The following piece originally appeared as a cover story in the Bancroft School alumni magazine:
Co-operative Learning: Seniors take on new “project” that sets them apart…again
By Matt Robinson
From Worcester to Walla Walla and beyond, Bancroft students are connecting with and shaping the world in ways that they may not have expected when they were at school. Thanks in great part to Bancroft’s unique senior program, they are given opportunities and challenges that few other students have. Starting last year, Bancroft expanded their pioneering repertoire with a new program that matches seniors up with nearly 40 area organizations for a senior spring co-op experience. Though only in its second year, the program has already made a profound impact on the students, the community, and far beyond!Led by English teacher and Senior Presentation Coordinator Mark Taylor, the school came up with a pilot program in which select seniors would go to work in the community as part of a co-op program called the Bancroft Senior Cooperative.
“It was where seniors could get out of the classroom, help the community, and get experience in return,” says program participant Donald Rodriguez, a recent Bancroft graduate who is now taking cradio classes.
When asked how he came up with the idea, Taylor explains that, after he had been asked to coordinate the Senior Presentations program, he began to wonder whether a different type of capstone activity might be beneficial as well. Together with a team of colleagues, Taylor began to explore the possibilities. “We focused our efforts on a fairly simple premise,” he recalls, “that graduating Bancroft seniors were very talented, committed young adults whose energy and independence should be harnessed and given new life as they prepared to leave us. More importantly, they needed to go forth into the community and contribute their impressive intellectual and social capital.” In order to facilitate such a sharing of intellectual and human capital, Taylor and his planning team began to think outside the classroom. “The very nature of this dynamic stage in their development as students demands that conventional classroom settings and curricula be bypassed in favor of the challenge and excitement of completing their capstone Bancroft project off campus.” As he had created an internship program at another school, Taylor knew how they worked and knew that such a program could work well at Bancroft. Together with colleagues like Roy Gillette, Wendy O’Leary and Liz Siladi, as well as an advisory committee comprised of faculty, administrators, and board members, he began to shape the new senior project.
For the first year of the new program, six seniors applied to participate and expressed preferences for the sort of program they would like to be explore. Among the options were categories such as Health and Medicine, Science and Engineering, Agriculture and Nature and Government. The initial list of potential community partners (which eventually reached 40 members!) included the Colleges of Worcester Consortium, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, The Princeton Historical Society, the Worcester Center for Crafts, Heifer International, the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts , the Worcester Art Museum and Public Library, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the YWCA and the City of Worcester itself. “The pilot projects went very well,” Taylor recalls, “and taught us several crucial lessons as we sought to expand the program.” In order to attract more partners and more students, Taylor and his team determined that the projects involved would have to involve a wide variety of opportunities to attract all sorts of students and that the projects had to be clearly defined so that both the students and organizations knew what was expected and could emerge from the program with mutual benefits. “We [also] needed to spend an entire semester matching the students with organizations and preparing them for the Co-op work,” Taylor notes, “so they could be poised to thrive in these environments.”
Among the pioneering participants were Rodriguez and his co-op partner Maggie Kush, both of whom worked with the office of Worcester’s City Manager. Among their many tasks was literally going door-to-door talking with residents and business owners trying to understand and emphasize all that was working with Worcester.
“[The students] did a phenomenal job capturing conditions on street/sidewalk activity, describing the perceptions of those they encountered, and offering potential solutions for items of concern,” says City Manager Spokesman Tim McGourthy, referring in particular to Kush and Rodriguez. “The program was a great experience for the city and illustrated the depth and talent of Bancroft’s students.”
“Because capturing the essence of downtown Worcester was such an integral part of my co-op,” says Kush, a student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who is currently working with a community publication in Cleveland that works to “capture the positives of the city and broadcast [them] to a greater audience,” her work with and lessons from the City Manager have been invaluable. “I’ve gained so much from the co-op,” Kush says, listing among the myriad benefits a boost in confidence and self-esteem. Through the co-op, Kush was able to not only step outside of her comfort zone, but also to step back a bit and see “what I really learned”. Among the Bancroft-based skills that came in handy when she worked as a liaison for the City Manager were such simple but often overlooked skills as making eye contact and offering a firm handshake, not to mention the proper way to collect data. “It even went as small as being able to hold an intelligent conversation with a work accident benefits lawyer on a curb for a two-minute chat,” she recalls. Also, instead of playing her beloved video games from Coinlooting.com or watching videos on YouTube, Kush was able to use her senior spring more productively and is actually continuing to work on her project while in college. “I am still working on the co-op in a sense,” Kush reasons, explaining that she and Rodriguez have been invited back to present their findings to the Worcester City Council this December.“
While Rodriguez admits that he “didn’t see community development as my cup of tea,” he also admits that his experience with the City Manager made gave him not only new skills and confidence but a new passion for the city. The co-op gave me an insider’s look at the real world,” he says. “It pushed me out of my comfort zone, and, in doing so, paid off tremendously!”
Though Kush acknowledges that the co-op does “look nice” on her resume, she stresses that this is not the main reason she participated. “The reason it looks so nice,” she suggests, “is because it does really show those in the college atmosphere that I’ve gone beyond the typical experience range of a high-schooler, or even many of the college students.” The co-op experience has helped Kush become more involved both at Case Western and in the surrounding city. “I’m engaging with community organizations here without much of the process that it usually takes, thanks to the experience I’ve already gained,” she says. And, as Cleveland is facing many of the same challenges as Worcester (and so many other urban areas), Kush is able to use her Bancroft co-op experience to support another community. She is currently enrolled in a class called Cities Under Construction that has been studying similar ideas to those she explored through the co-op. “[My co-op experience] has allowed me to go a step farther and make new connections in the class,” she says. In addition to all of this class and community work, Kush is also pursuing further independent projects with professors at Case Western that came about after she told them of her work at Bancroft. “Overall, the experience and knowledge gained by the co-op has allowed me to be more confident and able in a field I love,” she says. “I’m so glad I could be involved in it!”
As much as the students benefited, so too did the community partners. “It went incredibly well,” says Colin Novick, executive director of the Greater Worcester Land Trust when asked about his experience with the program. So well, in fact, that Novick not only agreed to participate in the program but he also spoke at Bancroft’s first annual co-op celebration in May.
“We had two high achieving, personally motivated, and deeply committed students join us for a full month of hard work,” he explains. “One focused on the stewardship of conservation lands out at Kinneywoods conservation area designing a new trail loop through forest, wetland, and field-stone lined paths….The other focused on preparing state grant applications for two properties that the Trust had in its sights.” To know more you can check out the detailed break down here.
From packaging grant applications to exploring uncharted sections of Trust properties (and finding a few rare species along the way), to helping to create a strategic plan for the organization, the Bancroft students learned the ins and outs not only of the Trust but also of the Worcester area and its administration. Novick applauds the long list of skills and abilities his Bancroft students were able to master and employ in their relatively brief time in the co-op. “Each project was critical to what the Trust is working to achieve,” Novick says. “Each student dove right in, learned the minutiae of [every] project before them and put in more hours than required for the senior co-operative program.” And while many students might do the co-op just for the resume, Novick echoes Kush when he says that they did not do this out of a sense of obligation, but out of what Novick sees as “a newly found love of and enthusiasm” for the projects. “It was inspiring to us on staff to see the sheer energy and passion they brought to their projects.”
Another co-op student who is still involved with her project is Sylvia Parol who graduated from Bancroft in 2010 and participated in the pilot program before its official launch. Now attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Parol selected the local YWCA as her first choice because the project involved mentoring young women in her community. Parol worked to design a new leadership program for area high school students. “The YWCA had great programming for women near college age and middle school,” Parol explains, “but they needed a program to bridge the gap.” By combining and reorganizing resources the Y already had, Parol created a 10-week program that supported Worcester’s young women in such diverse areas as financial literacy, career planning, public speaking and, yes, community service.
As the Y is right in her neighborhood, Parol felt a special connection to the campus and the girls who go there. “I was eager to help make a difference in my own community,” explains Parol, who received the Katharine F. Erskine Spirit of Leadership award from the YWCA and the city of Worcester for her work. Despite the fact that it was not required, Parol decided to keep helping after graduating from Bancroft. “When I decided that I would be going to college at WPI,” she recalls, “I realized that I’d still be very close to the YWCA, and I could help turn this program into a [continuing] reality.” Having been mentored herself by the Y’s Executive Director Linda Cavaioli and Youth Programs Director Tiffany Lillie, Parol helped assemble a team of other great women to help her mentor the younger women who came to the Y for the program. “We changed two of our sessions to include a ‘mentor round-robin’,” Parol explains, “where participants would get to sit and talk to a mentor…in small intimate conversations.” The girls Parol helped also gave back by helping organize the Y’s 125th anniversary party and the Taking Steps Against Violence walk. “Overall, the program was a great success,” says Parol. “Creating this program has led me to discover so much about myself….I learned so many valuable skills about how to plan my future, how to stay involved in my community, and so much more. I’ve also learned what I am truly capable of. I can make a difference in the lives of so many young women with this program, and now I am eager to accept more leadership positions and take on challenges.”
“The program was a total success,” Rodriguez concludes enthusiastically, recalling talking to his fellow program pioneers and sharing stories of all the amazing things they were all doing. “I remember…standing in awe,” he says, recalling conversations that ran from statistic collections to health program implementation and any of the myriad other things the seniors did during their nearly 3,000 hours of co-op project work. “These guys were doing amazing things that they didn’t even know they’d be involved in six months before!”
Looking six months in the future, Taylor is excited to continue to grow and develop the program he helped start. “It is an incredible example of the power we have to impact others when we stop our busy lives,” he suggests, “to look beyond where we are for the next great thing to do or place to be, and to take stock of how great our contributions can be right here and right now.”
