In my final semester here at UMass Amherst, I have been volunteering for two hours, once a week at Holyoke Homework House. Homework house is a national organization that has sites throughout the U.S. One of these locations is in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The organization is a non-profit that provides teachers, and tutors, to underserved communities to function as afterschool caretakers. These teachers and tutors help students with their homework afterschool free of charge. It provides underserved working-class families a place for their kids to go after school while they are at work.
Most of the kids in the program are of Puerto Rican descent, and speak Spanish at home. I have been able to use my knowledge of the Spanish language to help them with the homework, and I have been able to use the larger lessons I’ve learned in the Spanish major, to be knowledgeable of the Puerto Rican Diaspora which has allowed me to approach my engagement with this community, and these kids with great respect, and a desire to learn from them. There is one girl who is learning to read right now that I have been helping, and she knows a little English, and a little Spanish, and I have been able to use this knowledge to help her use words from both languages to learn and understand new vocabulary in English. It is truly a gratifying experience to see the time I have invested in learning Spanish pay off, and in a way that is helping someone else.
The students I have been working with are in the 5-8th grade age group. 3 years ago they would have been in 2nd-5th grade, which is when we learn how to read and do basic math. 3 years ago the pandemic hit, and everything went online. A lot of these kids can’t read, or do basic multiplication, and it is because of the pandemic, and how it affected this already marginalized community. It is going to take at least a decade to fix all of this, and if you’re reading this and considering volunteering with Homework house, I encourage you to do so. Not only is it a fulfilling experience, but it should be our duty as a community to come together and help these kids catch-up to were they would have been if the pandemic hadn’t happened (which unfortunately is already behind the rest of Western Mass. public schools).
If you are interested in volunteering at Homework House here is a link to their website, they always need volunteers. You can sign up for CESL293 “learning through community engagement,” which will fulfill a Gen ed requirement, and facilitate the volunteer process at Homework house. https://homeworkhouseholyoke.org/