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Students at the Waldorf School Serve at the Esperanza Center
Extracted from the May 31 issue of the Waldorf School of Baltimore newsletter
On Monday May 24th, 9th and 10th grade students at the Waldorf School of Baltimore ended their community service and intercultural, experiential learning for the school year at the Esperanza Center. The Center offers legal, health and tutoring services primarily to families from Spanish speaking countries.
The main objectives of this service project are to:
• Provide an experience for the students to interact with people from a foreign culture.
• Develop students’ awareness and compassion for immigrants with cultural and socioeconomic background different from their own.
• Develop students’ understanding of what is involved in learning a foreign language.
• Enhance students’ communication skills.
• Empower students to be of service to others.
The goal of having the students teach a foreign language is to go beyond learning grammar, to transmit a culture and to provide memorable experiences for the students so what is learned stays with the students and evolves with them through adulthood. This experiential learning is achieved in a situation that also empowers the students to be of service to others.
Students tutor families once a month throughout the school year. This is the third year students have volunteered their service at the Esperanza Center. In most cases, students are assigned a tutee and they work one-on-one based on the needs of the tutee. In addition, students are currently creating bilingual material to be used by volunteers at the Esperanza Center.
A report that was written about one high school student’s work at Esperanza Center was selected by U.S. UNESCO and was sent to UNESCO headquarters in France for consideration to be published in the Third Collection of UNESCO Associated Schools’ Good Practices for Quality Education - Intercultural dialogue.
Following are the reflections of a 10th grade student about his work at Esperanza Center:
“Visiting the Esperanza Center is a great experience because it exposes me to a different culture. At first I thought it would be difficult teaching someone English, but once I got in there and got into a flow it came naturally. Teaching at the center also helps me build my conversational skills in Spanish. Being able to talk to someone whose first language is Spanish is different than learning in the classroom. What I like most about the experience is the fact that the people there really want to learn, and even if they don’t understand they keep trying. You never find anyone looking bored or unfocused. That kind of patience also helps when you are trying to explain something that you don’t fully understand yourself. Even if you are not a fluent Spanish speaker, you can still contribute something.“
-Collin Athas, 10th grade
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