Young Leaders Finding a Solution

All of the opportunities and experiences that I have accumulated in my two years at the University of Southern California (USC) have led me along a path of service learning—community service that bolsters my academic experience by giving my service context in the community. The most valuable service-learning program that I have been involved in at USC has been the Joint Educational Project (JEP). As a freshman, this program allowed me to visit the schools in the community and mentor elementary students in reading and math. My guidance may have helped my tutees’ reading, but, more importantly, it increased their confidence in themselves as successful students. JEP offers elementary, middle, and high school students a weekly mentor, and helps establish a support for young students outside of their families and traditional classrooms. Last year as a program assistant and this year as a co-director for JEP’s Spanish department and Peace Games program, I assist other USC students’ service learning endeavors.

USC is located in a largely Hispanic area of Los Angeles where many of the schools have largely Hispanic student bodies. The students that I have worked with have unknowingly convinced me to pursue a minor in Spanish to maintain bilingual fluency so that I can teach students in similar schools in an effective and comfortable manner.

My experience in six of the schools bordering USC has proven to me that there is a need for customized learning plans for Spanish-speaking children in English-speaking schools. As a result, I joined a research team in the linguistics department at USC to study bilingualism and second-language learning in adults. The work I did in my first semester on that project helped me earn a scholarship to participate in the McNair Scholars Summer Research Program for 2007. The McNair program is hosted by more than one a hundred U.S. college campuses and offers under-privileged and minority undergraduate students the opportunity to construct a research proposal and work with university faculty members for 10 weeks to carry out the project, preparing them for a graduate education.

The intricate relationships that I was beginning to see between linguistics, bilingualism, and education inspired my proposal for the study of Spanish-speaking students in Los Angeles schools and how their parents’ home literacy practices (how often they read at home, what they read, whether they read in English or Spanish, and more) relate to their children’s reading scores by age nine (when all California students are expected to be fluent readers).

Monica Bennett (second from left) with USC 2007 McNair Cohort Scholars

Growing interest in related research on the part of educators and politicians alike has allowed me to publish my findings in a research journal and to present it at the McNair Research Symposiums at UC Berkeley. It is clear that there is a growing interest in Latino students, not only as an illustration of our wavering educational system, but also as leaders in finding the solution. My Mexican background, supportive mentors, parents, and academic experiences have opened doors for me that I never would have imagined existed. Today, my relatively small involvement in a neighborhood that is starving for academic attention is allowing me to achieve my aspirations to better myself while making a difference in my community. As astronomer and mathematician John Lubbock wrote, “The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.”

This belief and the support of those around me motivate me to inspire the wish to learn in my students and peers.

Taking the initiative to seek out opportunities, to reach my goals and building a strong support system of people have helped, and continue to help me to achieve my aspirations. No matter what your passion is, know your goals and know that you can reach them; all it takes is time, dedication, and initiative.
 

By Monica Bennett