STAR Volunteer with the YMCA
Community Engagement and Sources of Power
Catalina Currier
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Over the past two years, I have spent my community engagement hours as a volunteer mentor and tutor in the after school program, STAR (Strengthening Teens Academically and Recreationally), a non-profit hosted by the Tuckahoe YMCA. STAR focuses on students in Quioccasin Middle School who speak English as a second language and most of the students are children of immigrants, refugees, or came to the USA seeking a better option. Students come to STAR after school for 2 hours to get help from high school and college volunteers in practicing English, completing homework assignments, and socializing with others for practice in English.
Several students struggle from being very intelligent in their own language, to being looked down on in class for not knowing the answers in English, and come to STAR discouraged. Those students end up not completing assignments or slacking off because they find it a better option than to ask for help. The volunteers are there to encourage them to complete their homework and to help tutor them in their different subjects, but it’s hard to establish a relationship when volunteers are only there on certain days.
The program runs Monday through Thursday, and due to my own schedule, I can only ever be there twice a week. This is common among other volunteers who only show up once or twice a week, and sometimes not at all. This leads to a sense of loss from the students. They don’t trust in the volunteers, because they are afraid they will be gone by the next semester, which often happens. When I first started volunteering, the students were reluctant to come up to me and ask for help, because they didn’t know who I was or if they could rely on me to provide them the best and correct information.
This ties together with the 5 Bases of Power and how they’re utilized in this setting. The Director who runs the program holds Legitimate, Reward and Coercive power, as she has the ability to take away phones, punish the kids, or reward them for behaving well. In comparison, my power seems obsolete and leads to the students not wanting to listen to me.
As a volunteer and “cool college kid”, I have some Referent power, the ability to influence based on the strength of the relationship between a leader and their followers, because of my status, but it had to be built up over time. “Big Kids,” such as high schoolers or college volunteers are seen as cool, interesting and young, and that connects them to the pre-teens in middle school, as opposed to adult teachers. The STAR students are more likely to listen to them, as well as confide in them worries, fears and doubts. They trust their volunteers to be truthful with them. But as said before, this type of relationship needs to be built over time.
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During my first year in the program, the kids were awkward around me, and were reluctant to push past the referent power I held as an older student. As I built relationships and came back for a second year, they began holding me to higher standards in my role. One time around exams for university students, I told one of my regular students that I would be gone for the second day of the week to study, and she replied, “Well come here and study with us, we can help you.” That interaction has stuck with me, because these students were reflecting back the same encouragement I showed to them.
My two artifacts are a card from last spring, and a Valentine’s Day card from this spring. Last year, they wrote a generic card to every volunteer, but it still made me feel happy inside that I was making a positive impact on these student’s lives. Then on Valentine’s Day, I got a much more detailed card from one of my students who wanted to say thank you for taking interest in what she was interested in, and that she was happy for me to be a part of the program. By investing in the student’s activities that make them happy, I can help them to have a more fulfilling time in the program and develop stronger relationships with them.