Students Who Teach

Blakely A. Rogers '88 spends her Friday morning classes cutting and pasting construction paper. She is not in a Visual and Environmental Studies class--Rogers works with children's art classes in the Longfellow elementary school, where she has also done math tutoring as part of Harvard's House and Neighborhood Development (HAND) program. She is only one of more than 100 Harvard students who volunteer in the Cambridge Public Schools.

These students work in the schools through two separate Harvard programs: HAND and Phillips Brooks House (PBH). Together, PBH and the Public Service Program--of which HAND is a major component--provide most of the public service opprtunities on campus, says Milbert Shin '87-88, student coordinator of the the Public Service Program, which was started in 1982 with funding from the University.

"The beauty of volunteering is that there are lots of different opportunities," says Mary Louise Piret, bilingual special education teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. She points out that the high school alone offers over 250 courses, and Harvard students help out in a wide variety of them.

Alan Brickman '76, who runs the city-sponsored Cambridge School Volunteers program, goes beyond Rindge to emphasize the scope and variety of the whole city. "Cambridge ranges from prominent families to non-English speaking families--Cambridge is Harvard Square, but it is also [housing projects] Jefferson Park and Rindge Towers," Brickman says. "The trick is to find the appropriate place for the appropriate volunteer."

Brickman says he hopes to place 400 volunteers, including college students and other workers, in the city schools. This number would represent an increase from even the 380 that were placed in the "golden era" of community service in 1974-5, he says. Volunteer involvement has been on the rise since a low of 170 placements in 1981, Brickman says.

"Students are a responsive constituency," he says. "There was a recognition that public education was in trouble--a perception that the Reagan Administration was not concerned with public education," Brickman explains.

Thanks to well-organized programs like HAND and PBH, Harvard has traditionally provided the bulk of the volunteers in the Cambridge public schools, Brickman says. Now, students from Lesley College and MIT comprise an increasingly large piece of the volunteer pie because of Brickman's stepped-up recruiting campaign on those campuses. Unlike Harvard, Lesley, a teachers' college, grants its students academic credit for volunteer work in local schools.

Even without academic credit, tutoring is a very attractive opportunity for many Harvard students. "I like being involved in a non-political way," says former Eliot House HAND Chairman Andy J. Powell '88. "It gives you some perspective on what's going on."

Public service "is addictive," Shin says. "Once volunteers see what's going on, its hard to turn back." And Rogers says, "I just love it. You get a special feeling that you can't get doing anything else--there's no way you can get that feeling from a job."

Last year, Rogers worked on math with Deborah Kershner, a 13-year-old at the Longfellow School. "It was really funny because I'm not a math person at all," says Rogers, who concentrates in Fine Arts.

"Deborah was super-bright," Rogers says, "so bright she wouldn't concentrate." Rogers says she spent weeks trying to establish trust and communication with the eighth-grader. "The hardest thing for me is dealing with someone very different than I am," Rogers says. "You have to know exactly how to work with each person."

At first, Rogers says, there were problems with the relationship. "I'd go in and say, `What did you do in class?' and she'd say, `I don't know.' Then, we would go through the book and do things I know she had heard in class," says Rogers. "That was really frustrating, but then I would bring her brownies, and we would just sit and talk for the first 20 minutes and stay over an extra 15."

"By the end of the year, her grades were getting a littlebetter, and she was so psyched up, which was an amazing change for Deborah," Rogers says.

"It was wonderful. Blakely was just great," says Deborah's mother, Laura Kershner. "Last year, Deborah didn't understand anything about algebra." Laura Kershner added that Deborah has since placed out of algebra and into a geometry class.

Some Harvard tutors have had more difficulty establishing a relationship with their tutees. Michelle K. Jacobs '88 tutored two students through Leverett House HAND but stopped after one seventh-grader regularly missed sessions.

"He was smart, good and well-behaved; he just didn't go to school a lot," Jacobs says. She says she thought that his teacher had signed him up for the math tutoring without asking him if he wanted to participate.

Maintaining a regular schedule can also be a problem for would-be tutors. While tutoring at the Fletcher School, Powell says he found what time he tutored affected his success. "There are some situations where [tutoring] works better than others," he says. "I saw the kids at the end of the school day when the last thing they want to do is sit there while their friends are having fun." He says that one of the students he had been assigned to tutor would sneak out of school to avoid the sessions.

By contrast, Rogers says she never had scheduling problems while tutoring Deborah. "I [laid] down the law in the beginning," Rogers says. "When she didn't show up once, I told her that I walked 20 minutes to get there so could she call me and leave a message on the answering machine next time. And she did."

Even with an enthusiastic student, tutoring once a week can present problems, because students forget what they have learned. "Any progress you make is diminished by next time," Powell says.

None of these hurdles have deterred PBH Education Committee Co-Chairman Elena Patterson '88, who tutors at Rindge. In four years, the senior says she has tutored about 20 students in math and science.

"If students are having problems, they want to show up to the sessions," Patterson says. Patterson says that she does not generally have problems establishing a rapport with the students, perhaps because she concentrates on a tangible subject matter. "If you get the answer right, that establishes trust," she says.

Explaining her durable commitment to tutoring, Patterson says, "I love math and science, and I deplore the fact that others don't. That is mostly because it is poorly taught, and I can try to do something about it."

In addition, Patterson says she plays a special role for female students. "I prefer to work with girls because I think they need special encouragement," she says. "It is important for them to see a role model who has had success in these `impossible' math and science courses and can show them that they can too."

Like most undergraduates who stick with tutoring programs, Carl J. Rosin '88 says he has found the students enthusiastic and the tutoring experience a positive one. "The kids I've worked with have been very willing to learn. They are very happy to work with us. When you're in sixth grade, a college senior is the greatest thing in the world," says Rosin, who is co-chairman of the Leverett House HAND committee.

Now in his third semester of tutoring in the HAND program at Longfellow, Rosin is working with a blind student in the sixth grade, taping and reading books. He has also helped a fifth-grader with reading and writing.

Rosin adds, "The kids really get into it--they know we're not going to sit at a desk and beat information into them."

"You know they're learning--because they spend the time, you know that they know that learning is important." Rosin said, adding that he has seen improvement in some of his tutees. He recalls being thanked by one fifth-grader whose new report card showed an improvement from a B to B-plus.

Teachers of the tutees are also grateful to the volunteers, Rosin says. "They're very appreciative and grateful for our help," he says.

Teachers agree. "I desperately need them [volunteers,]" says Piret. In past years, the Rindge teacher has had volunteers from the Divinity School and undergraduate tutors from PBH. She is currently working with a Harvard sophomore in one of her bilingual education classes. "The situation I'm in requires each student getting individual attention. If I can handle the most difficult children and give one or two to volunteers, the load is off me," she says.

"Volunteers are not a frill," says Brickman. "In the age of Ronald Reagan and public school cutbacks, they are indispensible. Volunteers are a fundamental part of our ability to provide service to students."

"The time I put into training the tutors is given back to the students 10 times over," says another Rindge bilingual and special education teacher, Barbara Clemons, who has had tutors from Harvard in past years. "I am only one person and without volunteers the students would not get the same amount of attention," she says.

Clemons described the relationships of her emotionally disturbed students with tutors as "multi-level." She says the tutor can give a struggling student an increased sense of social confidence, which can translate into academic progress.

Tutors report that the social part of a tutoring relationship may evolve into a relationship not unlike the one forstered by big brother/big sister programs.

"We got to be really good friends," Rogers says of her tutee. "She started to look forward to the sessions, and she would get her life together beforehand because she wanted to please me."

However, many tutors say the circumstances can make such a progression difficult. "It depends if you're tutoring within the confines of a school day," says Quincy House HAND Co-Chairman Nina R. Schwalbe '88-89, who tutors Russian at Rindge. "If so, the kids will see you as more of a teacher."

Time constraints also limit the possiblities, Powell says, noting that a big sibling relationship takes much more time than a tutoring one.

And some tutors say they do not expect to become very close to their students. "I'm not looking for a big sibling relationship. In part, it's the nature of [math and science] subject matter. It's hard to discuss life when you're discussing numbers," Patterson says. "I have discussed boyfriends and colleges but not had any deep friendships."

"If a student is open and the tutor is committed, it can happen," Brickman says. "We have volunteers who manitain relationships years after graduation. You don't force it, but if it happens, that's terrific."

Whether the relationship stays academic or becomes more social, tutors, organizers and teachers emphasize the need for a firm commitment on the part of the college student.

As Leverett House HAND Co-Coordinator, Taryn Shea '88 has the responsibility of screening potential volunteers. "Anybody who's committed and loves kids can do it," Shea says, but she adds that dedication is important because "the kids that are involved are the ones who have had commitments broken on them in the first place."

"Just because you have mid-terms, it's not okay to quit," says Public Service Program Student Coordinator Roberta Kellman '88. "People have good intentions, but sometimes they don't realize that the kids are looking up to them and expect to see them."

Brickman says that college students are sometimes more committed to the lofty idea of community service rather than the practical reality. "There is the potential for Harvard students to adopt an attitude of noblesse oblige," he says. He says he has experienced difficulties with college students who think that they've looked over public education, have all the answers and not be willing to listen.

Schwalbe says that some teachers may sense and resent the noblesse oblige complex. "They think, `Here's a kid who wants to do some public service to put on the resume when he gets a job as an investment banker,'" she says. In that situation, teachers "would rather teach the class [themselves] than work with the tutor," she says.

Patterson says some students who want to get involved with PBH have an inflated opinion of their role and think they are nobly conferring tutoring upon the underprivileged. "I think and hope that changes quickly," she says. "Getting students involved in the first place is the most important thing," she says. "If the reason [why the students are tutoring] doesn't change later, then there's a problem."

Students who persevere as tutors in the public schools find out that the learning goes both ways, according to tutors, teachers and program organizers.

Clemons says that she supervises the college students but encourages them to use their own initiative in the classroom. "Let's face it--this is a very qualified group of volunteers," she says.

Piret calls the tutoring experience "a learning process for everybody." Like Clemons, she says she tries to talk a lot with the tutors so that they feel as if they are contributing something to the classroom.

"It's good for everyone to learn how to teach and work with a child," says Rogers. "You learn a little more about people every time you go."

Brickman says that Harvard undergraduates and Cambridge students can often learn simply from each other's backgrounds. "You have to work with Harvard students so that they understand that Cambridge is different than the middle-class, affluent, white suburbs which are more familiar to many of them," he says.

Schwalbe says, "Some of these kids live five minutes away and have never heard of Harvard or Harvard Square. You can make them aware that Harvard is not just an institution raping their real estate. Through tutoring, local children can meet Harvard students and get to know Harvard," she says.

Piret, a Cambridge resident, agrees that tutoring creates positive ties between the University and the community. She says, "I think the tutoring programs are good PR for Harvard. I think [Harvard] should help out as part of its role in the community."

Above all, tutors say they teach in the Cambridge schools because it is fun. "We're totally psyched--everyone enjoys it," says Eliot House HAND Co--Chairman Leslie Crutchfield '90.

"It's great for [tutees] to see a big person who is happy and has time to devote to them. Its nice for us to have a little person who doesn't want to talk about existentialism," Schwalbe explains. "A lot of us come to Harvard because we like school and learning and we like to share that with people."