city of Springfield, and the closer I feel to the community.

 I don’t get to work with the youth often, but when I do, I really enjoy it. They are mostly high school students working with GTC, and they bring a fresh and entertaining perspective to things. I love seeing other youth who are concerned about food justice issues as much as I am. I also love seeing the encouraging responses we’ve gotten to our fundraising efforts, and being able to enjoy the wonderful events we’ve spent months planning is definitely a bonus. It is only frustrating that change doesn’t happen faster!

We are collaborating on initiatives to bring a grocery store to Springfield, as the city is considered a food desert (a term for an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food), as well as working to develop a plan to make Springfield more accommodating for bicyclists and pedestrians. There is so much work to be done to make Springfield a more sustainable community, and it is a pleasure to be a part of these valuable efforts. 

Empowering Girls in Springfield

By Julia Montiel

Edited by Lauren Quirici

Girls to Women is a mentorship program that was started last April by myself, my friend Jaenelle and a group of five other girls. The group aims to empower young girls of color in the urban areas of Springfield. Girls to Women aims to help the girls achieve leadership, facilitate learning through artistic mediums, and promote self-awareness. I am highly passionate about empowering girls, especially minority girls. I was a part of a program similar to this one in high school, it inspired me to give back what I learned.

I am the co-chair and CBL fellow for this program. We agreed as a group to delegate certain tasks, and I was delegated co-chair/fellow. There are currently 8 mentors, and we are working on recruiting more.

Among my goals for the beginning of the semester were to establish a relationship with a high ranking supervisor in the high school, establish a viable transportation method, recruit mentors and mentees, and organize lesson plans. I am definitely able to see a good amount of progress in terms of transportation, establishing relationships, and recruitment. All of my goals are coming along well.

I plan to work on this project through the spring semester.  We have not started the program yet because we are still recruiting mentors/mentees, but it should be up and running by the spring semester. My long-term goal for this program is to have a great group of young women becoming life-long mentors to the young girls in Springfield.

Some challenges that I have faced have been the issue of transportation to and from Springfield.  The time commitment that is needed for this kind of program has also been a problem, since, as a full-time student, my availability is limited.

So far, I haven’t had to tweak my goals or visions because of the great support that I have on-campus at Mount Holyoke and off-campus in Springfield. Both schools are extremely welcoming and understanding of my vision, and are willing and able to help me achieve my objectives.

I have learned that I need more patience, especially in dealing with the time commitment involved in trying to establish a program from the ground up. It is extremely difficult and time consuming, but I find myself loving what I do even more because of this.

College and Career Readiness at the High School of Commerce

By Dianna Tejada

Edited By Lauren Quirici

My project is a partnership with the High School of Commerce (HSC) in Springfield, Massachusetts, which I created on my own.  As a 2011 graduate of the high school, my experiences there helped me with its creation.  Initially the project was called “The College Access Workshop Series,” but after discussions with the staff that I work with, it was changed to “College and Career Readiness.” 

My role is to be a co-facilitator in the College and Career Readiness course at the HSC.  I will be available to speak about certain relevant topics, such as being a student who attends an institution that does not require standardized testing, and how can I use my experience to help the youth in the course. I am also responsible for creating a full-day event for the community partner wherein students come to Mount Holyoke and attend workshops, mock classes, practice interviews and a campus tour.

My goals in the beginning of the semester were as simple as just getting this program running.  I had been involved last semester with a different community project, so I had to begin from scratch with this partnership. I plan on sticking with the HSC for the full school year (or longer) in order to ensure not only that the HSC attains a 100% college acceptance rate, but that the youth are doing what makes them happy at the end of it all.

It has been a huge adjustment having to change my entire fellowship after I was already established at a different one, but everything with HSC has been going much more smoothly than I ever would have imagined. It was a little difficult getting into the school to begin the partnership from the beginning, but after the community partners realized that my commitment to change was real, they warmed up to the idea that “an outsider” (due to affiliation) would be coming in to help them.

Initially, my fellowship was supposed to involve me creating a curriculum and facilitating workshops on college access for the youth. The workshops would have covered everything from pinpointing what kind of higher educational institution fits an individual’s needs most to figuring out what narrative would be best to represent each student in his or her college essay. After meeting with the community partners, I came to find out that they had already created a course which covers these topics.  This meant that I would have to open my mind to the possibility of working on my project during school and not after school as I had initially planned.

Being aware that I am there to serve them, I decided to go in with my mind open to all of the possibilities that could come out of my proposal. Now, I am working together with HSC staff to figure out what the needs of the students are. We want to find out whether I would be of more help in the classroom, or if I’d be better as a mentor in a more intimate setting, like an after-school program.

I am always frustrated that I don’t have enough time in my schedule to do it all. I would love to spend full days at the HSC and get to know every senior, but being a full-time student means that unfortunately, it’s just not possible.

 
I do love that this partnership allows me to go back to my foundation and help make it stronger for those who will follow me in working with the HSC. It is an amazing experience and and opportunity, and I am able to watch myself grow through the change I am able to help implement at HSC.

Library/Biblioteca 451 brings education to the people

By Cheryl O’Connell

Edited by Lauren Quirici

Library/Biblioteca 451 is a people’s library founded by myself along with a group of students from Holyoke and Springfield just over a year ago. After attending Holyoke Community College together and being involved in organizing in our community, we decided to make the critical education that we had access to more available to the rest of our community. We placed bookshelves in public spaces such as barber shops, restaurants, and community programs around the area, and provided pop-up libraries, and facilitated teach-ins to learn with our community about social justice issues.

We took the name of the project from the book Farenheit 451. The project started off with just a few people. Over the last year, more volunteers have started working with us. The number of volunteers involved fluctuates, but there's a core group of about seven of us.  The group is structured in a non-hierarchical way, so we all work together and make decisions collectively.  We have made great connections throughout the community and hear often that people stop by our shelves for books.

One goal of mine was to get the project more organized and make our system more efficient. This semester, we were able to organize the warehouse space where books are stored before they are distributed. I also created a blog and set up a partnership with local bookshops for donations.

The biggest challenge for Library/Biblioteca 451 has been finding a way for our project to stay relevant and inclusive. We want people in the community to feel a sense of ownership in what we're doing. We have also had to work on re-evaluating our system of obtaining donations. We get a lot of books through social media, but this hasn't proven to work well for getting Spanish language books. We are currently working to find a new way to accomplish this goal.  We’re hoping to continue to build a stronger relationship with our community where there will be more mutual learning opportunities.

I'm changed by this project all the time. I learn so much from my community about what issues we should be focusing on, how to actively listen, and what it means to build community. I love the literature and the conversations that arise out of sharing in the learning process. It's frustrating for me that I don't have more time to dedicate to 451. Hopefully that will change in the future.

Support for Mothers and Women from Behind the Scenes

By Carolyn Waskeiwicz

Edited By Lauren Quirici

I am working at MotherWoman, a nonprofit organization located in Hadley, Massachusetts that supports and empowers mothers to create positive personal and social change.  Some of the ways that MotherWoman seeks to do this is by building community safety nets, impacting family policy and promoting the leadership and resilience of mothers.

I chose to work with MotherWoman because it is located in my hometown. I wanted to make an impact on women in my community, as well as in the Pioneer Valley.  My goal going into this internship was to make difference for somebody, and I believe I have done that by working behind the scenes and preparing the training sessions which teach facilitators to run support groups, ultimately helping the women who are in need.

MotherWoman is a very small nonprofit organization.  It employs three full-time staff and another three people part-time. There are also six interns from the five college community working with the group.

I am currently doing all the preparations that my supervisors need to run the different training sessions that MotherWoman offers. I often prepare handouts and packets of information which the participants receive at the training sessions. I also wrote and delivered donation letters to local businesses in effort to secure donations of food and supplies for the weekly support groups for mothers. 

My expectations were broad when I went into MotherWoman, and my goals are being met in a different way than I had imagined. I thought I’d be impacting mothers on the ground level, but instead I have been mainly supporting my supervisors in order to allow them to do the ground level support. I am hoping next semester to get out into the field, and to really see what these training sessions are all about.

I have learned that non-profits can be very hectic, and dealing with this has taught me to be more patient and accommodating. I have definitely grown throughout the semester, and have built up my own self-confidence and self-expectation along the way I love knowing that I can come into MotherWoman and have a task put in front of me, and with the skill set they’ve given me, I can quickly and effectively complete it.  I also enjoy the freedom that my supervisors have given me to complete work on my own.  It has been easy to make progress accomplishing my goals because I am supported in so many ways at MotherWoman. That’s what they do, after all. It’s no surprise that they support everyone in the office as well as they do the mothers in their target group.

It is frustrating that MotherWoman struggles to get all the support that they need. The office needs new things, such as a larger printer, to help them grow; but they also need to grow in order to be able to afford things like larger printers.  It’s a struggle. It feels good, however, to know that during my first semester, I have really helped to make the training program a stronger one by supporting my supervisors and helping them to quickly and effectively make decisions and to organize the training materials. I love that everyone at the organization is so passionate about being there, too, and that despite all the challenges, everybody works so hard to get the job done. 

Fighting Foreclosure, Building Community with Springfield No One Leaves/Nadie Se Mude

By Amelia Gonzales-Pinal

Edited by Lauren Quirici

The community organization I work for is called Springfield No One Leaves/Nadie Se Mude (SNOL/NSM). SNOL/NSM is a community-run organization that fights foreclosures and evictions by banks.  The project involves working to strengthen the Spanish-speaking community as well as to raise awareness of the connection between the foreclosure and housing crisis with health.

I began working early September and will continue to work until early May.  I am the only fellow from Mount Holyoke College working on this project, and I work alongside the organizers and many members of the community who are involved with SNOL.

My role is to conduct workshops to build community with the Spanish-speakers who are members of the Bank Tenant Association of Springfield (BTA), as well as to conduct workshops about the connection of health with the housing and foreclosure crisis, especially in Springfield.  My project is continuously being developed as I communicate with the BTA members about their needs and my role in the organization. I am carrying out my project through workshops, and am currently working on plans with regarding health awareness for the next step in my project.

I chose this project because, as a Mexican-American, I know the importance of building the Spanish community in a predominantly non-Spanish area.  Minorities who speak different languages face language barriers that make it difficult to feel included within an organization.  I felt it necessary to be a part of this community and help build the strength within the Spanish speaking community.  I am also personally interested in public health, and the environment in which one lives has a tremendous effect on the mental, emotional, and physical health of an individual.  I saw an opportunity to learn more about how foreclosures affect health, and to raise awareness within the SNOL/NSM community about the importance of their own well-being.  After having visited SNOL/NSM several times, I fell in love with the inspiring people and organizers who fight day and night to keep their homes.

My goals at the beginning of the semester were to be a part of outreach in the current SNOL/NSM campaigns, to conduct research about public health by conducting workshops and interviews, and to help strengthen the Spanish speaking community by helping plan and carry out a series of workshops called “Encuentro Comunitarios.”  I succeeded in starting work toward these goals, and I plan to continue through May to further carry out and develop them.

My project is coming along great! My goals have definitely been changing as I go, but in a very good way.  The campaign that I was supposed to help with was cancelled because of a need to focus on other things, but even without it, I have made a lot of progress.  I planned and co-facilitated a two hour “Encuentro Comunitario” with one of the group organizers, which was successful. We are currently planning the next workshop.  I also planned and co-facilitated an hour long public health workshop with another organizer, which was very successful as well.  Both workshops got positive feedback.  The public health workshop was very personal for the community, and led to a realization among members of their similar struggles, and led to increased solidarity.

Carrying out these goals has been an incredible experience in which I have learned much and grown close to the community I work with.  These goals challenged me to improve on my organizational and Spanish speaking skills, and my experiences have made me a stronger person.  I am excited to continue to work with the community members, and grateful for the support of organizers Malcolm and Roberto, who pushed me to challenge myself and who supported me when needed.

I have changed and learned so much over the course of these past few months.  In being a part of the SNOL/NSM community, I have learned so many things from the people I’ve met that it would be too much to write, and too difficult to explain.  I have grown close to many of the members within the community and have heard their stories, which has taught me the importance of listening.  I have learned that the simple act of creating awareness and a space to talk about personal issues has a tremendous effect, and I am excited to continue my work with SNOL/NSM.

Working to provide education to all at CHOICES

By Tessa Gonzales

Edited by Lauren Quirici

I am working with a group called CHOICES, which was created by Melany Mendoza at Peck Middle School and is co-run by the Holyoke Community College.  The aim of CHOICES is to strengthen the desire of middle-school students to further their education, build long-lasting relationships with the students, and promote positive attitudes towards academic and social learning.  The program has been running for several years now, and includes a handful of site supervisors, as well as a large number of college/high school tutors to assist the children.

My role in this program is to recruit and organize new volunteer tutors into the program, provide them workshops and training, and keep up communication with my co-fellow Blair-Alexandria Cobb, a sophomore and friend who introduced me to the program, with community partner Melany Mendoza, and with the tutors.

At first, I was hesitant about the whole idea of tutoring middle-school aged children because I’ve always worked with elementary school-aged children, but once I began volunteering I found it to be a fulfilling and amazing experience. I felt strongly for the kids and how they have to continue to deal with a flawed education system, a challenging social and school environment, and the transitional process into adulthood.   Still, even as I tutored them, I felt that the kids were giving back so much more: they gave me the chance to make a difference in their lives.  I chose this role because I wanted to spread awareness about CHOICES and share my enthusiasm for being involved in these young adults’ lives.

At the beginning of the semester, I had written down a vague list of personal goals for myself, such as compassion, tolerance for diversity, and motivation to complete an object. However, after participating in a CBL assignment designed to help with this process, I have more accurately identified my goals as promoting interaction between MHC students and the Holyoke community, desire of students to fulfill their academic potential, and positive attitudes towards academic/social learning for students.  My goals are now more focused on positively impacting the students and staff at CHOICES, rather than just how the said goals can influence and benefit myself. Although it is quite difficult to achieve my more idealistic long-term goals, I find that small acts, such as saying something encouraging to a student or offering encouraging advice to a tutor, can still make a difference.

Some challenges that I’ve noted are an occasional lack of communication that can hinder the flow of the program, and some behavioral problems that occur among the students.  Balancing schoolwork with CBL work often presents issues with time management, but this only challenges me to better organize my schedule.  Lastly, I’ve found that learning to navigate the business side of relationships with fellow peers and supervisors was a bit of a challenge. All in all, I have learned from the experience.

So far, being a co-fellow for CHOICES has changed my perspective of the world.  It has helped to strengthen my administrative and logistical skills, as well as helping me to utilize my social network.  It has given me the chance to stand up for what I strongly support and believe in: a decent education for children of all socioeconomic levels and cultures.  It has given me the chance to connect to mentors and supervisors who hold the same passion as I do, and students who don’t realize their potential for growth.

I find myself often becoming frustrated that these kids have to deal with bureaucratic systems that lack the same resources that I was given as a child. When I see students who give up hope in the idea of going to college, or even high school, I become disheartened by society and what it fails to offer these deserving kids.  Throughout my experience, I have learned to claim these kids as my own, and thus, I hope to serve “my kids” through my work as a CBL fellow for CHOICES.

Developments at the South Hadley High School Writing Center

By Allyson LaForge

Edited by Lauren Quirici

The South Hadley Writing Center was started when Ariel Lanz and Julia Herman, both Mount Holyoke students of the class of 2013, decided they wanted to establish a writing center at South Hadley High School in response to the suicide of Phoebe Prince in 2010. Their goal was to foster a connection between the South Hadley community and Mount Holyoke, as well as to create an academic project to diversify the sports culture at the high school and provide an avenue for students to learn about the college process. The South Hadley High Writing Center opened in 2011 under the supervision of Ted McCarthy, former vice principal of South Hadley High, and Alan Bloomgarden, of the Mount Holyoke CBL program.

During the past semester, I have worked at the center with Ami Terachi, class of 2013.  My role in our project is to teach a peer-mentoring course to high school sophomores, juniors, or seniors, as well as to help supervise the current mentors as they work with students inside the classroom.

As a senior at Milford High School in New Hampshire, I proposed a writing center to the faculty as a part of my final project for the National Honor Society.   Having worked on a similar project before, my interest was sparked when I heard about the South Hadley High Writing Center. My passion for this project comes not only from my commitment to bringing writing centers to high schools, but also from my interest in the idea of literacy and writing as products of culture, rather than ability. As a teacher, I hope to help student mentors realize the importance of diversity in the classroom and to broaden their conception of the writing process. 

At the beginning of the semester, our goals were to revitalize the South Hadley Writing Center in order to streamline its function, as well as to publicize the center to the larger student body. At the beginning of the year, the center worked much like Mount Holyoke’s SAW Center. Students who wished to be mentored could make appointments or come by during drop-in hours. However, unlike at the SAW Center, the majority of students were not compelled to use the Writing Center as a resource.  We wanted to fix this problem, as well as to provide ongoing education to current mentors so that they could work effectively in the Writing Center.

Over the semester, Ami and I have transitioned the current peer mentors from working “drop-in” hours to working with teachers in specific classes, much like the course mentors the SAW Center provides to first-year seminars at Mount Holyoke. Although this has been largely successful, the high school has unfortunately decided to discontinue the peer mentoring course next semester due to scheduling concerns and time constraints. It will be replaced by a Writing Summit put on by the high school faculty for peer mentors and students. However, the model of classroom mentoring that we developed over the year will continue, which is a huge accomplishment.

Our biggest challenge this semester was communication with the high school. Two transitions in leadership, one at South Hadley when the Writing Center received a new supervisor, and one at Mount Holyoke when Ami and I replaced Julia and Ariel, contributed to the difficulties.  Additionally, Ami and I encountered multiple time constraints as we tried to juggle teaching a new course on top of our own classes and schoolwork.

Over the semester, Ami and I adapted the peer mentoring course to reflect our changes to the model of the Writing Center, and to include more material on diversity within the high school to make the peer mentoring theory more applicable to students. We also made sure to listen to the expectations our students had. When we learned that they were hoping to improve their own writing in addition to learning about peer mentoring theory, we adapted the course assignments. For example, the majority of the students this semester were seniors applying to college. To help them with this process, we had them write personal essays, and then revise them to reflect the feedback they received.

In addition to confidence in my own ability to problem-solve and self-advocate, both of which equip me for the “real world”, I have developed a passion for teaching. I’ve also realized how important it is to for me to continue learning about writing in the context of history. One of the most difficult weeks Ami and I had was when we taught about linguistic diversity, using Lee A. Tonouchi’s “Da State of Pidgin Address” and Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” The idea of linguistic imperialism was a new concept for students, and it was hard to convey the importance of these readings when they had so little background in the study of colonialism. It was frustrating to hear them say that they didn’t think it was important to read these essays, but it also helped me realize how important it was to continue learning and teaching about these subjects.