Action | Student News
Bringing the Environment to Durham Elementary Schools
MEMs Volunteer Through the DEL Community
Outreach Program
By Jean Lynch MEM '06
Faced with heavy course loads and career development concerns, many professional degree students barely find time to sleep, much less volunteer. But up to a quarter of Nicholas School students have made time to connect with the Durham community through the Duke Environmental Leadership (DEL) Community Outreach Program.
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The kindergartners in Jamie Barnhill’s classroom were in high spirits, and the silent cheer their teacher asked for was anything but silent. Who could blame them? They were five years old, it was a sunny day, and two enthusiastic graduate students had just stopped by to talk with them about turtles, jellyfish and spiders. There also may have been the hint of a game of make-believe in the air, too.
A Nicholas School student would feel right at home in this classroom. Mr. Barnhill and his charges had festooned it with artifacts from nature and projects explaining how they work. Elk skulls and paper fishes, tadpoles and insects adorned the walls, and a science center explained the parts of a spider. “What is a flower?” “What is a bird?”
Colleen Kenney and Sarah Borchelt, first-year MEM candidates, were regular volunteers at this classroom at Durham’s Forest View Elementary School. Previously, they had talked about butterflies with the children and paper cutouts still decorated the room, providing a reminder of the lesson. Today, Kenney announces, they would talk about land and sea turtles and their associated food webs.
A voice broke in over the intercom: “Boys and girls, we will be having a fire drill in just a few minutes. Remember that we always ask you to leave the classroom quietly and behave as though there might be a real fire.” They did exit quietly, inspired by Mr. Barnhill’s request to file out “as silently as a box turtle swimming in a pond at night.”
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The outreach program is administered by the Nicholas School’s DEL program. Deb Hall MEM’00, runs it with the help of student assistants in three Durham elementary schools—E.K. Powe, Forest View, and C.C. Spaulding. Involvement ranges from one-time special projects to regular student visits to the classrooms of interested teachers, depending on the wishes of the partner school and the availability of Nicholas School volunteers.
While Hall has the job of developing relationships with schools in the community, it fell to Vanessa Jordan, the program assistant and an MEM candidate, to recruit the 2004-2005 volunteers and match them with appropriate assignments. On Jordan’s watch, at least 50 MEM candidates managed to find time to teach environmental science in the community. About 20 students volunteered on a regular weekly or biweekly basis, and dozens of others were involved in occasional or one-time teaching events such as Arbor Day and Earth Day celebrations or Family Science Night at E.K. Powe. Some students took on an entire classroom, while some work with a few students or with one student at a time. Jordan volunteered regularly and can’t say enough good things about the program and the volunteers: “The commitment the volunteers showed was amazing. The greatest thing about the program is that both the school kids and the Nicholas School students benefit tremendously from it. We all learn from each other.”
photo captions:1. Colleen Kenney; 2. Sarah Borchelt; 3. Forest View Elementary Students