Helping others get a leg up
Community volunteering is part of the curriculum at many private schools, with students helping those in lower grades
Katrina Yeung came to Canada three years ago from Hong Kong and settled into Havergal College, a private school in Toronto, as a boarder.
She worked hard at school, at making friends and fitting in. Now a Grade 11student, Yeung, 16, has taken her new immigrant experience to help other students in the surrounding community feel like they belong, too, by volunteering for “homework clubs.”
Like she has done for the last two years, Yeung boards a shuttle bus every Wednesday that takes her to Grenoble Public School, 20 minutes away, to help elementary students with their homework. Last year, she was paired with a Grade 4 student, a recent immigrant from the Middle East.
“I worked with her to do her class assignments and then we had fun reading stories and playing games like Apples to Apples, Scrabble and Pictionary to improve her English,” Yeung says.
While all secondary school students in Ontario are required to put in 40 hours of volunteer work in order to graduate, the majority of private schools in the GTA kick that requirement up a notch by making volunteering and community work part of the yearlong curriculum, in many cases significantly surpassing the 40-hour mark.
Private schools also expect their students to use their problem-solving and lesson planning skills to better the lives of those they help, and to look at the impact the volunteer experiences have had on them.
Yeung, for one, says that the homework club at Grenoble has irrevocably changed her and provided her with a love of volunteering.
“I was really shy in Grade 9,” she says, “and now I feel more self-confident.”
The experience has also made Yeung more reflective about her life and her future in the world at large. “I want to become an emergency room surgeon and work in the developing world.”
Yeung’s new-found focus is due in part to the way in which Havergal, through its Institute: Forum for Change program, encourages students to pursue their passion and become innovators through local community partnerships and international exchanges and excursions.
Says Melanie Belore, interim manager of Havergal’s Institute: “It’s a shared, cross-cultural experience where our students benefit just as much as those they help.”
At Appleby College, a private school in Oakville, Ont., Milena Vujicic, 14, a Grade 9 student, has been tutoring elementary school children for two years at Kerr Street After-School Program, a non-profit organization that supports low-income families.
“At Appleby, these volunteer programs are embedded in our students’ days,” says Bonnie Woolfenden, director, service learning at Appleby. “Every Friday, they take some time to reflect on the impact they are making, are encouraged to understand its context and apply it to their own lives.”
Vujicic identified a Grade 3 student who was afraid she wouldn’t pass her EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) provincial exam. Two to three times a week for three months, Vujicic prepared the student using an Ontario Ministry of Education test booklet in the areas of math and English.
“My volunteer work at Kerr has improved my tutoring and communica-
“I was really shy in Grade 9 and now I feel more self-confident.” KATRINA YEUNG GRADE 11 STUDENT AT HAVERGAL COLLEGE
tion skills and fostered a passion for teaching,” Vujicic says. She sees herself becoming a neuroscientist and maybe someday a professor.
Kirsten St. Germain, Kerr’s children’s program co-ordinator, says that the decade-long partnership with Appleby College has made a huge difference to the program’s participants because they get one-onone help.
“Our kids get excited when they see the Appleby students come through the door.”
For Garima Karia, her secondary school volunteer experience also helped her on her own education journey.
Karia, 18, recently graduated from Toronto French School’s International Baccalaureate Program and is now a student at McGill University in Montreal studying political science and organism ecosystems.
While at TFS, she committed to the school’s four-month service project volunteering to work with Pathways to Education, a national, non-profit organization that helps teens in lowincome communities stay in school, graduate and go on to post-secondary education.
Says Kim English, a TFS guidance counsellor: “We help students like Garima Karia gain awareness of how other people live and challenge them to move out of their comfort zone.”
Twice a week, Karia tutored students from Grades 9 to 12 in English, math and sciences, helping them complete their school assignments. “My time at Pathways has been nothing short of incredible.”
One girl in particular, Karia remembers, had difficulty with public speaking. So Karia used her TFS experience as a Model United Nations delegate, debater and dramatic arts participant to create a public speaking workshop for small groups of teens. They learned tactics for effective presentations and speeches.
“I am glad I was able to give back to the Pathways community in sharing what I love.”