For a better understanding of how volunteering can benefit you as well as the students you work with, click on any of the links below.
- Community Resource Advocate finds volunteering very rewarding
- Tutoring proves to be good practice for a career in teaching
- Developing a rEast High School tionship with students is the key
- MNIC instructor sees growth in students and volunteers
Community Resource Advocate finds volunteering very rewarding
Meg Lewis’s enthusiasm for volunteering at the Minnesota Internship Center is infectious. “I love it there,” she says. “I work as a CRA—Community Resource Advocate—doing things like helping students to find housing, fill out college applications, explore careers, and learn job skills.”
Meg works with the Somali and Ethiopian students at MNIC’s East High School . She started her volunteer internship at MNIC as part of a degree in Family Social Science, which combines social work and family psychology. She plans to work as a marriage and family therapist after graduation.
“The Somalis and Ethiopians have such a strong sense of family,” she explains when asked about the connection between her volunteer position and her career. “And the separations that they have suffered are just heartbreaking.” Meg believes that her volunteer work has deepened her compassion and helped her to understand more more completely how important family can be.
When asked about the qualities she needs in her volunteer position
Meg laughs and says “Patience—because the students are just learning English.” ‘Another laugh. “—and creativity. There’s a values checklist that we use with students to help them explore different
careers. I have to figure out ways to help students that don’t speak English understand words like ‘achievement’ or ‘competition.’”
How does she manage to convey the meaning of those abstractions? “Oh, I use scenarios and then have the students tell me how the scenarios should end.”
“You also need to be understanding and it helps if you are a naturally social person yourself,” she concludes.
Like so many volunteers Meg recognizes the many ways that she is benefiting from her experience at MNIC. “The students are profoundly appreciative, even though they need so much more than I can give them,” she says. “I’m very touched by their gratitude. They have taught me to appreciate all that I have. I thought I had to work hard to get where I am, but compared to their struggles…I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate my life.”
Tutoring proves to be good practice for a career in teaching
Antoni Tang started volunteering at the East High School to fulfill a requirement for service 
learning in an African American Studies class at the University of Minnesota, but
he enjoyed what he was doing and learned so much himself that he decided to stay on and continue tutoring. Antoni believes that the experiences he has had as an English tutor and as a writing tutor
directly rEast High School te to his goal of becoming a teacher himself.
“I’m learning how to use different teaching techniques,” says Antoni. “For example, I’m learning that repetition is a great way for beginning English students to learn, but with more advanced students you don’t want to give anything away. The more advanced students will ask you questions but you just want to give them hints. You want to help them see that they can figure out the answers themselves.”
Patience is the quality that Antoni finds most important in his work with students at MNIC. It is also a quality that his students have helped him to develop. “My students have taught me a lot—it isn’t so easy to learn a foreign language when you are just thrown in. This summer I worked with a student named Khalid who was starting from scratch. He didn’t know the alphabet or any English at all, and I got a much better understanding of what people go through by working with him. To be a good tutor you have to be sensitive to that, but at the same time you need to be a motivator.”
Does he feel that his volunteer efforts have paid off for the
students? “Some students struggle and it can be frustrating if they can’t move to the next level, but some students make a lot of progress. Two of the students that I worked with in the
writing class are going to the University this year and I have run into them on campus. That’s a great feeling.”
Developing a rEast High School tionship with students is the key
“I’m an education student at the University and you hear over and over again in education classes that you need to develop a rEast High School tionship with your students,” says Ashley Penny, a MNIC basic skills tutor. “But I didn’t really understand what this meant until I started tutoring. It has been amazing to see how the establishment of a rEast High School tionship can make such a difference in the classroom."
“I stand out like a sore thumb,” she continues. “I’m blonde, and white, and my students are mostly African American. I was afraid at first that we wouldn’t connect, but the second time I went I played football with the students and they were all totally about letting me play. I tutor, but I’ve also gone on field trips, and I’ve played sports with the students. They are more willing to listen to me in the classroom because I know them and they know me.”
Ashley tutors one morning a week at the University Technology Center, located in Dinkytown. She began tutoring at MNIC because she wanted to experience education in a non-traditional school.
“I’ve learned that just because it doesn’t look like the classroom that you went to in high school, doesn’t mean it isn’t a classroom,” says Ashley. “Skills that I got while discussing Shakespeare, the MNIC students are getting through discussions about current events or events that are important to them.”
Ashley believes that the most important quality for a volunteer is flexibility. “I am a tutor, but some days I am also a mentor and I end up answering a lot of questions about college. I try to make it tangible for the students, not this huge thing that they could never aspire to. I know they could be successful in college.”
“Also, you have to realize that volunteering isn’t about you and what you can get out of it,” she continues. “It’s about how you can help someone else. You need to be patient and remember that even if you go home frustrated, if your student is learning, the day was a success.”
MNIC instructor sees growth in students and volunteers
Volunteer tutors in Jill Krause’s class at the East High School are often greeted by students calling out “Teacher, Teacher.”
Jill Krause has been an instructor in the East High School for the past 4 years and during that time has worked with 6 – 15 volunteers each week in her class. “The students consider all of us, me and the volunteers, to be teachers,” says Jill. “They gravitate toward the volunteers because they know that they will get the help they need.”
Jill believes that the most important quality a volunteer can bring to the classroom is a sincere interest in the students. “If you get to know your students by name, it makes such a difference—they really respond to people that are genuinely interested,” explains Jill.
“Patience is also important,” Jill says. “You may need to explain things 3, 4, or maybe even 5 times, in different ways but in simple English. You need to be willing to work with high school age students that are at grade school level in their language skills.”
Jill says that she has worked with volunteers in many different ways—sometimes the volunteers are assigned to one student, sometimes a volunteer will work with a small group. “It is great for the students that are behind the rest of the class,” she says, “because the volunteer can explain things in depth.”
Jill has also occasionally split her class in two and asked a volunteer to work with one of the large groups, but only if she knows the volunteer well and the volunteer is comfortable with the idea. “It’s very helpful to be able to do this sometimes. For example, if we are asking students to read out loud,” she explains, “a lot more students will get a chance if I can split the class into two groups.”
“This is a great opportunity for the students, but also for the volunteers,” she continues, “I’ve had some volunteers that were very timid when they started, but the students are so welcoming. Volunteers are very important here.”
See more on volunteering at MNIC...
Minnesota Internship Center Charter High School
300 Industrial Blvd
Minneapolis, MN 55413
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office@mnic.org
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