Creator: Amanda Mangano
This blog post explains one of the experiences I had working with the students at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in the Northeastern Writer’s Room. This was the first time I realized the impact of my service on the students at O’bryant, which is why it is my favorite memory from my service.
Over the past semester, I have been volunteering at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science as part of my service-learning for my First Year Writing class. Through a partnership between Northeastern University and 826 Boston, I have been able to help students with English assignments in the Northeastern Writer’s Room. I have worked with a range of students from grades eight to twelve on a variety of different projects.
One of my most memorable service moments was actually my most recent
experience at the O’Bryant School. I arrived on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Break before the next Writer’s Room class arrived. That day, I was working with a class of twelfth grade AP United States History students, and I was helping them with writing a research paper. They had been tasked with arguing whether the 1920s was a period of cultural change for the United States. I was expecting a very unfocused group of seniors that didn’t want to do any work heading into break. and it had been quite some time since I had taken a history class, so I was really relying on the students to have the facts written down. To my surprise, one particular student did want to get work done that day. Even though a majority of her class was more focused on break than the paper at hand, she had come to the Writer’s Room seeking help. She had all of the evidence she needed for a great paper, but she was having a writer’s block and had been sitting staring at her computer for a while. I sat down next to her at her desk, and I offered to help her. We worked together for several minutes talking about where she wanted to go with the paper, what she was trying to argue, and how she was going to argue it. After talking it over, we wrote her thesis and topic sentences so that she had a good foundation for her paper, and I left to help other students.
At the end of their class, I came back to see how much of her paper she had
finished, and, to my surprise, she was almost finished with it. When their teacher dismissed the class, the student I had helped at the beginning of the class told her teacher that my suggestions really got her paper rolling and that she loved having me to work with. It wasn’t until after the teacher told me that I really understood the impact my service at the O’Bryant School had on these students. I was helping really helping them and it felt great.
Although there were some students during my sessions that weren’t interested in getting help. There were other students that really appreciated my service and took advantage of the help that I was offering. These students are what made my service feel meaningful, and made me grateful for the opportunity I was given to instill my knowledge on younger students.