If I could give you
one piece of advice when it comes to choosing whether you’d want to take a
community-engaged learning course or not, I’d just say do it. It’s not that
simple, of course, because you’d have questions that many professors who’ve
taught said courses or administrators familiar with the program can answer;
what happens when you have questions for students who have already been
introduced to the community-engaged learning environment though? Yea, that’s
where I come in.
Around mid-January, in
other words, the beginning of the spring semester at Manhattan College, I was a
history major ready to learn everything there is to learn about history. Prior
to this semester, during the registration period, I was told that all history
majors are required to take an introductory course at some point throughout
their time in the program labeled “History 100: (subtitle dependent on
professor)”, and this course was meant to teach students in the program how to
use history in the world around us, as opposed to just memorizing information
from a book. I found out that the History 100 course planned for the 2019
spring semester was a “community-engaged learning” course. What the hell is
that? I thought as I sat in my advisor’s office. After a thorough explanation,
I realized that a community-engaged learning course was not your typical
college, lecture-style class, and my shock immediately turned into
excitement.
After listening to my
advisor’s explanation of the course that I would be taking, my mind immediately
conjured a scenario in which I was sitting in a room with my classmates, our
brains dreading the amount of stress we were about to put them through. Then,
our professor walks in, and it’s Robin Williams. He starts telling us that
textbook learning is nonsense, we are all free thinkers, and at a point we even
start standing on desks shouting, “O, Captain, my Captain!” Yes, if you haven’t
figured it out by now, I love Dead Poets Society. So, to say the least, I was
excited to do some unconventional, out-of-classroom learning, and I thought
this class was going to be my chance to experience that. That would’ve been
dope, but reality wasn’t exactly compliant with my expectations.
Our class was called
“Slavery in the Bronx,” and our goal as a class was to put together a
presentation showing people historical evidence that slavery existed, and was
pretty prominent, in the northern region of America. Specifically, we were
focused on creating a presentation that we planned to present to the community
of Hunts Point in the Bronx at the end of the semester, and a key part of
accomplishing that goal was using the surrounding Bronx community as our
classroom just as much, if not more, as our classroom on campus.
Skipping towards the
middle of the semester where we passed the contextual phase; we established our
goal and now we had to map out the logistics of working towards that goal. Our
professor did most of the logistical work, which included setting up meetings
with professionals in the field we were studying, planning field trips, and
even choosing the venue for our final presentation. We were split up into
various groups and given different responsibilities. There were four groups in
total; Genealogy, Parks/Communications, Community Outreach/PR, and Maps. I was
part of the map group along with two other students. In every group, there was
a recurring theme: collaboration. Not only did I have to work together with the
individuals in my group, but I also had to work with other groups sometimes
because one group may have information that helped my group complete whatever
task we were working on at the time. No matter how much of a solo worker you
think you are, in community engagement courses you will have to work with
others for the sake of completing a task and reaching your class’ end goal in a
timely manner.
If you’re a freshman
at Manhattan College and you’re not that good at socializing (like me),
community-engagement classes are the perfect way to make friends, or at least
socialize under the guise of ‘getting work done.’ The key in my class was
collaboration. If we didn’t work together as a class, there was absolutely no
way our presentation could’ve come out the way it did. The people that I met in
History 100 have inspired me in many ways to become more socially aware, more
empathetic towards others and more passionate about whatever I study. My
professor was a part of that inspiration too. He wasn’t exactly Robin Williams,
but from the beginning, he kept it real with us. He told us that either our final
presentation would be a success or a failure. Plain and simple. He told us that
sometimes life just happens, you make plans and they don’t come to fruition the
way you thought they would, but that doesn’t take away from the experience.
What do they say? It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey?
Whatever it is, it’s true. Regardless of whether our project was successful or
not, I still finished the semester with more friendships than I did at the
beginning, more knowledge than I did at the beginning, and a better view of
unorthodox learning.
The actual engagement
with the surrounding community of the Bronx was a vital component as well! From
meeting with professors from other universities, to visiting St. Ignatius
Loyola and speaking with, arguably, the most socially aware middle schoolers
I’ll probably ever meet, I was able to take a piece from every encounter we
made during the semester and form one mosaic of everything that made my
experience with community-engaged learning one that I’ll never forget.
My advice to you,
reader, is that you understand that the words community engagement means much
more than you might think. When you take a community-engaged learning course,
you’re focused on being more in tune with the community, yes, but you’re also
forming a community yourself, whether you realize it or not. There are people
you will meet throughout the semester that will teach you things that you
simply can’t learn by sitting in a classroom taking notes, and you’ll create
friendships that’ll hopefully last for a lifetime. So, if you’re on the fence
like I was, or nervous about taking a community-engaged learning course at
Manhattan, just do it. It’s the best way to merge community and learning, and
it's a great way to take a break from the routine of the traditional classroom
setting.
P.S. - If you were
wondering how our presentation turned out and would like to watch it, you can
see it on Manhattan College’s Facebook page.
Devaughn Harris is a sophomore majoring in philosophy and minoring in history. He's also a creative: a writer, a thinker, a doer.
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