Toward A Common Language: Building Community through Service-Learning

Hackley Review Winter 2017-18: By Emily DeMarchena Washington ’94, P’30 -- Landing back on the Hackley hilltop in 2007 after a seventeen-year absence was surreal for me in more ways than I could possibly express. The aesthetically mismatched red-brick building where I had spent my Middle-School years had been replaced by the green, picturesque expanse of Akin Common, the “temporary” double-wide trailer where we had held Science classes was nowhere to be found, and the Tuck Shop had been moved from its creepy, dank, dark home in the basement of Minot Savage to the pristine and spacious bottom floor of the newly inaugurated Saperstein building.

There were still some familiar faces around, providing for some reassuring, albeit bizarre, interactions with former teachers turned colleagues. “Mr. Variano,” my Middle School Director, was now Phil, my coaching partner for Softball, and “Ms. Budlong,” my seventh-grade Math teacher, was Anne, my homeroom partner.

What hadn’t changed, and what ultimately drew me back to Hackley, was its commitment to using its wealth of resources to provide the student body with a balanced, thoughtful, and academically challenging educational experience that values character and service to the community over intellect. As a modern language teacher, I want my students to become skilled, culturally competent communicators—communicators who use the language to connect and build relationships with others across linguistic, cultural and, oftentimes, ideological differences. Giving people a common currency, language, with which to authentically communicate, understand and challenge their preconceived notions of reality in the world today, is essential to my mission both as a language educator and diversity and inclusion practitioner. How could I achieve these seemingly lofty educational goals while providing my students with the opportunity to use and hone their language skills in a real-world context? Little did I know that Hackley would be the place where I would discover, explore and implement the teaching model I had been missing, my proverbial missing piece of the pedagogical puzzle: Service-Learning.

I’ve never been very good at puzzles, so my learning curve was going to be steep to say the least. I was first introduced to the concept of Service-Learning over ten years ago by the former Upper School Community Service Coordinator, Shachar Link. While Community Service is broadly defined as a voluntary act that benefits others, Service-Learning is a teaching strategy that combines academic and social education goals to meet real community needs; it requires the application of knowledge and skills, and the deliberate reflection about the experience. The core principles and best practices of Service-Learning entail a compelling and meaningful sense of purpose, learning objectives anchored in curriculum, active and collaborative engagement with community partners, and integrated reflection as a means to unearth and respond to the current and future needs of all the involved parties. A successful Service-Learning project harnesses the power in communities to foster a sense of a common, interconnected purpose and sustained relationships. “This is where the rubber hits the road,” I thought to myself. There was no better place than Hackley for me to explore this novel approach to teaching. So where did I begin?

I have been fortunate to teach the Spanish V and the Post AP: Language and Culture courses during my tenure at Hack-ley. These courses attracted our most talented, engaged and committed students of Spanish, and I found them eager to develop their communication skills. With “We want to be able to communicate with native speakers, Señora” echoing in my head, I began my search for community partners. I reached out to Neighbors Link, a non-profit organization in Mount Kisco that seeks to “strengthen the whole community by actively enhancing the healthy integration of immigrants.”

Neighbors Link serves a primarily Latino immigrant population, mostly from Guatemala. When I met with the community partners, they identified some immediate and long-term needs that our Hackley students could address. Once the project was clearly laid out, I identified the linguistic elements (lexical groups and functional language) necessary to accomplish our objectives. Which vocabulary needs teaching or reviewing? Which grammatical structures will the students need to use? What historical context needs discussion? What socio-cultural trends need or attention? How will we rehearse in the “safety” of the classroom environment before we leave the Hilltop to address this need?

During the last ten years, the participating students have responded to the varying needs in different ways, and while we have sustained our relationship with Neighbors Link, the projects have evolved from year to year. More recently, the extensive Hackley network has allowed me to build a relationship with a new community partner right here in Sleepy Hollow, Open Door Family Medical Center. The parents of two current Hackley students, physicians on the center’s medical staff, were eager to foster a more meaningful relationship between the Hackley community and their organization. Oddly enough, these parents first learned about Hackley (and subsequently applied for admission for their daughters) when they witnessed our students’ involvement at an event they attended at Neighbors Link. In the past, our students have researched, developed and disseminated information about health risks for educational fairs, planned and implemented cultural-enrichment programming for the after-school program at Mount Kisco Elementary School, interviewed and chronicled the challenges of day-labor workers in Westchester and, most recently, collected detailed accounts of families displaced from their homes by a carbon-monoxide leak last year two-weeks before Christmas.

This desire to use language to connect with and better understand the diverse lived experience of Latinos in Westchester County is a driving force of the project. Another objective of the project is to affirm and celebrate the community members’ ethnic identity, as a minority population, as the danger of their losing ties to their identity is high. During the reflection period for our projects, the students often share that it is “one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences” of their junior or senior year because it incorporates working with a population with whom they may have not had direct contact, and serving this community with the language that they have studied for so long but have not employed in a real-world context. The “Ah-hah!” moments are diverse and expansive. Students report that the project made them more aware of their privilege and the dangers of “living in a bubble,” and that the reality they enjoy on the Hilltop is not the reality for the majority of the population of Westchester County. Many finish the project with the notion that it would be irresponsible to not leave the “bubble,” given the resources they enjoy.

In addition, the experience pushes students to apply grammatical concepts and lexicon studied in a way that many, if not most, have not been asked to do. A deeper, lasting understanding of language register, grammatical mood, and syntax occurs organically when the situation is deeply meaningful. Notorious topics like the Subjunctive Mood, the Imperfect and the Preterite tenses, or the dreaded, double object pronouns become a little less mysterious when you are teaching a group of eager ten-year-olds magic tricks, learning “Luna de Xelajú” (a Guatemalan folk song) and comparing it to “This Land is Your Land,” or sharing your own experience with Lyme disease with an at-risk population.

Over the past few months, the Hackley faculty in all three divisions have been tasked with a crucial and timely reflection exercise. In our “Portrait of a Graduate” discussions, we are attempting to “define more precisely those habits of character, scholarship and accomplishment we hope to cultivate in our students to help ensure lives of meaning, purpose and active involvement with the world.” We will look to embrace teaching strategies which foster these skills in our students. Working collaboratively to create or innovate, engaging actively with others to address shared problems and learning to communicate effectively and empathetically with all the stakeholders in the community have been at the forefront of our discussions. For me, a well-crafted Service-Learning project not only develops all of these skills but provides our students with the opportunity to take genuine ownership of their learning, something that lessons constrained by the four walls of the traditional classroom often cannot. Meaning in the lesson is inherent, almost obvious, sustained, and unique to each learner. The cursed age-old question, “Why am I learning this?” is replaced by “What else can we do?” or “Which problems can we address with the knowledge we’ve acquired?” Service-Learning done well makes its own path, a forward-looking vision of the world where our students grow into longtime learners, responsive citizens and value-grounded people.

Beyond mastering a nuanced control of grammar and a sophisticated knowledge culture, I want my Spanish students to realize that honing their communication skills is a means by which they can work hand-in-hand with members of the Spanish-speaking communities to address real-world problems that transcend language. Language becomes the tool and a critical lens through which they can connect across difference and examine their own biases. Once they have acquired the skills to decode bias and identify prejudice, they can better address inequities that keep all of our constituents, not just those from historically underrepresented groups, from leading compassionate, productive and successful lives.

The integration of Service-Learning projects into my curricula was the best pedagogical decision I have ever made and, if you ask my students, a highlight of their time on the Hilltop.

-- Emily DeMarchena Washington attended Hackley in Middle School, and returned as a Middle and Upper School Spanish teacher in 2007. Her son entered Kindergarten in Fall 2017 as part of the Class of 2030. Listen as Emily is interviewed about her program by Dr. Adrianne Pierce, Classics Department Head and Hackley Hilltop Podcasts creator. Click here to listen to more Hackley Hilltop Podcasts.