It’s close to 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in April, when a small group of students from Fountain Hill Elementary School bound into a large basement room at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, blocks from the western part of the Lehigh campus. The youngsters are ready, first, for snacks, before diving into homework. They gravitate toward the Lehigh students who come here regularly in late afternoon to help them with their reading and other core subjects.
Abdallah, a second grader, works on his spelling with Joey Kawash ’19, who has devised a game of sorts to encourage the second grader to tend to his tasks. Abdallah identifies a picture, as instructed: Hat. He sounds out how to spell it, then scores a point for writing it correctly too. Other youngsters at nearby tables read or work on other assignments.
The site is one of three homework clubs that support Bethlehem Area School District (BASD) students. Site coordinator Amber Hutchinson ’17 says, in all, some 115 Lehigh students provide in-school and after-school tutoring at Donegan and Fountain Hill elementary schools and Broughal Middle School. Some tutors volunteer, others receive work-study awards.
At a homework club at Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Lehigh tutors help Bethlehem Area School District students with their homework.
At the individual schools, community school coordinators help identify the youngsters who might need extra academic support, but any interested student is welcomed, Hutchinson says. The tutors record each week’s assignments, note students’ strengths and weaknesses, then send reports to the children’s teachers. On Tuesdays, the children have dinner too, courtesy of Lehigh clubs, fraternities and sororities.
Hutchinson finds the work rewarding. She was headed toward a career in electrical engineering, but after years of tutoring as an undergraduate, she decided to change course and pursue a graduate degree in education. “You could just tell when you were making that connection,” says Hutchinson, recalling students’ “pure joy” at improving their math test scores, even the slightest bit. “I love … seeing their growth.”
Carolina Hernandez, assistant dean and director of the Community Service Office at Lehigh, talks about the university’s responsibility to the community.
Recognizing too that quality schools are essential for thriving neighborhoods, Lehigh has actively engaged with BASD Superintendent Joseph Roy ’09 Ph.D. to improve the quality and outcomes of the schools near campus.
Lehigh’s Center for Developing Urban Educational Leaders, and now the Community Service Office, partners with BASD and the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley in creating university-assisted community schools at Broughal, Donegan and Fountain Hill schools. In addition to academic support, the designation allows each school to extend their reach into the community, with students as well as their families receiving health services and social support. The Community Voices Clinic, a mental health clinic in the family centers at Broughal and Donegan schools, was formed in 2012 in partnership with BASD, St. Luke’s Health Network and Lehigh’s counseling psychology program.
Carolina Hernandez, assistant dean and director of the Community Service Office at Lehigh, says Lehigh students are often profoundly influenced by their work in the community. She says tutors, for instance, “quite frequently” change their career trajectories and go on to become educators.
Carolina Hernandez, assistant dean and director of the Community Service Office at Lehigh, talks about what makes a community special.
“When you arrive on a college campus at 18, you are still learning about what it is that you want to potentially do, and there’s this pressure of, ‘I want to do something for the rest of my life,’” she says. “For us, it’s about exposing students and helping students learn who they are and learn about the role that they have in the greater community.”
The Community Service Office, founded in 1996, oversees not only the tutoring programs but also the Great South Side Sale, blood drives and other projects. “We work anywhere and everywhere to meet the community need,” Hernandez says. “Most importantly, we do it all in partnership with our non-profits. Everything is driven by the community voice.”
She says the efforts are making a difference. Children in the tutoring program, she says, have been able to improve their grade-level reading significantly.
“South Side is our community,” Hernandez says, “and we have a duty and a responsibility to the community that we are a part of.”
