By Mikaila Baumel, Justice and Legal Thought
Would you like to learn a little about my volunteer program, Lakeland STARs? Awesome! Well, Lakeland STARs is a program through all of scholars paired with Paint Branch Elementary School.
Hi! My name is Mikaila Baumel, and I am a sophomore biochemistry major in the Justice and Legal Thought Scholars program! Would you like to learn a little about my volunteer program, Lakeland STARs? Awesome! Well, Lakeland STARs is a program through all of scholars paired with Paint Branch Elementary School. Once a week, first through sixth graders at the elementary school come to the university. They are paired one on one with a tutor and work with that tutor every week. It is about a two and half to three hour program each week. The first chunk of time is spent helping them with their homework. PBES is a school that has a lot of diversity in its student population, and so some of their homework is in Chinese, which is always funny because I have just as much difficulty with it as they do. After homework, there is either a planned program or free time. If it’s a nice day outside, the kids can run around and play tag; sometimes we try and plan a scavenger hunt for them. If there is a planned program, that can be led by a tutor from scholars or something called Theraplay - a bunch of games the kids play that teach them about playing with others and being fair.
I plan on doing the program until I graduate with the hopes of encouraging and motivating these elementary schoolers to do well in school so they can go to college and be successful.
The programs the tutors lead constitute these capstone programs. While I was not able to do my project due to Coronavirus and being off campus, I would love to tell you a little bit about it. We would have split the kids up so the first through third graders were together and the older kids were together. Then, we created two different versions of a math exam (an easy one and a hard one for each group of kids). They would have been given the same amount of time to complete the tests, and the kids that finished would have gotten a piece of candy. This (hopefully) would have prompted the kids with the harder exams that didn’t finish to speak out and mention how it was unfair that they were given a harder test with the same time limit. This would have led to a discussion about fairness and how they felt and what could have been done differently to make it fairer. I have been with the Lakeland STARs program for two years, and I absolutely love the program. I joined because it reminded me of something I did at home before college. I plan on doing the program until I graduate with the hopes of encouraging and motivating these elementary schoolers to do well in school so they can go to college and be successful.
This project stood out to me because I've worked with young kids before and am passionate about helping underprivileged kids get the opportunities they deserve. I learned a great deal about the Lakeland STARs program and how they incorporate both one on one tutoring and group bonding activities, and am definitely more interested in doing my capstone with them. As a bioengineering major, I think it's super cool that you're having such a great time doing Lakeland STARs as a biochem major.
Hi Mikaila, this is a really great poster and overall a great project you are a part of that helps so many people. To personally impact the younger generation is a very honorable thing, and it seems that you have definitely left an impression on your tutees. Your work with Lakeland STARs definitely ties into the themes from JLT because of the additional resources you helped provide to these lower-income families.
This topic is very relatable because I did something similar with tutoring in high school and I enjoyed watching the students expand their minds to different ways of thinking. Your topic made me aware of the program since I did not know about it before and how children are very diverse from this elementary school. How did you balance the time with the students with your own personal time with school?
I liked this project a lot because of how dedicated the creator was to the improvement of the students they worked with. I've never really heard of this program so everything about this poster was new information to me. What especially stood out was the interest in exposing these kids to a college experience at an early age in order to motivate them to work harder. I thought this was a very interesting idea and I could see it potentially working. My one question would be whether or not the kids volunteer to be a part of the program. I'm interested if it is an after school activity for them or a way for them to get help.
Mikaila, your poster really stood out to me because I decided to join the STARs program as a freshman this past fall, and I'm so glad I did for many of the same reasons you mentioned in your project. From your poster, I got to learn about another individual's personal experience from this program and gained insight on how it can impact people in different ways. I also hope to continue being able to work with my tutor from this past semester and watch him grow and improve. Reading about experiences like yours further inspires me by seeing just how special of an impact we truly can have on these kids.