Hurtling Toward Service: Perspectives From an Earth Force AmeriCorps VISTA

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Did you know that Earth Force has several employees who are AmeriCorps VISTA members? It’s true! In fact, I, myself, am one such employee.

VISTA, an acronym for Volunteers in Service to America, actually predates AmeriCorps. It was established under President Lyndon B. Johnson and incorporated into AmeriCorps during ­­­­theClinton administration. VISTAs work to fight poverty in theUnited States, while boosting the capacity of deserving organizations, and several have chosen to do so throughout the years at Earth Force. In addition to myself, we have two other VISTAs this year: Dan Brown, my Philadelphia counterpart, and Taylor Moulton, who works for Earth Force in D.C. For many people, committing an entire year to service as aVISTA helps them to dig deep into important and complex poverty issues while also gaining work experience in the nonprofit sector.

But working on poverty issues in this capacity can feel like a roller coaster at times, experienced first in the wages we earn. VISTA salaries are only 110% of the poverty line, an intentional AmeriCorps decision that was made so we can better understand the living circumstances of the populations with which we work. I’ve become accustomed to waiting in line at the county assistance office to get my food stamps (well, it’s a SNAP card now, but essentially the same). It’s certainly an experience I won’t soon forget.

Over the course of the year, we are strapped into the roller coaster. The year starts off on an exciting note; you meet new people, go to fun orientations, and just soak in the newness of the experience. Sometimes that guy at the coffee house even comps your drink because he admires your work—life is good. Eventually, you settle in, and reality hits. You’ve been tasked with building out programming and bringing a community together around a specific issue: in my case, engaging young people living in communities of low income in environmental problem-solving. Building sustainable programming is tough, especially in communities with limited resources. Both funding and time are limited within schools, and it takes hard work to connect the right people together in meaningful ways.

Earth Force VISTA Dan Brown helps students plant a tree at H.A. Brown Elementary

As a newcomer (on a fixed timeline) to this field of work, it was daunting at times to tackle these complexities of partnership-building. But I began to slightly reframe my position as a consultant-type role. I could bring my “outsider” perspective to approach the work with a slightly different outlook than my coworkers and together we could devise creative solutions to the challenges that popped up along the way.

Now, three quarters of the way through my VISTAterm, we’re at the top of the roller coaster again. The skills that I’ve gained by working as a service-learning coordinator have been invaluable and I feel comfortable and capable in my work. In almost every way, the job is certainly different than anything I’ve ever done. I know I’ll take the experience with me when I move into the next phase of my life.

For information on the AmeriCorps VISTA program, visit http://www.americorps.gov/about/programs/vista.asp

When Was the Last Time You Did the Impossible?

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A few weeks ago, I learned that several students we worked with at Stetser Elementary School were invited to the White House by Michelle Obama for the Fourth Annual Spring Planting. While the news shocked and excited the entire Chester community, I was thrilled but not surprised these exceptional young people got this opportunity. One thing I have learned about young people since I started working at Earth Force is they set their sights high and work to accomplish the impossible.

During the 2010-2011 school year, students at Stetser took a look around their community and noticed a lack of local produce. As of December 2010, the community of Chester had no supermarkets and only two food marts throughout the entire city that sold fresh fruits or vegetables. Despite the imposing nature of these facts, students at Stetser chose to tackle the issue head-on. They planted vegetable gardens as a way of providing local, fresh food to their school and their community. They knew the First Lady was focused on health and getting young people moving, and they took this opportunity to contribute to her mission. When they wrote her back in February of 2010, they told her of the change they were working to make. Not surprisingly, one year after that letter was written, the First Lady chose to recognize the immense accomplishments of these young people.

This isn’t the only example of Earth Force students achieving the “impossible”. Fifth grade students from Belle Hall Elementary School embarked on a seven-year Earth Force project that would have a lasting effect in Charleston, SC. The “Bike Bunch” was formed to campaign for safe bike and pedestrian lanes on the new Cooper River Bridge. After conducting surveys of the community and presenting the findings to the bridge planning committee and other local community organizations, the students and their teacher traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk to South Carolina legislators about their vision. As a result of their efforts, combined with the efforts of other community organizations including Charleston Moves, the plans for the new bridge were altered to include a spacious pedestrian and bike lane.

In the summer of 2006, when the new bridge was finally completed, the students came together again to celebrate their past experiences. Coming from as far away as New Hampshire, the students celebrated by attending the opening ceremony for the bridge, hosting a booth at the festivities preceding the grand opening, and collectively bicycling along the bridge’s pedestrian lane. What an incredible accomplishment!

I think as we get older, we forget that if you aim for your dreams, work hard, and believe in them, anything is possible. Today, embrace the passion of these young people: set your sights on the impossible.

Sense and Sustainability

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Not too long ago, my coworker Dan paid a visit to the Environmental Action Club at Germantown Friends School here in Philadelphia, and he could not stop talking about how impressed he was. The members of this after-school environmental club have been using Earth Force for several years as a way to realize their goals of improving the environment and the community in which they live. There’s a lot to say about this bunch, but perhaps most inspiring about their work is their eye for sustainability in everything that they do.

Most people know that sustainability is one of the cornerstones of environmental and community service, but there’s a lot more to this buzzword than meets the eye. These students really understand that sustainability means keeping up with their past efforts and making sure that their current undertakings will result in lasting improvements in their community. They work alongside their experienced and encouraging educator to maintain the fruits of their previous efforts—whether it’s their rain garden, pond, or compost bins—while also building on them and taking on new projects. This makes their club a model of both good environmental stewardship and active community involvement.

The experience this after-school club is having shows the benefit of repeated experiences with Earth Force’s Six-Step Process. With multiple experiences, youth not only build on past work to move toward a better community and a better Earth, but they also refine their understanding of civic engagement and what is means to be active citizens in their communities. These youth understand that making the work last is key. They provide us with a great example of how the Earth Force process really works, and we’re proud to have them as partners!

Flipping the STEM switch

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Our partners at Kids Consortium recently released the “Integrating Scientific Practices and Service-Learning: Engaging Students in STEM” guide to help educators connect the dots between a service-learning approach and the science classes required by state standards. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to download the free document as it provides 54 pages of helpful tips and inspiring examples of youth-led learning in real classrooms. What will really jump out at you is how teachers can take what we need to learn from a textbook and apply it to the world so that students can feel, touch, and connect to what they care about.

When reading through the guide, I was struck by how beneficial this approach would have been for my own high school experience. Beyond the occasional movie days (we all remember how exciting those “fluff” days were!) the best part of school was when we looked at the world around us. Like in my high school biology class, when we studied sustainability and energy use before getting our feet wet building straw bale and mud walls for “greener” houses. But how relevant was learning how to build a straw bale wall to my current career? Not very. And in chemistry, while we did many fun experiments, our semester of learning had no real-world connection and I can’t remember what we studied!

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear how a project-based approach like the one we use at Earth Force (and illustrated beautifully in the Kids Consortium guide) would have taken those courses deeper and ignited the topics in a way that connected us to our communities. It would have been simple to scaffold the sustainability curriculum around an energy audit to create a smarter school building energy approach to combat the excruciating Arizona heat. Or, to make chemistry more relevant and memorable, we could have structured our semester around a water quality investigation of the surrounding man-made lakes we visited during summer vacations.

 

STEM fields can so easily be taught in a silo format that doesn’t excite students beyond the end of the semester. But I believe when they’re taught in a way that asks students to be citizen scientists and engineers in their community, something clicks forever. Let’s flip that switch!