Student volunteers are always needed. On the USM campus a plethora of posters paper the walls and bulletin boards, pleading for student time.
As the school year gets underway, it becomes evident that time is a commodity, and a precious one at that. Many people just don’t have the time.
But what is one hour a week? To students at King Middle School, one hour can mean a great deal. One hour a week can provide enough time to make a friend, thanks to AmeriCorps volunteer Melissa Prescott.
A dedicated group of eight USM students is using their time to make a difference in the community through the AmeriCorps Education Award Program. This program is merely one branch of a very large and diverse organization with a variety of programs and opportunities for community service.
Andrea Thompson McCall, assistant dean of student life, has been involved in the program from the beginning. The first two years of the program were dedicated to academic service learning development and did not stray far from the classroom. In the last year, the program turned its focus to community service.
Thompson McCall recognizes that the opportunity to volunteer in the community will help to enhance classroom learning by creating opportunities to apply the abstract concepts students read about daily.
“[The AmeriCorps Education Award Program] is a tool for helping to get community needs met. It’s a tool for getting more USM students engaged in their community in ways that they can bring back to their coursework,” she said.
Student teaching experience is what Prescott loves about the opportunities she has with the program.
“I’m really seeing how it’s good experience even before I student-teach. To just get me in there and get me leading a class to figure out what I have to do to [make] that successful,” Prescott said
Prescott is an art education major in her final year at USM. While searching for an independent study class to fulfill a design requirement, she stumbled upon the program in May of 2002. Thompson McCall paired Prescott with King Middle School, which was in need of help with its art programs.
Prescott is currently teaching an art class to an eighth grade ESL class. She is also involved in an after-school art program for Project Safe and Smart, in which students get to design and implement a lesson plan for the after school workshops.
Prescott is gaining hands-on experience as a teacher before her student teaching is to take place.
With Project Safe and Smart, Prescott is recruiting volunteers for a variety of needs. Students are needed to serve as mentors for the kids. A mentor needs to devote at least one hour a week to a child, with a one-year commitment. There is also an e-mentoring option that creates a relationship through e-mail.
“It would be nice if every kid could have a mentor,” said Prescott
Students are needed as tutors after school and for reading hours during the school day. The technology education department at King Middle School is looking for a computer-proficient student who can devote two to three hours week. This particular opportunity could be evaluated for independent study.
“[The Education Award Program is] a tool. It’s not an end in itself; it’s a means to the end. In the end it’s getting community needs met because there are community agencies just crying out for volunteers,” says McCall.