Teach Baltimore sends help to schools in need

Senior Rodrigo Yano said he applied to Teach Baltimore, a summer program that allows college students to teach at elementary schools in inner-city neighborhoods, because he wanted to work with children from an urban environment.

"I'm from the suburbs, and in the past I taught in more of an upper-middle class neighborhood," Yano said. "Where I grew up, if I got in trouble in school, I would get in even bigger trouble at home. If the kids misbehaved, the parents would take care of it. This was a different experience, a different mentality. Discipline was more up to us, as teachers."

"But in the end, kids are kids," he said. "They might give you a hard time, but that's how all kids are."

Teach Baltimore is a way for college students to become more involved in the surrounding community, said Jody Libit, the director of program operations.

"It's a great opportunity to see the places that students normally might just drive by on their way to school," Libit said. "You can get out of the enclosed campus space and actually work with people from the neighborhood."

For the program, college students spend six weeks teaching kindergarten to second-grade students from Baltimore city schools. Started to prevent summer learning loss, Teach Baltimore focuses mostly on reading and writing skills. The program also includes weekly field trips to places such as the aquarium and Washington D.C., Libit said.

"Children from different incomes learn at pretty much the same rate during the year," she said. "It's during the summer that children from lower incomes fall behind.

"[In the program,] we try to provide them with access to books and to the kinds of opportunities that children from a higher income level might have. It's not just the organized camp aspect, but something as simple as a mother reading to her child in the evening. Some of these kids don't have that. With us, they get that day-to-day practice of the different skills they've acquired during the year," Libit said.

To get into the program, students have to go through an application process that includes essays, recommendations and an interview. The application deadline for this year is March 28.

Once accepted, the college students participate in a three-week training seminar. According to the program Web site, training covers topics such as classroom management, team-building and lesson planning.

Getting used to doing the lesson plans ahead of time was a challenge for senior Meng Meng Shen, who taught for the program this past summer.

"It's not like studying for a test -- you can't just cram it all in the night before," he said. "You have to know what you're doing in advance. And if something doesn't work out, you have to be able to change the plan. That was hard learning at first."

"With little kids, it's easy to get frustrated when you can't keep their attention."

Shen said that though discipline was sometimes a problem, he enjoyed interacting with the children on a more informal basis.

"At recess, or just playing with them, it was fun to interact with people who aren't as strict about their lives," he said. "The kids don't feel restrained. They just do whatever they want and say whatever they want. Sometimes it seems they don't have a care in the world."

But junior Cynthia Rosa said that some of the students had personal or family problems that "shocked" her.

"On a daily basis, the children have to face challenges that I have never faced," she said. "While being their teacher and trying to educate them, I also really became involved in their lives. It became almost a personal mission for me to help them catch up where they should be. It was difficult, because I had to realize there's only so much I could do. I could not solve all their problems."

But for Rosa, despite the demanding nature of the program, it was still well worth it.

"I could do my part to make their summer a little better," she said. "I could show them that there are other possibilities beyond what they know."