Journey to the Center of the YMCA

When a Community Partner requests a site visit, we usually don’t quite know what to expect.  On top of that, November 1^st was a Saturday and I was fully expecting to be going on a site visit to the Wang YMCA of Chinatown alone because of that. However, it seems that some other people at Northeastern were fully aware of the kind of visit this was going to be. I ended up being part of a group consisting of Professor Julie Miller, S-L co-op Barak Soreff, and Service-Learning Teaching Assistant Jennifer Hum.  Northeastern student, former S-L student and Service-Learning Teaching Assistant, and YMCA volunteer Nathan Hahn was nice enough to show us the program, and took us to see students serving in their classrooms.

Angela Tang, the student supervisor for the site, popped her head in a couple times to answer questions and make sure we had access to everything we needed.  She even pulled a couple volunteers away from their conversation groups so that I could talk to them face to face about their service experience.  The resounding consensus was that the service was going very well, and the students felt like they were making a difference.  I’m inclined to agree with them, as I personally have not seen students with the kind of connection to their mentees that they had.  It was instantly obvious when I entered the room that the kids being tutored here were extremely warm and friendly with their tutors.

The students at the Wang YMCA are almost entirely Chinese immigrants with limited English proficiency.   Most of them came from China within the past year, and as such have a very hard time in school.  Nathan had us flip their experience around, and imagine taking science classes in Chinese after six months to a year of taking Chinese lessons.  That is the kind of experience that is hard to imagine doing as an adult, but it would be flat out daunting as a young child.  Their tutors at the YMCA sit in the classroom with them for two hours every Saturday, helping them with homework and reading stories alongside them.  At the end of the session, all of the students come together to read a story out loud, which helps them with comprehension as well as making them more comfortable with speaking in English.  The amazing thing about this program, apart from its successes (notably, 1 student recently went to Boston Latin Academy, 5 more went to John D. O’Bryant High School) is that it is entirely spread by word of mouth.  There is no advertising aside from kids and parents who are already involved in the program spreading it to their friends and family. Despite this there are currently 3 classrooms being used to house the program, and it is still growing.

After we had been shown around each of the classrooms, Angela took us all out for Dim Sum.  It was both delicious and plentiful, and once we had finished Angela would not let us leave without taking home leftovers from at least one dish. During the meal, I got a chance to talk to her about her involvement in the program.  I was extremely impressed by her dedication to the students.  She seemed bolstered by their successes, and genuinely worried about their futures.  When queried about the program overall, she said, “We have one purpose, we give them a chance.”  She also had a lot to say about the efficacy of the program.  The defining factor, it seems, is the kind of time commitment that she believes in.  She encourages programs to foster deep relationships between their students and mentors.  Many of her mentors have been with students for more than one semester and she swears by that.  It allows the students to take time to open up, and when they are comfortable with their tutors they are much more likely to actually focus on their learning.  It is difficult to fully capture the drive that I saw in Angela and Nathan in writing, but suffice it to say that they are passionate and affectionate individuals, and are running a fantastic program. 

                                                                                                            By: Dan McKenna