2008 Woodie Awards
Campus Ministry Corner
Beth Sheehan
Issue date: 2/5/05 Section: Campus Life
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When I decided to go on a Spring Break mission my freshman year, I felt particularly called to join the group that went to the South Bronx, after reading a book by Jonathan Kozol called Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace is a book about Mott Haven, South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in our nation. At that time I had had some exposure to the poor before in my life. I have been a volunteer at My Brother's Keeper, a small Christian non-profit which brings food and furniture to people who need it throughout Southeastern Massachusetts. I have been through some of the tougher streets of Brockton on countless food deliveries, and I have brought furniture into frighteningly empty apartments, where single mothers and their children have nothing and are forced to sleep on the floor. As I read Kozol's book, I was startled by the conditions in which children were forced to grow up in the Bronx. Stories of rat infested apartments, heroin needles in playgrounds, parents with AIDS, and shootings on the streets made Brockton look like heaven. "What are these Mott Haven children going to be like?," I wondered, as we traveled towards our temporary home on 42nd street.
The next day we arrived at the Mercy Center, a new facility built in Mott Haven that helps run the after school program that we were working at. Despite the beautiful new facility, its surroundings were more than dismal. There was trash everywhere on the streets, clusters and clusters of high rises for subsidized housing, and homeless people pushing carts. Aside from the Mercy Center, the storefronts, the schools, the houses, and streets all looked dirty and depressing. When we went to the elementary school where we were volunteering, we were sent to a classroom where students were working on their homework.. I was both shocked and upset by the difficulty that these students had in doing their work, many of them struggling with work that was well below their grade level. It was clear that many of them faced challenges with learning disorders, while others were still learning to speak English as a second language. Working with these kids was challenging for me; often times the kids were too hungry to work, as they said they didn't have any breakfast. Other kids who were in second and third grade had dark circles under their eyes and fought to stay awake, telling me that they were up until 2 or 3 in the morning. The range of abilities in kids of the same age made helping them complete their homework difficult; some third graders were able to do their times tables effortlessly, while others were struggling with basic addition. I grew frustrated, not with the children or the school or any one person in particular, but with the fact that many of these kids statistically weren't going to make it far educationally. Many of them talked about how they hated school, how it was a waste of time, and how they wouldn't be going to high school. I tried hard to look past this fact and encourage them as I helped them with their studies.
The next day we arrived at the Mercy Center, a new facility built in Mott Haven that helps run the after school program that we were working at. Despite the beautiful new facility, its surroundings were more than dismal. There was trash everywhere on the streets, clusters and clusters of high rises for subsidized housing, and homeless people pushing carts. Aside from the Mercy Center, the storefronts, the schools, the houses, and streets all looked dirty and depressing. When we went to the elementary school where we were volunteering, we were sent to a classroom where students were working on their homework.. I was both shocked and upset by the difficulty that these students had in doing their work, many of them struggling with work that was well below their grade level. It was clear that many of them faced challenges with learning disorders, while others were still learning to speak English as a second language. Working with these kids was challenging for me; often times the kids were too hungry to work, as they said they didn't have any breakfast. Other kids who were in second and third grade had dark circles under their eyes and fought to stay awake, telling me that they were up until 2 or 3 in the morning. The range of abilities in kids of the same age made helping them complete their homework difficult; some third graders were able to do their times tables effortlessly, while others were struggling with basic addition. I grew frustrated, not with the children or the school or any one person in particular, but with the fact that many of these kids statistically weren't going to make it far educationally. Many of them talked about how they hated school, how it was a waste of time, and how they wouldn't be going to high school. I tried hard to look past this fact and encourage them as I helped them with their studies.