Name: Samantha Jaeger Name: Stephen Pendergast
Class Year: Sophomore Class Year: Junior
Major(s): Psychology Major(s): English, Philosophy
Minor(s): Educational Studies, Writing and Communications Minor(s): Writing and Communications
Fun Fact: I sing! Fun Fact: I play piano!
HC Siena: You’re both Writing Center Community Engaged Fellows. This is a new position. Can you describe how this position came about and the responsibilities this job entails?
Samantha Jaegar: Last year, within the Writing 240 class, we fostered a partnership with Albany Leadership High that we wanted to continue. This position is new because Dr. Glynn wanted us at ALH year round, not just in the spring semester with the Writing 240 students. We are helping Dr. Glynn design Writing 240 as a community engaged class. We go to ALH every Tuesday and Thursday morning to tutor in classrooms.
Stephen Pendergast: Part of this project, or the vision that Dr. Glynn has, is to make the Writing Center more engaged in the community; we don’t believe that the Writing Center is just a thing to itself anymore. If we are in a college, we should have an affect on the community around us, and in turn the community will also affect us.
HC Siena: You were both in Writing 240 last semester. What made you want to take up this leadership position?
SJ: We didn’t really get a lot of time at ALH, maybe about five weeks. I had to miss our first visit for a family emergency and one of my other sessions got cancelled. I only got to ALH three times, but even in just those three times I felt that I was really connecting with the students I was working with. I didn’t feel like I was there long enough but I felt like I could have an impact if there was more than I could do, so I wanted to stay along and do that.
SP: Similarly to Sam, I really enjoyed my time at ALH. I was with the ENL program instead of the ELA program. I loved the teacher I worked with, Sr. Sharifa, and I loved the work we were doing, so I wanted to continue it. One of the things we’re trying to do with this partnership is research with ALH on how to tutor effectively, especially focusing on how to tutor ENL students. That’s just really cool, as nerdy as that sounds. It’s really cool.
SJ: Nothing that I could have learned in the classroom would have taught me nearly as much as going to ALH.
HC Siena: Sam, you work with ELA students, while Steve, you work with ENL students. Can you describe the differences?
SJ: Steve definitely has a few more challenges than I do. I don’t work a language barrier, but that being said some of my ninth graders are reading and writing at a fourth and fifth grade level. Some of the girls are up to par on their reading level, and some are even beyond. It is a really really wide range, that definitely poses a challenge. I can work with a girl who only needs me to go over something, look through it, make a couple of minor fixes, and that’s it. On the other hand, I’ll work with a girl who uses the words “like,” “as,” and “dude” in her paper, and I really have to work hard in sessions like those.
SP: The thing with ENL students is there is really no one challenge. ENL, for those who don’t know is English as a New Language. The challenges are multifaceted. One of the things that we are trying to do at ALH across the board is improve literacy, and that’s one of the things writing centers are supposed to do as a whole. Writing centers are not just a “fix-it” shop for papers.The specific challenge for ENL students is, what language do they speak as a native language? Language really affects how you think. Not only do I have students who think in ways that are not standard for academic English, but then also I have to deal with the literal language barrier itself. There are not really strategies to help you go through it, it is more about patience using Google Translate and just being there for the students. It’s almost better if the students have the confidence that they can write, rather than learning the English to write which just comes with living in America and going through American school programs. A lot of what I do focuses more on wholistically tutoring the student. It’s also sometimes tough to see improvement with a students, but there are a lot of small victories.
HC Siena: Can you talk about the long term future of this partnership?
SJ: Part of the reason that we are there every Tuesday and Thursday is to maintain this partnership so we can continue to work towards the ultimate goal: to build some sort of a writing center in ALH. ALH also has a very, very small library. We want to give ALH the resources for more opportunities. We want to be able to build basically a satellite writing center, where we can train students at ALH to tutor other students, exactly like we do here at Siena. We are looking at some federal funding, but everything is all up in the air at this point. The hope in the future is that we will be able to have the funding to improve those two areas where literacy would be important.
SP: Ideally if we get this satellite writing center, it would also become a place where Siena students themselves can go serve at this writing center, and be there to help ALH students help other ALH students. We are trying to build a very sustainable relationship between ALH and Siena. What we are doing right now is a lot of groundbreaking for the future of this partnership.
SJ: We’re there to make Siena’s presence known. Me working in my ninth grade classroom is not the long term goal necessarily. We’re just trying to maintain and further grow the relationship right now.
SP: We want them to know that we are not here to fill out hours. We want them to know that we are trying to improve the school as a whole.
HC Siena: If a Siena student wanted to get involved with this partnership, how could they?
SJ: They should definitely reach out to Dr. Glynn or Dr. Kassel, who will consult with us and from there we can work on placement within ALH for the student. Our program is literacy, but if anyone wants to be involved at ALH within a different capacity, that is more than welcome, and it can definitely happen.
SP: What she said.