Undergraduate Teacher Program Faces Problems of Acceptance and Expansion

In the Harvard community, PBH has traditionally represented a group of dedicated students, sometimes accused of idealism, who venture forth once a week to perform all types of miraculous good in the slums of Boston and Cambridge.

Supposedly, the more than 750 volunteers were received with open arms by the inmates, patients, and slum dwellers who received all this sweetness and light. Fortunately for PBH, most students now realize that its Salvation Army all-smiles-and-little efficacy days are over, and that the work of PBH is selected as much for the stimulation it will offer the volunteers as for the practical good it might do.

What most students still do not realize, however, is that PBH is not universally loved in all the areas where its volunteers work. Indeed, the volunteers themselves are often unaware of any strife between agency heads and PBH officers that may have occurred before a program has finally been implemented.

Nowhere has this struggle for acceptance caused so many problems but eventually given more satisfaction than in the school systems surrounding Cambridge. Politically, Harvard University and all it stands for is verboten in many of these towns; an alliance with Harvard is an alliance with "rich snobs," "fairies," "vandals," and fewer votes. An alliance with Harvard students--in this case PBH--is unthinkable.

Since the school committees consist of elected officials, the first response to PBH's offer to supply undergraduate volunteer teachers was not overwhelming; in fact, one former PBH official described the response as "downright antagonistic."

35 Teachers

Eventually, though, the Harvard Undergraduate Teachers program has been accepted in the schools of Cambridge, Newton, Arlington, and Brookline. Currently 35 undergraduates are serving as part-time teachers in these communities.

At Newton High School, Gerard Prunier '66, a native Parisian, is teaching a French class at approximately the level of French 20. Taught entirely in French, its reading list is impressive and demands much of he 20 students in the course. Among the titles are Cocteau's La Machine Infernale, Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie N'aura Pas Lieu and Marivaux's Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard.

Like most others participating in the HUT program, Prunier finds it as valuable to himself as to the students. The necessity to prepare extensively by reading the texts he assigns gives him "a good chance to come back to something I've neglected."

Unfortunately, HUT has not always received co-operation from school staffs. Although HUT's avowed purpose is service to the community by means of filling in where needed, and offering classes which might not otherwise be available to students, many school staffs still look upon the volunteers with suspicion.

To some school teachers the HUT volunteers represent an alien force, a group of students who have come to take away their jobs and keep their salaries down.

Most teachers now appreciate HUT's goals; the few who express antagonism are depriving their pupils of an opportunity they cannot get elsewhere.

Schools with HUT programs have been able to enrich their program by providing more courses. Because these courses--for example, a game-theory course in a Newton junior high school--are frequently esoteric, they are best taught by college students with information about new fields fresh in their minds.

The advantage of having a volunteer reduce a teacher's course load is an aspect of HUT which even the critics of student volunteering have acknowledged. HUT's usually take half of a class, either the "bright" half or the "slower" half, leaving the remainder with the regular teacher. The increased homogeneity usually results in a more responsive group.

HUT now hopes to attract more volunteers to teach the "slower" half. Because teaching bright youngsters seems more appealing, few volunteers have taken up the challenge of teaching less intelligent student.

At registration this fall, 491 students indicated an interest in teaching for HUT. Yet at the present time, there are only 35 active teachers. This situation reflects a major problem which PBH now faces in its HUT program.

The Screening

The screening of volunteers is one of the most troublesome aspects of the HUT program. Frequently a school system will accept student volunteers only on a tentative basis, ready to "fire" them on a moment's notice. Meeting this problem has consistently been a worry to PBH, since a single bad experience may build serious pressures for PBH to drop its program in that area.

Formerly, HUT attempted to screen volunteers on the dubious assumption that Group I and II students were ipso facto poor risks. One of the first accomplishments of last year's chairman, Charles Hanson '63-3, was to eliminate this wishful fallacy of academic snobbishness. With the end of academic exclusiveness, HUT has gained many "magnificent teachers," according to one school superintendent. John Limbert '64, last year's HUT vice-chairman, described the interviewing of prospective volunteers: "If a volunteer is articulate, we see if there is a place for his skill. If he has some good ideas as to what he wants to do with his subject, then we ask a final question; would he make a good teacher?

"The whole process is very subjective, but we have to be. We're dealing with a very delicate situation."

Transformation

Because of its past exclusiveness HUT has not been structured to accomodate the large number of volunteers now seeking to work with it. Of all the PBH committees, HUT alone does not have a system of coordinators to supervise volunteers in the field. In the past, it has not needed any, but feeling is now running strong that if PBH ever expects to accomodate as large a number of volunteers in HUT as in its other programs, then it will have to restructure HUT.

The current HUT experience has proved valuable to those in it; PBH intends to make it more so for more students.

HUT's immediate future seems bright; schools systems who use it have begun to praise it to other systems. Requests for information have come from as far away as Kansas. And the Harvard School of Education has thrown its support fully behind the program.

Indications are that volunteering is very much alive at the University, a fact which President Pusey called proud attention to in last year's Baccalaureate address. Indications are that HUT, with small structural improvements, will become one of PBH's most valuable activities.

HUT has now passed its initial period, and is trying to develop a more permanent structure that will advance its dual goals of benefiting the schools and volunteers. In the belief that teaching is one of the most valuable types of volunteer experience, PBH has recently refused HUT permission to solicit funds for paying its volunteers.

As one teacher has said of his HUT experience, "It's like another education. I'm doing this because I'm here on scholarship and this is one way I can repay a debt"