Someone They Can Trust

Phillips Brooks House programs such as Keylatch, One to One and Mission Hill target inner-city children who need additional support in tutoring or peer counseling. Undergraduate volunteers try to provide the children with...

Rasheedah, a fourth grader at Blackstone Square Community School in Boston, says she attends the Keylatch program sponsored by Phillips Brooks House, because it provides her with after school tutoring while her mother is away from home.

"I need help with my homework while my mom's at work," she says. "When there's not Keylatch, she says try first and then she'll help you."

Rasheedah says she often has trouble completing her school work when she has only her mother to help her.

The Keylatch program provides Rasheedah and other Blackstone children left alone in the afternoon while their parents work with the extra help they need to succeed in school, according to Keylatch member Phillip M. Grant '94.

Undergraduate Keylatch volunteers not only help children with their homework but also form special friendships with their students, Grant says. Friendships form during group play sessions after the children have completed their homework and during weekend outings.

The children say they enjoy these play times as much as they benefit from the attention to their homework.

A third-grade boy says he attended Keylatch as much for the activities offered as for the help with school work.

"It's the best," he says. "At the end of the year, you get to go out of state. Last year we went to Ashland, New Hampshire, to a park, and the year before that we got to go to Washington, D.C."

Volunteers say that the Keylatch program addresses an important need among families by attempting to provide providing children with extra help to stay in school.

A USA Today survey recently ranked Massachusetts 34th in national dropout rates with approximately 23 percent of students leaving high school before graduation. A 1989 study by the American Association of School Administrators defines an at risk student as one who is "one or more years behind their age group in the number of credits attained or basic skills levels."

Harvard students say they benefit from the program as much as the kids. Laura E. Meeks '96, who joined Keylatch because she had attended a PBH open house, says she admires the children because of their spontaneity.

"They'll just get up and start singing and dancing in front of everybody. I'm surprised they have that sort of confidence at their age," she says.

Meeks supervises the fourth and fifth grade Keylatch children.

On a typical day, Meeks divides her time between coaching six fourth graders through a lesson in estimation and refereeing a hectic game of "Dictionary" in which the children attempted to guess the true meaning of a difficult word.

'Extra Help'

A similar PBH program targets the Mission Hill housing project and seeks to provide the much-needed "extra help and support" to the children of the Mission Hill project, according to Program Co-Chair Debra B. Stulberg '95 and Esther Hong '95.

Because the program takes place in the Mission Hill Project in downtown Boston, safety is of the utmost importance, Stulberg says. As Stulberg prepares to send her groups of volunteers to different locations within the project in the neighboring Harvard School of Public Health, she asks two volunteers to walk a child home after the program.

"I think you should designate two counselors to take him home, because last time he didn't get back until 6:30," Stulberg cautions.

"We bring the kids together after school and spend about half the time on homework and the other on project goals," Stulberg elaborates. "We offer both academic and support services."

According to Stulberg, children at Mission Hill do not receive the attention they need from regular classroom teachers. She says her project offers them careful tutoring and individual attention.

Not only does the Mission Hill project provide for the children's academic growth, but it encourages cultural awareness. Stulberg says volunteers must occasionally deal with gang-related tension between Black and Puerto Rican children. The project is approximately equally divided between Blacks and Puerto Ricans.

"One of the specific goals of the project is to bring kids together who wouldn't normally associate," explains Stulberg.

The children in the Mission Hill program seem comfortable with the program's multiple role in their lives. Younger children occupy themselves with journal writing and reading skills, while older children learn about social issues and participate in discussion sessions.

One day late last year, an AIDS counseling group sponsored by high school students from the Boston Public Schools visited the oldest children in the program.

As the group explained the use of condoms in the prevention of the spread of AIDS, the Mission Hill children nodded knowingly. A question about lubricant was answered unabashedly by a sixth-grader who cautioned his peers not to use oil based substances "like Crisco or Vaseline."

Later in the discussion, the peer group's instruction became more technical. As children's attention wandered, the boy reminded his friends of the significance of AIDS.

"Everyone just think about Michael Jordan, and it will be more interesting," he advised.

Keylatch, One-to-One and Mission Hill are just a few of the programs offered by PBH which target Boston's youth. Other programs range from Magic Me, which brings children to visit the elderly, to Refugee Youth Termtime Enrichment which coaches Southeast Asian refugees on their English skills.

A Friend to Trust

Another of the 20 PBH programs which reach out to Boston children is the One-to-One program, which pairs Harvard students with children from four Cambridge area housing developments.

Kelly A. Smith '96 says she chose to become a Big Sibling because she was homesick during her first weeks at Harvard. "I missed my little sister and I missed being around children," she says.

Smith says dealing with a child by herself is often financially as well as emotionally draining.

When she visits her Little Sister, Smith says she pays $3.40 in T-fare as well as an average of $10 if she and her sibling choose to see a movie or visit a museum.

"If I stay at her house or if we walk around, I have to be very resourceful," Smith says, "Especially in the cold weather."

Although Smith says she thinks the One-to-One program is effective in providing children with much needed friend, she says she often worries over the program's procedure.

"We had a meeting where we went over a handbook on what not to do." Smith says. "As far as how to deal with a problem child, their advice is more 'Wait until you have a problem and then give us a call and we'll tell you what to do.'"

Smith says her seven-year-old Little Sister, Melissa, who lives with her grandparents in the New towne Count housing project became part of the One-to-One program because her grandmother felt she needed a friend she could trust.

"I'm a friend that's not going to do anything bad to her, that's not going to take sides when she has a fight with her family, someone she can trust," Smith says.

When family and schools don't give children the attention they need, PBH volunteers seek to give children the friendships and the support they need to be successful.