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Sruthi Ramesh (ft9810)

Dr. Rita Casey

PSY 2400

April 8th 2017

HON 3000: Developmental Psychology Service Learning

For my service learning project, I chose to volunteer at The Childrens Center located in

Midtown, Detroit; I volunteered primarily in the Homework Help Days Program and an ADHD

Support Group. The Childrens Center is an organization that provides specialized clinical

services to children who struggle with behavioral, emotional, educational, intellectual and

developmental challenges or may have experienced trauma. (The Childrens Center website). In

my experience, their programs tend to be very family-friendly and encourage family members to

bond with each other, while also fostering a sense of community between the children and

within the organization that acts as a second home for the children.

The first program that I worked with is called Homework Help Days. In this program,

children are paired with volunteers who can help them with their homework, work with them to

develop skills that they might be lacking in, engage them in educational games, etc; typically this

interaction is one-on-one and the children are encouraged to pick a tutor and stick with them.

This helps to foster a mentor-mentee relationship and improves the quality of care that each

student receives since the tutor is already familiar with the childs strengths, weaknesses, likes

and dislikes.

One thing that really surprised me about this program when I was a new volunteer was

the academic capabilities of the children I worked with. When I first started, I was told that many
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of these children were at least a couple of grades behind their current grade in academic

achievement in at least one subject, but when I started working with them, I realized that their

lagging had less to do with their individual capabilities and more to do with a lack of an essential

individual part of the learning process -- instructional scaffolding (Vygotsky's theory of

learning). When children learn new concepts they may have the tools to solve the problems

(Vygotskys zone of proximal development), but need an adult or someone with experience to

act as a scaffold. This scaffold helps the child use the tools they currently have to do something

unfamiliar by providing the extra support and instruction that is needed. Two essential features

of scaffolding are knowledge of the individual childs current skill level, which some teachers

with a large class may not have, and experience with the skill at hand, which some parents may

not have. It seemed to me that the children at TCC were not getting adequate scaffolding at

school or at home and were thus falling behind. As a volunteer I, among others, was able to act

as an effective scaffold for students by getting to know them well and giving them my individual

attention for as long as they needed to be able to independently solve the problem at hand.

Since there were only about ten students who regularly came to HW Help Days, I (and a

couple of the other regular volunteers) got to know the majority of these children well, and this

familiarity bred close and meaningful relationships. Through this program, I met two children

who really changed the way I think about tutoring and mentoring younger children. The first was

a girl in second grade who, for the purpose of this paper, Ill call T. When I first met she T was

very talkative and mischievous. Her mother and her were very involved in TCC so she knew

everything about everything and everyone. I was asked to help her on that day because she had

English homework, but she insisted on doing her math homework only, because she liked math
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more. Once I coaxed her into finishing both Math and English and asked her what she wanted to

do next, and she immediately picked up a childrens circuit building system. Even though the

packaging said that the toy was meant for older children, I couldnt say no to her enthusiasm. So

I double checked with the coordinator and we sat down and built circuits. As someone who grew

up loving STEM subjects, Im a huge proponent of getting children, especially girls, interested in

STEM fields at a very young age; the fact that TCC also encourages this is heartwarming to me.

As I talked to T over the next few weeks, we became closer and she revealed to me that she

really wanted to go to Wayne State. So, I told her as much as I could about my classes and my

life to try to keep her excited about attending college; somewhere during this conversation, she

told me that she wanted to become a pediatrician, and I began to see a younger version of myself

in her. I remembered being her age and being so excited to be a pediatrician when I was older. In

that moment, our relationship shifted and I no longer saw myself as just her tutor; I saw myself

as her mentor and wanted to watch her grow up and become the doctor that she so earnestly

wanted to be. Ive never had this sort of mentor-mentee relationship -- as a mentor or mentee --

and I can now wholeheartedly corroborate the benefits such a relationship. From the mentors

point of view, talking to someone who is looking to you for advice is rewarding and reminds you

of why you started going down the path you chose. As a mentee, having a mentor to look up to

gives you a unique support system and can be a huge self-confidence booster. Other benefits to

the mentees include higher high school graduation rates, higher college enrollment rates, better

attitudes about school, stronger interpersonal skills, etc. This mentor-mentee relationship, in

particular, focused on both short term success -- in the form of completing homework
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assignments, learning new skills, etc -- and long term success -- in the form of discussions about

college and school.

The second student I got to know well was a 7th grade girl who, for the purpose of this

paper, Ill call L. When I first met L, she was very quiet and sat at the very back on the room.

She was one of the only people that was allowed onto a computer without having to ask

permission; I found this very unusual since the coordinator typically tries to keep the kids off of

the computers. So when the coordinator asked me to go sit with L, I walked over and asked her if

she needed any help. She said, Not really, but I sat down anyways and started talking to her. I

looked closer and saw that she was working on Khan Academy math practice for 4th grade at

this point I didnt know how old she was, so this didnt strike me as unusual. As I got to know

her, I found out that she was working on 4th grade math assignments because her father wanted

her to work her way up to 7th grade, which seems reasonable until you actually try working with

the system. L was pretty good at what she was doing, but it took her nearly two months to get

from 4th grade to 5th grade because of the way the program was set up; it probably would have

taken me two months to do the same. She was beyond frustrated, and she went from liking math

to despising it. So I asked the coordinator if there was a specific reason why she was doing this

repetitive work, and I learned that the coordinator had also been trying to convince Ls father to

let her just skip ahead to 7th grade. However, Ls fathers desire for her to do so much math

wasnt out of concern for her mathematical abilities; it was to keep her busy so that he wouldnt

have to spend time with her. I learned that Ls father would drop her off at TCC and sometimes

not even show up to pick her up and that was part of the reason why it took her so long to warm

up to people. After I learned this, I tried to think of ways that I could help L feel more confident
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and supported. The next time I met with her, I asked her what she'd rather do instead of math.

She immediately told me that she wanted to draw, but that her dad would never let her. So I told

her that if she worked on her math for an hour, I could find something for her to draw or color.

She seemed hesitant at first, but eventually agreed. My reasoning for doing this stemmed from

what I knew about the importance of feelings autonomy and competency. According to

Ericksons Theory of Social Development, L and her peers are currently working to resolve a

conflict between Industry and Inferiority. Here, industry refers to the capability to acquire new

skills and knowledge, thereby increasing ones self esteem and self-confidence. However, in Ls

case, she was forced to repeat skills that she knew well and was prevented from acquiring new

skills; this in turn reduced her self esteem and feelings of adequacy, as the theory predicted. In

order to nudge her toward industry, I encouraged her to set boundaries for herself and tried to

give her options to choose from where possible. I encouraged her to make decisions that would

help her develop new interests and skills. She still does math during the tutoring sessions, but we

work together to create a time-table that will allow her to explore other subjects and interests as

well. Overall, the Homework Help Program introduced me to some wonderful children who I

will definitely continue to tutor and mentor, and also helped me better understand the importance

of developmental psychology in early education.

The other program that I volunteered with was an ADHD Support Group. My role

involved working with the siblings of the children with ADHD who were at the support group.

TCC recognized that the siblings of children with special needs or illnesses are very often given

less attention than their sibling and that this lack of attention can translate to lower academic

performance, poor interpersonal skills, etc. In order to combat this, TCC encouraged the parents
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involved in this support group to bring all of their children and organized a group of volunteers,

myself included, to work with them. My job primarily included talking to these children, playing

games with them and occasionally helping them with their homework. I noticed that many of

these children were very shy and took a long time to warm up. For a couple of weeks, I got to

work with a toddler, who was about two years old. Since we had just finished the chapters on

Childhood in my developmental psychology class, I was able to apply some of the concepts that

I learned in class while looking after this child. In particular, I tried to talk to the toddler as much

as possible, even though he couldnt really form words; talking to children when theyre young

helps them develop a richer vocabulary later in life and improves their memory and

word-processing ability. I also read stories to him and played age appropriate color matching

games, etc. This experience reminded me that the siblings of children with special needs are also

affected, but are among the first to be overlooked.

Overall, volunteering at The Childrens Center was incredibly gratifying and

eye-opening. I learned many life-lessons that I will carry with me and created many new

relationships that I will cherish. I am especially thankful that I was able to have this experience

alongside PSY 2400 this semester; being able to directly apply the concepts that I was learning in

class to a real-world setting allowed me to more effectively help the children I was working with,

while simultaneously strengthening by understanding of the concepts I had learned. I look

forward to continuing to volunteer at The Childrens Center.